300 Endangered Baby Seahorses Released in Port Stephens as Part of Recovery Project

Over 300 aquarium-bred baby seahorses were released into the waters off Port Stephens in New South Wales, as part of a threatened-species recovery project.

This footage, provided by SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium, shows a diver releasing the creatures into their new environment – the first release of its kind in the Port Stephens area.

Having previously released hundreds of baby seahorses into Sydney Harbour, SEA LIFE said one of the aims of this year’s project was to extend their recovery north to Port Stephens.

Laura Simmons, SEA LIFE regional curator for Australia and New Zealand, said, “This is a huge step in our seahorse recovery program. We’re excited to take the successes we’ve demonstrated in Sydney Harbour up to Port Stephens where populations have seen the most devastating declines.”

In February, a total of 30 so-called “seahorse hotels” were deployed to Port Stephens, allowing enough time for sponges, algae and seahorse prey, such as small shrimps, to start using the structures, making them perfect locations for seahorses to call home.

According to the aquarium, the “White’s seahorse, also known as the Sydney seahorse, is Australia’s only threatened seahorse species with populations declining due to habitat loss and degradation." Credit: SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium via Storyful

Video Transcript

LAURA SIMMONS: I'm Laura Simmons. Regional curator for sea life in Australia and New Zealand. This is such an awesome day for us here at SEA LIFE Sydney. And with our partners at DPI fisheries research. We are taking our baby seahorses, 300 of our baby seahorses to Port Stephens to be released onto seahorse hotels today.

Being able to release them into PORT Stephens is such a huge step because that is an area where they're most critically in danger. The reason it's so important. And why it's been such an amazing journey is we've been able to more than quadruple our holding space for our beautiful seahorse lab and nursery, and we've been able to breed more than 1,000 baby seahorses this year.

The juvenile seahorses that we have here are actually from parents that came from Port Stephens. These Port Stephens adults were collected specifically for our breeding program. In order to assure genetic diversity amongst our breeding program, we wanted to make sure that the animals were genetically appropriate when they were released.

SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium was so fortunate. We received very generous grant support from the threatened species commission's environment recovery fund this year. And while you're receiving this funding we not only expanded our seahorse breeding labs and our nursery facilities, but it's also allowed us to expand the range where we can help to recover the species all the way North to Port Stephens.

Grant funding provided 30 seahorse hotels so that we were able to have them deployed in the Port Stephens. They were put out into the water of Port Stephens a couple of months ago specifically to become bio filled. We want them to become encrusted with living organisms like sponges and corals, and also become inhabited by the food source for our baby seahorses once they go to live in those seahorse hotels. As we move on into year five of our project, we'll continue to partner with DPI fisheries research, not only to continue breeding seahorses, deploying more seahorse hotels, and also establishing the range to be farther and broader, really our goal is to recover fully this endangered species.

This multi-year, very collaborative project is not possible without the relationship that we've built with DPI fisheries. Without this partnership, we wouldn't have the ability to work with this endangered species. And most importantly, also be able to release them into the wild to help recover their spaces.

If you'd like to learn more about our White seahorse recovery program and have an opportunity to contribute, we now have a behind the scenes tour that allows you to go below the surface and see our White seahorse program up close, to visit our nurseries and also see how we're making all of this magic happen. In addition to being able to visit SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium, our guests and also adopt a seahorse. Check out our adapt to seahorse program that helps fund the SEA LIFE trust, which also helps recovery programs around the world.