An assessment of West African seahorses in fisheries catch and trade

Cisneros‐Montemayor, Andrés M.; West, Katrina; Boiro, I. S.; Vincent, Amanda C. J.

doi:10.1111/jfb.12818

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 21 publications

(26 reference statements)

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“…Both species have a large geographic range extending across most of Europe and North Africa including the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean and Black Seas (Lourie et al 1999b ; Otero-Ferrer et al 2017 ). Neither species is thought to be currently targeted by fisheries throughout most of their geographic range, but there is trade in west Africa of H. hippocampus (Cisneros-Montemayor et al 2016 ) and a new and increasing fishery for H. guttulatus in the Ria Formosa in Portugal (M. Correia, pers. obs.).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A synthesis of European seahorse taxonomy, population structure, and habitat use as a basis for assessment, monitoring and conservation

et al. 2017

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Accurate taxonomy, population demography, and habitat descriptors inform species threat assessments and the design of effective conservation measures. Here we combine published studies with new genetic, morphological and habitat data that were collected from seahorse populations located along the European and North African coastlines to help inform management decisions for European seahorses. This study confirms the presence of only two native seahorse species (Hippocampus guttulatus and H. hippocampus) across Europe, with sporadic occurrence of non-native seahorse species in European waters. For the two native species, our findings demonstrate that highly variable morphological characteristics, such as size and presence or number of cirri, are unreliable for distinguishing species. Both species exhibit sex dimorphism with females being significantly larger. Across its range, H. guttulatus were larger and found at higher densities in cooler waters, and individuals in the Black Sea were significantly smaller than in other populations. H. hippocampus were significantly larger in Senegal. Hippocampus guttulatus tends to have higher density populations than H. hippocampus when they occur sympatrically. Although these species are often associated with seagrass beds, data show both species inhabit a wide variety of shallow habitats and use a mixture of holdfasts. We suggest an international mosaic of protected areas focused on multiple habitat types as the first step to successful assessment, monitoring and conservation management of these Data Deficient species.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s00227-017-3274-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A synthesis of European seahorse taxonomy, population structure, and habitat use as a basis for assessment, monitoring and conservation

et al. 2017

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“…) and West Africa (Cisneros‐Montemayor et al. ). Third, as in many previous studies, our CHI models were based on linear‐additive assumptions (Halpern & Fujita ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A pivotal knowledge gap is mapping illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing of seahorses. These IUU fishing activities may impose high pressure on seahorses in some regions, such as Ria Formosa in Portugal (Correia et al 2015) and West Africa (Cisneros-Montemayor et al 2016). Third, as in many previous studies, our CHI models were based on linearadditive assumptions (Halpern & Fujita 2013).…”

Section: Caveats and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Using cumulative human‐impact models to reveal global threat patterns for seahorses

Zhang

Vincent

2019

Conservation Biology

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Understanding threats acting on marine organisms and their conservation status is vital but challenging given a paucity of data. We studied the cumulative human impact (CHI) on and conservation status of seahorses (Hippocampus spp.)—a genus of rare and data‐poor marine fishes. With expert knowledge and relevant spatial data sets, we built linear‐additive models to assess and map the CHI of 12 anthropogenic stressors on 42 seahorse species. We examined the utility of indices of estimated impact (impact of each stressor and CHI) in predicting conservation status for species with random forest (RF) models. The CHI values for threatened species were significantly higher than those for nonthreatened species (category based on International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List). We derived high‐accuracy RF models (87% and 96%) that predicted that 5 of the 17 data‐deficient species were threatened. Demersal fishing practices with high bycatch and pollution were the best predictors of threat category. Major threat epicenters were in China, Southeast Asia, and Europe. Our results and maps of CHI may help guide global seahorse conservation and indicate that modeling and mapping human impacts can reveal threat patterns and conservation status for data‐poor species. We found that for exploring threat patterns of focal species, species‐level CHI models are better than existing ecosystem‐level CHI models.

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“…Seahorses and pipefishes belong to this family, along with pipehorses and seadragons [1][2][3][4][5]. Many syngnathids live in highly vulnerable inshore marine habitats [6] such as shallow reefs and lagoons [7,8], mangroves [9], estuaries [7,10,11], seagrass beds and algal flats [12,13]. This makes them highly susceptible to overfishing and habitat destruction.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In many regions, syngnathids are threatened by commercial overexploitation. Some are sold as curious or aquarium fish [2,5,8,9,14,18], but the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) market is the main consumer of wild syngnathids [12,14,18]. For example, the global annual seahorse trade exceeds 20 million individuals [19][20][21][22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Limitations of DNA barcoding in determining the origin of smuggled seahorses and pipefishes

Serite

Ntshudisane

Swart³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Seahorses and pipefishes are heavily exploited for use in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and less frequently for curio markets or as aquarium fish. A number of recent studies have used DNA barcoding to identify species sold at TCM markets in East Asia, but the usefulness of this approach in determining the region of origin remains poorly explored. Here, we generated DNA barcodes of dried seahorses and pipefishes destined for TCM that were confiscated at South Africa’s largest airport because they lacked the export permits required for the CITES-listed seahorses. These were compared with published sequences and new sequences generated for Mozambican seahorses, with the aim of determining whether it is possible to identify their country of origin. All pipefishes were identified as Syngnathoides biaculeatus, a widespread Indo-Pacific species, but the published sequence data did not provide sufficient resolution to identify the region of origin. The same was true of the majority of seahorses, which could not even be identified to species level because they clustered among an unresolved species complex whose sequences were published under the names Hippocampus kuda, H. fuscus and H. capensis. The presence of a few specimens of a second seahorse, H. camelopardalis, suggests that the shipment originated from East Africa because the range of this seahorse is centred around this region, but again, it was not possible to determine their country of origin. Even though seahorses and pipefishes have high levels of genetic population structure because of their low dispersal potential, DNA barcoding was only suitable to tentatively identify species, but not their region of origin. DNA barcoding is increasingly used to identify illegally traded wildlife, but our results show that more sophisticated methods are needed to monitor and police the trade in seahorses and pipefishes.

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An assessment of West African seahorses in fisheries catch and trade

Cited by 7 publications

References 21 publications

A synthesis of European seahorse taxonomy, population structure, and habitat use as a basis for assessment, monitoring and conservation

A synthesis of European seahorse taxonomy, population structure, and habitat use as a basis for assessment, monitoring and conservation

Using cumulative human‐impact models to reveal global threat patterns for seahorses

Limitations of DNA barcoding in determining the origin of smuggled seahorses and pipefishes

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