Seahorses become an unexpected export

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter


Seahorses, one of nature's most intricate animals, have become one of New Zealand's most unexpected exports.

Seahorse farms in Tauranga and Napier are earning the country several hundred thousand dollars a year, exporting live seahorses to pet shops in the United States and dried ones to Chinese medicine traders in Hong Kong.

Traditional Chinese medicine uses the species to treat impotence, lumbago, kidney disorders, skin problems, high cholesterol and loss of "chi".

Demand is skyrocketing, with retail prices in US pet shops of up to US$220 ($325) for each seahorse, because of overfishing in Asia which has devastated seahorse numbers.

The creature is due to be listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species on May 15, when permits will be required to sell them across national borders.

New Zealand scientists have perfected techniques for breeding and feeding the tiny animals which have stumped experts in other countries.

Blair Gray, a 30-year-old Otago University marine science doctoral student who runs the Seahorse Farm at Awatoto, near Napier, says the biggest problem was to grow the right live food which the seahorses eat.

"We are growing a combination of three different types of crustaceans [shrimps], and we are importing crustaceans from Canada," he said.

Most of New Zealand's pot-bellied seahorses - the largest seahorse species in the world, sometimes growing to more than 20cm - eat the common brine shrimp.

The animals are fed for 12 to 18 months, then killed and dried for airfreighting to Hong Kong.

With 70,000 seahorses being bred at present, Mr Gray said the trade was worth "in the hundreds of thousands" of dollars.

"We are selling everything we can produce," he said. "It's becoming quite profitable."

The farm employs 12 people and is owned by Hawkes Bay Aquaculture. The biggest shareholder is Auckland-based Tattersfield Securities, which is controlled by the owner of Walker and Hall Fine Gifts, Allan Tattersfield.

The country's other seahorse farm at Te Puna, near Tauranga, was started in 2002 by a 40-year-old former pet shop owner, Greg Leveridge. He and his wife Donna run it by themselves and have sold live seahorses worth about $70,000 in the past year to the US pet trade.

They specialise in breeding tropical seahorses, which are smaller than the New Zealand species at around 5-6cm but survive better in warm fish tanks inside houses.

The Leveridges also breed brine shrimp and plankton on their 1ha property to feed to the seahorses, and single-celled algae to feed to the plankton.

Once they are big enough to sell, the live seahorses are packed in plastic bags about the size of 1-litre milk cartons, made specially by a New Plymouth company to be about a third full of sea water. The other two-thirds of the bag is pure oxygen.

"The oxygen is feeding into the water all the time," Mr Leveridge said. So far he has airfreighted more than 3000 live seahorses to a dealer in Florida without a single death.

A scientist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), Chris Woods, said he started the research which led to the local seahorse breeding in 1997.

"At that time, nobody in New Zealand could do it. Our brief was to solve those problems," he said.

The seahorses are one of a few species in the animal kingdom where males and females form stable partnerships through their lives of up to about five years.

Even more unusually, the females squirt their eggs into the males' kangaroo-style pouches, where they are fertilised by sperm and grow for up to a month until 100 to 200 baby seahorses are ready to hatch.

At the end of gestation, the male goes into labour, pumping and thrusting for hours to release his brood.

Seahorses

Seahorses are found throughout the world between latitudes 50 North and 50 South, mainly close to shores.

Numbers are dropping, mainly because of the demand for traditional Chinese cures for impotence and other medical conditions.

Some populations have dropped by 25 to 50 per cent in the past five years.

The Chinese market pays about $3000 a kilogram for dried seahorses.

Live seahorses sell for up to US$220 ($325) in American pet shops.