Longsnout seahorse

Longsnout seahorses can be yellow, orange, red, brown, black or anywhere in between — and one of their many talents includes camouflage. While they’re far from speedy swimmers, once they’ve grabbed onto a stable object with their long, prehensile tails, their camouflaging abilities help them to capture unsuspecting prey as it floats by. The tiny shrimps and other crustaceans that make up their primary diet are then slurped up through long, toothless snouts.

These fish (yes, seahorses are fish!) are usually most active during the day, anchoring onto seagrass, corals, or floating sargassum seaweed beds through the night. They can grow to be almost 18 cm/7 inches in length — a spectacular sight if you’re diving among Saba’s reefs.

Longsnout seahorses bond for life, and their courtship rituals often consist of stunning displays of color-changing and graceful swimming. Female seahorses deposit eggs into male seahorses’ pouches, where the eggs are fertilized. Roughly two weeks later, the pouch opens as baby seahorses hatch, each usually less than 2.5 cm/1 inch long. 

These bony-plated animals aren’t a first choice of prey for most of their fellow ocean inhabitants, but their populations have been declining worldwide as a result of habitat degradation, being caught as bycatch in the fishing industry, and large-scale collection for the pet trade. Currently listed as Near-Threatened, their decline is extra concerning since longsnout seahorses are what the conservation community calls “ecosystem health indicators,” meaning their population health also reflects the overall health of reefs. 

If you spot a longsnout in the wild around Saba, take a photo and upload it to iNaturalist! Doing so helps scientists and conservation managers better plan for how to protect important reef species. 

Header image by @zahnerphoto (CC-BY-NC).