According to a recent study, extensive fishing off the Coromandel coast could be forcing the great seahorse to migrate laboriously toward Odisha (Source: The Hindu).
Key points
- The study was based on a specimen of a juvenile great seahorse, or Hippocampus kelloggi, caught in a ring net and collected from the Ariyapalli fish landing centre in Odisha’s Ganjam district.
- There are 46 species of seahorses reported worldwide.
- The coastal ecosystems of India house nine out of 12 species found in the Indo-Pacific.
- Seahorse populations are distributed across diverse ecosystems such as seagrass, mangroves, macroalgal beds, and coral reefs.
- These nine species are distributed along the coasts of eight States and five Union Territories from Gujarat to Odisha, apart from Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
- The population of the great seahorse, which is among the eight species tagged ‘vulnerable’, is declining due to its overexploitation for traditional Chinese medicines and as ornamental fish, combined with general destructive fishing and fisheries bycatch.
- Seahorses are poor swimmers but migrate by rafting — clinging to floating substrata such as macroalgae or plastic debris for dispersal by ocean currents – to new habitats for successful maintenance of their population.
(Source: The Hindu)
