Project Seahorse
Book Description
Picture this: The beady black eyes of two seahorses peek out of a hiding place in a coral reef. Father seahorse and his mate wrap their monkey-like tails around small branches of coral and sway in the current. A tiny shrimplike creature drifts past the male seahorse's trumpet-shaped snout. Zoop! Father seahorse slurps up his prey. He needs all the food he can get. Inside the male's bulging pouch i...
MorePicture this: The beady black eyes of two seahorses peek out of a hiding place in a coral reef. Father seahorse and his mate wrap their monkey-like tails around small branches of coral and sway in the current. A tiny shrimplike creature drifts past the male seahorse's trumpet-shaped snout. Zoop! Father seahorse slurps up his prey. He needs all the food he can get. Inside the male's bulging pouch is a growing brood of baby seahorses...
Seahorses, some of the ocean's oddest yet most charming fishes, are in trouble. Over the past twenty years, seahorse populations have declined sharply. Like many other residents of the world's oceans, seahorses ar threatened by overfishing, pollution, destructive and wasteful fishing methods and climate change. In Handumon, a comunity in the Philippines, villagers and conservationists have joined together to protect the seahorse and the coral reefs where these quirky fish live. Amanda Vincent and Heather Koldewey, founders of Project Seahorse, work tirelessly with Filipino colleagues and local fishers like Rodrigo "Digoy" Paden to protect both Handumon's seahorses and the livelihood of local fishing families. through their efforts the Handumon Marine Protected Area is now a model "underwater park" where all marine life is safe from fishing. Handumon villagers are now finding the confidence to make other important changes for conservation.
In Project Seahorse, Pamela S. Turner explores how committed conservationists, community organizers, and caring neighbors are working together to restore the luster of a damaged coral reef. Scott Tuason's brilliant photography will give you a fish's-eye view of Amanda and Heather's seahorse research and allow you to swim along on a midnight fishing trip with Digoy. Most important of all, you'll learn what's being done--and what you can do--to help the seahorse.
There are lots of books out there about "seahorses" but this one is the most in-depth and also, I feel, the most important, as it really gives a sense of the bigger issues at hand when it comes to conservation of marine life working hand in hand with people and communities struggling to feed their families. I also like that, as a SITF title, we have female scientists who took an interest they had and ran with it. When Amanda Vincent was in graduate school she decided to combine her two interests--the ocean and the origin of sex differences--by studying seahorses. And Amanda became a pioneer. No biologist had ever studied seahorses in the wild! I find it amazing that as recently as twenty years ago there were animals that had not been studied in the wild - and here we have a book about the first person to do so!
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