Great Seahorse

About Great Seahorse:

• Great seahorses can be found in relatively deep waters.
• These are ovoviviparous and the males give birth to live young.
• They also have some traits, such as small body size, fast growth and high fecundity, that may confer resilience to high levels of exploitation 
• There are 46 known species of seahorses worldwide. India’s coastal ecosystems are home to nine of the twelve species found in the Indo-Pacific, which is a hotspot for seahorse populations.
• They are distributed across diverse ecosystems such as seagrass, mangroves, macroalgal beds, and coral reefs.
• These nine species are distributed along the coasts of eight States and five Union Territories from Gujarat to Odisha, apart from Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
• They are poor swimmers but migrate to new habitats by rafting (clinging to floating substrata such as macroalgae or plastic debris for dispersal by ocean currents) to ensure the survival of their population.
• Conservation status
  • IUCN: Vulnerable
  • CITES: Appendix II

Q1) What are coral reefs?

Coral reefs are large underwater structures composed of the skeletons of colonial marine invertebrates called coral

Source: With overfishing, great seahorses bolt from the Coromandel