Project Seahorse 2010 Annual Report 1 Director’s Letter On getting on with marine conservation henever the Project Seahorse team discusses pressing This past year, we committed ourselves to “frugal conservation” — Wmarine conservation issues, we find ourselves returning finding new, more effective ways to do conservation without to the same theme: the need to keep moving with conserva- sacrificing rigour. We have, for example, found a method to tion while maintaining scientific rigour. I’m very persuaded detect trends in marine protected area recovery by by the view of a wonderful colleague, the late Bob Johannes, monitoring only a small subset of all fishes on coral reefs. that there is no such thing as perfect advice. The choice, in Our finding is highly relevant in confirming that local conservation as in so many things, is between imperfect communities can gauge the performance of their marine advice or none at all. reserves by monitoring only commercially important or culturally relevant species, and make effective management Project Seahorse’s innovative and interdisciplinary approach decisions accordingly. I encourage you to read about this means that we are always exploring the creative tension and much more in the pages that follow. between action and research to develop stronger tools for marine conservation. Such integration is central to our I sincerely thank our donors, collaborators, and team members mission. Recognizing that the pressures on marine life will for their engagement and support. May we have many more continue whether or not our advice is forthcoming, I take the happy days on and near the ocean. And may we always speak position that we should offer the best technical advice we can for the needs of marine life with confidence and openness. while acknowledging our areas of uncertainty. And then get on with improving our understanding through strong research. In 2010, Project Seahorse brought its usual brand of pragmatic idealism to bear on some of the most world’s most pressing marine conservation problems. As you’ll see in the pages that follow, our work covered many continents and many different Dr. Amanda Vincent issues, from the impact of shrimp trawling on small fish spe- Director and co-Founder cies in Mexico, to the movement of seahorses in Portugal, to Project Seahorse the establishment of marine protected areas in the Philippines. Cover photo: Bargibanti’s seahorse (Hippocampus bargibanti) near Komodo, Indonesia. Guido Borgenon/Guylian Seahorses of the World 2010 Project Seahorse is an interdisciplinary and international organization committed to the conservation and sustainable use of the world’s coastal ecosystems. Our vision is a world in which marine ecosystems are healthy and well managed. 2 3 A thorny seahorse (Hippocampus histrix) near Dahab, Egypt. Herwig Helsen/Guylian Seahorses of the World 2010 Our work: Saving seahorses Seahorses are flagship marine species, charismatic symbols of the seagrasses, mangroves, coral reefs, estuaries and seaweeds where they make their homes. They are important predators on bottom-dwelling organisms; removing them can disrupt ecosystems. Their unusual life history — only the male becomes pregnant and pairs are monogamous in many species — offers an opportunity to increase our understanding of reproductive ecology. Project Seahorse pioneered the study of seahorses in the wild and continues to expand the body of scientific knowl- Cover photo: Bargibanti’s seahorse (Hippocampus bargibanti) near Komodo, Indonesia. Guido Borgenon/Guylian Seahorses of the World 2010 edge about their biology, life history, taxonomy, trade, and threats. Because these fascinating animals suffer from the same pressures and benefit from many of the same interventions as other marine life, our work to understand and protect them supports marine conservation more broadly. 2 3 remember their catches in the distant past. Using existing interviews, logbooks, catch rates from 1997 and later, she developed a novel methodology that allowed her to adjust the older historical data for accuracy. Today, small-scale fishers in the Philippines and other developing countries contribute to the global wild seahorse trade, which totals over 25 million animals per year. The seahorses they catch and sell — for about $0.40 each — end up on display in aquariums, as dried specimens in traditional Chinese medicine, and as curio souvenirs for tourists around the world. “By comparing Project Seahorse data from the past fifteen Project Seahorse PhD student Kerrie O’Donnell (left) meets with local fishers. years with the information we gleaned from the fishers about Kerrie O’Donnell/Project Seahorse the more distant past,” says O’Donnell, “we can better gauge the current rate of population decline and adapt our conservation work accordingly. Of course, memory is a frag- Saving seahorses ile thing, so we needed to adjust for bias.” A lack of historical data hinders conservation efforts for many Using local knowledge threatened marine species around the world. O’Donnell’s new methodology will help conservationists to