Finding seahorses and naming them gets people excited about conservation, even if they get stuck in silt.
WADING THROUGH a seagrass meadow at low tide, at 6.50am, is anything but graceful for a newbie. Each step in the waterlogged mud forms an air-tight seal around our feet, threatening to swallow our boots and shoes.
Earlier, the Save Our Seahorses (SOS) Malaysia survey team, and a small group of public participants had boarded a small fishing boat, scooting for approximately 20 minutes from the fishing jetty at Pendas, to the Merambong seagrass bed, less than 500m off Johor’s Forest City.
This morning’s search for seahorses goes slow at first, although we see black sea slugs, shrimp, and the occasional crab or fish darting around the centimetres-deep water. Then, our guide Wong Jieyi sights one male seahorse.
(Feature image: At the Merambong seagrass meadow in Johor, volunteers for NGO Save Our Seahorses search for seahorses during low tide at dawn. Changing tide times throughout the year means that sometimes survey trips can take place in complete darkness as well. | Photo: Vincent Tan)
The rest of us rush across the mud to reach her at the edge of the seagrass bed. We gently take turns holding the creature in the seawater, feeling its bony plates and spiny bumps, while its tail instinctively tries to curl around our fingers.
This early morning trip to the seagrass was part of a 3-day monthly expedition to survey Merambong’s seahorse population. The research began in 2005. The NGO SOS wants to build not just a dataset of local seahorse population, but also public empathy for the fish through direct contact with it in its habitat. SOS hopes that such a connection could help save the seahorse’s seagrass meadow home and slow global warming.
Of the world’s 46 species of seahorse, 12 – more than a quarter – live in Malaysian waters. Johor, where Merambong is located, harbours at least 3 species – the Common or Yellow seahorse (Hippocampus kuda), the Flat-Faced or Long-Nosed seahorse (H. trimaculatus) and Hedgehog seahorse (H. spinosissimus).
All Malaysia’s seahorses are listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN’s Red List – a global assessment of wildlife populations – and multiple threats cloud their future.
In Malaysian waters, nearly 3,400 kg of seahorses a year (or about 1,069,000 individuals) are caught as bycatch in trawl nets, gill nets and drift nets, according to a recent study. The same study found that more than two-thirds of local fishers are seeing fewer seahorse than before 2021—2023.
Demand for seahorses as ingredients, curios, and ornaments in traditional medicine and beliefs, among Malaysians, add to the pressure on seahorses.
About one in 5 Malaysians said they had used seahorses, according to a 2024 paper that surveyed 1,189 fishers and members of the public. Some used them for traditional remedies, while others kept them as pets or curios.
Among the public, Malaysian Chinese respondents were more likely to use seahorses for medicinal purposes, reflecting the influence of Traditional Chinese Medicine. And the non-medicinal users mostly comprise Malay fishers who often dry and keep seahorses as keepsakes or charms.
The same study found that while many Malaysians recognised threats like habitat loss and plastic pollution, awareness of other dangers to seahorses was far more limited. Only 42.5% saw overfishing as a major concern, and just 37% mentioned bycatch. The study also revealed that understanding of seahorses’ ecological roles and legal protections was generally low, especially among fishers.
Memorable surprises
At Merambong, the volunteers have been peering at the silt for nearly an hour since landing. Every step stirs up more sediment, turning the seawater murky and making their task harder. For a fish with such a distinctive look, seahorses are remarkably hard to spot. As ambush predators, they curl their tails around blades of seagrass with their tails, swaying gently with the current, their mottled skin blending with the surroundings.
But when a volunteer finally spots one, its tail curled gently around a blade of seagrass, it’s a moment of quiet triumph.
During the search, SOS guides explain how these animals are threatened by habitat destruction, bycatch, and the souvenir trade. For volunteer Violet Lee, who had only known that the males carry the young, the survey was an eye-opener.
“I didn’t know that Malaysia had so many seahorse species,” she said.
Each discovery of a previously tagged seahorse brings a small ripple of relief, proof that at least for now, the habitat is still holding. And through these field moments, the volunteers begin to understand that seahorses are not just rare or cute – they help keep the whole meadow in balance.
Saving seahorses helps ecosystems
Although seahorses can be found in various coastal habitats, their conservation can indirectly benefit larger marine ecosystems like the Merambong seagrass meadow. These seagrass meadows teem with life, sheltering sea slugs, anemones, fish, prawns, crabs, and sea cucumbers.
Seahorses are essential to keeping the meadows green and healthy. As predators, they help control populations of shrimp and other animals that would otherwise overgraze the seagrass. A seahorse fry can consume up to 4,000 prey a day, while adults eat 30 to 40 individual organisms daily, said Dr Adam Lim, seahorse specialist and director of SOS.
