See a Seahorse

To travel through the world visiting places where divers get to see the sea's treasures. This one would like to visit Hawaii and then return to the Caribbean!

This travel bug starts out in the worlds shore diving capital - Beautiful Bonaire. Its where I saw my first sea horse. Seahorses live in beds of sea grass and sometimes in shallow water with coral. They hitch themselves to things and graze on tiny animals that drift by with the currents.

Seahorse sex is not very traditional - the male gets pregnant! The female deposits her eggs into a special pouch on the male’s belly. The pouch seals shut while he nurtures the developing eggs. Once the eggs hatch, the pouch opens and the male goes into labor—giving birth to up to 200 tiny seahorse babies. Because the rates of survival for newborn seahorses are so low, incubation is essential at the beginning stages of life. Males are ready to re-mate within a few hours of giving birth. Male pregnancy allows for shorter birthing intervals and more offspring. males could have taken on this role because of the time period in which it takes females to produce their eggs. If the males carry the offspring while the females gather the nutrients needed to produce new eggs then they can continually reproduce batch after batch together, depending on one another for efficiency in spreading both of their genes.

In Chinese culture sea horses are prized for their medical uses. Seahorses are felt to have ‘powerful masculine’ stimulant qualities that fortifies the yan. They are used for impotence, incontinence and old age.

In the Hawaiian culture the seahorse has long be a sign of eternal friendship.