Tasmania’s Seahorse World is a tourist attraction aiming to improve seahorse conservation

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Seahorse World in Northern Tasmania is known as a tourist attraction, but it started out with a plan to export dried seahorses for traditional Chinese medicine.  The venture aimed to improve seahorse conservation by replacing animals caught through destructive and unregulated fishing, but the plan was never realised

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00:00These creatures lure thousands of tourists every year to Seahorse World at Beauty Point

00:08in northern Tasmania. As well as promoting the conservation of seahorses, Seahorse World

00:14also breeds them for aquariums. But it was originally set up to supply dried seahorses

00:21into the Chinese market.

00:23As a conservation measure, because 20 million of seahorses are removed from the wild every

00:29year for traditional Chinese medicine.

00:31Unregulated and unsustainable fishing in Southeast Asia, West Africa and Latin America means

00:38it's cheaper for buyers to get seahorses taken from the wild. That's made it unviable for

00:44Seahorse World to enter the market. There are rules restricting seahorse fishing, but experts

00:51say they're not entirely effective, and they need to be policed more strongly.

00:56We recently published a paper that looked at seizures of seahorses around the world, and

01:02it found that just the seizures we could document, which of course is going to be the tip of the

01:08iceberg really, it was millions and millions of animals were seized and so traded illegally.

01:15Despite the challenges faced here in Tasmania, there are some early reports of similar seahorse

01:22breeding facilities being set up in China. But it's still not clear whether they offer

01:26a path forward for conservation.

01:29These operations start up and then the question is, can they be sustained? Because they need

01:33to make sure they're bringing in enough revenue to offset the costs. And I don't know that

01:38we're at that point yet.

01:39For now, Seahorse World's mission to conserve wild seahorses remains only partly fulfilled.

01:46So we're going to close down this country with the

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