Boost for Sydney’s endangered White’s Seahorses as 200 find new homes at Balmoral Beach.

By JACK KELLY

Balmoral Beach has become the new habitat for 200 endangered white seahorses released under netting at the Baths on Wednesday.

The Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS) works with UTS and the Department of Industry Fisheries to repopulate the endangered species.

SIMS Research Assistant Jill Chambers is part of the team in charge of breeding and caring for the seahorses at the organisation’s aquarium in Chowder Bay.

“The Sydney Seahorse Project aims to help repopulate wild numbers of white seahorses. We also have planned to help restore the environments that they live in,” Ms Chambers explained.

“The white seahorse is the second [seahorse] species globally to be listed as endangered; we’ve seen a vast decline in their numbers over the past ten years due to habitat loss.

“The loss of these critical habitats happens through sedimentation through mooring pollution, and the general urbanisation of Sydney’s shoreline.”

The project aims to repopulate the endangered species by breeding and then releasing them back into the wild and by creating artificial environments.

The Balmoral jetty is the perfect habitat for sea critters due to its natural growth of nutrition, which manifests in its nets.

Seahorse hotels have also become an innovative source of conservation for groups attempting to restore the animal population.

“We selected Balmoral because it has a known population of seahorses that live on the netting. We also wanted to help implement more natural habitat by putting in our seahorse hotels at this site.

“The hotels are artificial structures that have epibiotic growth on them. So seagrasses, seaweed, and Sargassum sponges create a really beautiful habitat… It often takes around six months or so for that to happen. And then we will release the seahorses.

Once the seahorses have been released, the team must monitor them to ensure the species’ survival is proceeding as planned.

Mitchell Brennan, SIMS Research Assistant and one of the divers who released the horses today, says monitoring will start as early as tomorrow.

“We go out the next day within 24 hours to see how many stay around. They might move as it’s their first time out in the open waters. So we like to get that time zero point of release. And then we’ll do fortnightly monitoring, and then after three months, it’ll be monthly for a year,” Mr Brennan said.

“They managed to settle quite quickly onto the swimming nets we released them on. Several of them are sort of occupying some of the sponge and soft coral growth out there in Balmoral, which is positive.”

SIMS released almost 400 white seahorses in July last year and has recorded positive survival results so far.

The team tracks the seahorses via a special dye that illuminates the animals with a bright colour.

“Tagging is the implementation of a fluorescent dye such as an elastomer, and it goes under the skin of the seahorse between the bony plates, giving them ‘tattoos’,” Ms Chambers said.

“These elastomers can be many different colours; it could be red, or they can be orange, yellow, green and blue. And basically, this will enable us to track their progress in the ocean.”

The day was a success, preceded by months of work to rehabilitate the endangered species, but their task is far from over. Two more releases are planned for this year around New South Wales.