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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