MEDIA

Join biologist Amanda Vincent on a tour of the complex and beautiful world of the seahorse—from an underwater enclave in Australia (where their unique mating dance is recorded on camera for the first time) to the bustling apothecary shops of Hong Kong, where heaps of harvested seahorses feed a steady market. Then take a voyage to a small seaside village in the Philippines, where Vincent makes it her mission to come up with a conservation plan that can sustain human and seahorse residents alike.

Kingdom of the Seahorse

Series: NOVA

 A MALE SEAHORSE GIVES BIRTH

 Seahorses are tricky little creatures. They need to eat live food only. They're really voracious predators contrary to their sort of pleasant benign appearance. And seahorses also get a lot of diseases. So rearing baby seahorses is an exercise in trying to draw together a whole host of different tiny food sources, which means you have to culture the algae to feed the little food items to feed the seahorses. And it's complicated to do that well enough to have reliable supplies for large numbers of animals.