Male seahorse giving birth at The Deep Hull

http://www.thedeep.co.uk Filmed at The Deep, Hull, Yorkshire. The world's only submarium is home to over 3500 fish, including sharks and rays. As you may know, it is the male seahorse that incubates the eggs and then gives birth. This was filmed a while ago in our quarantine when our pair of Custom seized seahorse gave birth. There are many illegally imported seahorses. When they are discovered by Customs and Excise, London Zoo aquarium at ZSL help out by housing and taking care of them. There were so many this time they could not take them all. We were able to help out by taking this mature breeding pair.
Many seahorses are on the IUCN Red list classified as VULNERABLE and have shown population declines of 20% over the last 10 years. Many species haven't enough information about them to be able to manage their exploitation.
Project Seahorse is an orgainisation that serve as the formal IUCN Redlist authority on seahorses. They also pioneer many different schemes to help reduce these population declines. Using holistic approaches involving local people, communicating with major consumers and developing socio-economic solutions to the threats, Project Seahorse are at the forefront of seahorse conservation. For more information visit www.zsl.org/conservation/regions/asia/pr­oject-seahorse/

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• Category

  Education

[Sammo96]

RISE MY MINIONS RISE!

[struong10]

It has to do with ecology. Some species focus on survival of offspring and have few offspring, and some species have lots of offspring, many of whom won't survive to adulthood or reproductive age. There are competitors for food and other resources, as well as predators, all of which keep a leash on the seahorse population.

[kaykark]

Terrible living conditions for these poor creatures. He's holding a plastic chain. Totally unnatural.

[Matt SteveRfan]

Whoa, it's like a cannon

[Jupiter Conwell]

I didn't know they have so many babies :o

[Mika Chan]

In my head, all I thought of was him sneezing

[stormwillowboo]

Woah

[EmIsLegend]

Haha, how did they all fit in there? Funny how the dad practically faints in the end, then mom is ready for more action lol

[Bastian Cassidy Feddern]

That was really neat! 

[T.Rob Wyatt]

"... home to over 3500 fish." Make that 5300. Seahorses have the same baby name books we do except theirs just have check boxes next to each entry.