Museums for March 2002
See the Sea Horses While You Can! These fabled fish and their cousins face a grim future.
By Judith Kirkwood
Few creatures look more bizarre—or enchanting—than the sea horse, which appears to be assembled from the miniaturized spare parts of other animals. It possesses the flattened forehead of a horse, the shifty eyes of a lizard, the long snout of an aardvark, the armored plates of a stegosaur, the brood pouch of a kangaroo, and the prehensile tale of a monkey. No wonder many of the young children who visit the sea horses and their close cousins, sea dragons and pipefish, at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas (www.auduboninstitute.org) in New Orleans imagine they have entered a magical world.
Ironically, the main message conveyed through the exhibit is that the world's wild sea horse population, which once flourished virtually everywhere, is at risk of vanishing. The World Conservation Union lists sea horses and their near relatives as endangered. In China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, millions of sea horses are ground up each year and used in traditional remedies for ailments ranging from sexual dysfunction to respiratory disorders. In addition, pollution, shoreline alteration, and destructive fishing methods continue to damage the coral reefs and sea-grass meadows in shallow coastal waters where sea horses live and breed.