retrieve this vital to make a global impact information from the past accurately and effectively. Every night, local fishers paddle their tiny outrigger boats You can learn more about this research in “How does the over the Danajon Bank, a rare double barrier reef system in accuracy of fisher knowledge affect seahorse conservation the central Philippines, and, with only the glow of a lantern status?” and “Improving conservation and fishery assessments to illuminate their way, slip into the black water in search of with local knowledge: future directions.” Both papers are seahorses and other small fishes. If they’re lucky, a night’s available at www.projectseahorse.org/research. work will yield a single seahorse among their catch, which they will sell to traders. It wasn’t always this way. “The older guys told me that in the 1970s they would catch a hundred seahorses in a night, sometimes more. It seemed like an unbelievable number,” says Kerrie O’Donnell, a PhD student with Project Seahorse, of her interviews with long- Snapshots time lantern fishers. Here are just a few glimpses at other seahorse work last year: IUCN Red List As part of her research, O’Donnell interviewed the fishers The IUCN has designated Project Seahorse to be the authority about the species and volume of seahorses they caught in on extinction risks for seahorses, seadragons, pipefishes, stickle- the 1970s and 80s. Using their recollections and extrapolating backs, and related fish species. In 2010 we assessed six sea- from existing data, she recreated a history of seahorse fishing horse species, three of them newly identified. We determined on Danajon Bank. She wanted to understand how these that Syngnathus watermeyeri, a species of pipefish endemic to populations changed between the 1970s and 1996, when South African estuaries, is critically endangered. Our Red List as- Project Seahorse first began tracking seahorses there. sessments will inform conservation decision-making about these “To truly understand the situation right now, to understand and other seahorses, pipefishes and their relatives. the threats to seahorses and to identify solutions, we need Oil spill media advocacy to know what was happening ten, twenty, thirty years One of the critical issues overlooked in the early media coverage of ago,” she says. “In many areas of the world, we don’t have last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was its effect on small fish baseline data for seahorses or most other fisheries, so it’s species. Using the story of the iconic dwarf seahorse (H. zosterae) difficult to know how much fish populations have declined to illustrate the issue, Project Seahorse helped to shift the in recent decades.” international discussion towards the effect of the spill on small and In order to reconstruct these historical fisheries, O’Donnell less obvious marine life. The story was picked up by media and needed to account for the vagaries of memory. ‘Wishful read by over 25 million people globally, raising awareness and thinking’ and other factors can influence how fishers encouraging advocacy. 4 5 A Project Seahorse researcher at work in the Ria Formosa lagoon, Portugal. Iain Caldwell/ Project Seahorse Our work: Securing shallow seas The first 10 metres of depth along the world’s coastlines is where seahorses and a huge diversity of other marine species live, grow and breed. These coastal ecosystems are also where human beings exert the greatest pressure on our oceans, from overfishing, sea-filling (usually known as land reclamation), and real estate development to aquaculture, land-based runoff, and pollution. Many species and habitats are threatened as a result. We urgently need to take care of these ocean neighbourhoods, where billions of people live, swim, and fish. Project Seahorse’s innovative and interdisciplinary approach, which marries biol- ogy, ecology, social science, and advocacy, gives us distinctive insight into the problem and its possible solutions. We are using this insight — and our considerable academic credibility — to help secure our shallow seas. 5 Securing shallow seas Making marine conservation more efficient “When I tell people I do coral reef conservation, they usually tease me about the tough life I must lead, spending all that time Healthy corals in Danajon Bank, Philippines. Kerrie O’Donnell/Project Seahorse in the sea, sun, and sand,” says Dr. Philip Molloy, a postdoctoral researcher at Project Seahorse. “If only that were true. The widely unrecognized reality about conservation is that it’s time-consum- ing, physically demanding and, critically, expensive.” Dr. Molloy has been investigating new ways to make field conservation — specifically, the work of tracking changes in fish populations inside marine protected areas (MPAs) — more time-efficient and cost-effective. Achieving the right balance between scientific rigour and ac- tion is one of the great challenges in marine conservation. Our oceans, especially the first 10 metres of depth, face huge and urgent pressures, yet the work of marine conservation must be done carefully and accurately.