My first UNDERWATER seahorses!

It definitely sounds magical to be doing my Master’s research on a tropical island, scuba diving and looking for seahorses. In reality, I am diving in muddy, sandy, heavily trawled fishing grounds, spending hours straining my eyes to spot something amidst the murkiness, all the while avoiding getting scooped up in a net. For my first three dives, I was accompanied by An (my research assistant) and Thanh, a dive guide who’s got a knack for spotting seahorses. Sure enough, seven minutes in to our first dive, Thanh beckoned me over (for those of you who have never scuba dived, it’s actually kind of a pain to “call” people over underwater. If they don’t look at you for awhile, they can disappear into the murkiness and you have to find some way to make noise - usually by banging your dive knife against your tank - to get their attention.)

Anyway – so Thanh spotted a seahorse. An adorable little hippocampus spinosissimus, wrapped around a rock. And I was floored. There was NO WAY I would have spotted it. It blended in perfectly with its surroundings, covered in a layer of ocean fuzz.

But I got to work, measuring the seahorse and writing down information about its location. Seahorses are surprisingly strong and squirmy – it takes a while for them to relax. They cling desperately to whatever they can hold on to – a finger, a ruler, whatever’s nearby. During this time, my BCD (imagine it as an inflatable vest that holds your tank and also helps maintain your buoyancy) was self-inflating and I kept floating upwards, having to drain the air out, before I would sink back down. Extraordinarily frustrating. I also managed to lose my ruler in the murkiness, but luckily had brought two along just in case that happened. Finally I had all the info I needed, so I gently placed my seahorse friend back in his home and then we were off again, the three musketeers in search of seahorses. I couldn’t help but notice how destroyed the seafloor was; what was once seagrass beds was now merely sand and muck, torn up by trawl fishing. After about an hour and a half underwater. Thanh had spotted one other seahorse. We surfaced, took a bit of a break, then headed back underwater.

This time, I felt like I was more prepared – I had a better idea of what to look for. When we reached a particularly lush patch of seagrass amongst all the trawl paths, I thought to myself “There must be a seahorse here!” Sure enough, I spotted my first seahorse! I noticed its tiny little tail wrapped around the bottom of the seagrass. I was so stoked!

All in all, we found five seahorses underwater on my first day looking. Quite a bit less than we’d been expecting originally, but still, a great day!