“If the seahorses do not feed on the shrimp or the fish larvae, these will always bloom in number,” said Lim, noting that such blooms could strip the seabed of vegetation. “When the grasses are gone, there goes your habitat. Everything after is a domino effect.”
Seahorses slow down global warming
When the loss of seahorses leads to overgrazed seagrass meadows, it makes our climate less resilient. Seagrass meadows are one of the world’s most efficient ways to take carbon dioxide out of the air and store it. Though they cover less than 1% of the ocean floor, seagrass beds are estimated to store up to 10% of the ocean’s carbon, absorbing carbon at faster rates than tropical rainforests.
Seagrass meadows have been found to contain 400—2,000 tonnes of carbon in every hectare of their soil, according to a 2022 report from the IPCC. That is 3—15 times that of some of the world’s most protected tropical rainforests. Without seagrasses, there would be more carbon dioxide in the air, and the world would warm up faster.
The biggest threat to seagrass meadows is human development, such as land reclamations, or “sea-filling”, as marine ecologist Dr Jillian Ooi of University of Malaya calls it. She welcomes SOS’s efforts to use seahorse conservation to protect these ecosystems.
SOS seahorse surveys: back afresh
SOS, founded in 2005 by the late Choo Chee Kuang, a lecturer at Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, had long focused on surveying the seahorse populations at Merambong’s seagrass meadow.
But in 2014 and 2018, large scale development began nearby for Johor’s Forest City and Singapore’s Tuas Terminal, respectively. The presence of large barges and land reclamation works posed safety concerns for researchers, said Lim.
These worries, coupled with SOS’s new seahorse surveys elsewhere, led Lim – by then director of SOS – to suspend the Merambong seahorse surveys in 2014.
Finally, in September 2023, SOS was back in Merambong to pick up where they left off 9 years earlier. This time round, they are emphasising public participation and citizen science. Their surveys recruit everyday Malaysians, schools, volunteer bodies, and corporations. Participants even come from across the Causeway in Singapore.
Adopting seahorses builds connections
Many volunteers sign up repeatedly for SOS’s surveys for its signature “adopt-a-seahorse” programme. Violet Lee, for instance, took a year-long career break to volunteer in marine conservation. She made several trips with SOS to Merambong throughout 2024 to look for seahorses.
“It wasn’t until my third trip that I found my first new seahorse – which I named ‘Neptune’,” said Lee. She would go on to receive monthly updates on Neptune from SOS for months after.
And while “Neptune” is fairly par for the course as marine-related names go, there are also the ones that took creative detours – like “Rapunzel” (for a pregnant male) and punnier ones like “Hippocampus Huda” and “HorseXi” (both were a twist on the names of the discovers and seahorse).
SOS project leader Wong Jieyi, who is studying the Merambong population for her postgraduate thesis, has seen how this hands-on participation changes mindsets and behaviours. Wong recalled one participant whose father was not an outdoor enthusiast but followed his daughter to search for seahorses in Merambong anyway.
“As it happened, the father was the only one who found one or two seahorses. It was a very new experience for him and sparked his interest in marine conservation too,” said Wong. She has also seen how the experience helped some parents understand their children’s motivation or interest in marine biology.
Power of adoption elsewhere
Many conservation groups have long used symbolic adoptions as a way to build emotional connection and public engagement.
A similar philosophy underpins the outreach efforts of marine conservation group PULIHARA, which runs turtle conservation work in Terengganu. The organisation wanted to boost turtle numbers at Lang Tengah. They started with replanting corals and patrolling beaches to protect turtle landings and nestings.
But these initial efforts were not enough. Because many of the threats turtles face come from human activities, PULIHARA had to rope in public support too. So, PULIHARA set up turtle adoption where members of the public can adopt an individual turtle or a whole turtle nest for a fee. This not only raises funds for conservation efforts, but also educates the donors on their adoptees’ lifecycle, or the survival rate of the hatchings they adopted.
“Since our early days as Lang Tengah Turtle Watch, nearly 900 individuals and nests have been adopted,” said PULIHARA CEO Rahayu Zulkifli. About 20% of their adopters return for more adoptions, which Rahayu sees as “a very good sign” that “these individuals feel connected to our cause and to marine conservation.”
These adoption mechanisms, whether in Terengganu or Johor, reflect marine conservationists’ attempts to cultivate active stewardship by creating personal, emotional links between people and wildlife.
And adoption might prove more useful for conservation of seahorses than turtles. That is because seahorses have not figured as a flagship animal for conservation, unlike the more charismatic turtles and dolphins.
But for the people who have named their seahorses, they would not forget the thrill or “Neptune” or “Rapunzel”.
For local champions and the ecosystem
For SOS’s Lim, surveying seahorse numbers and tracking the fortunes of Merambong’s seahorse population need to go hand-in-hand with other capacity building measures. His team arranges ESG-related (environmental, social and governance) trips for corporates to Merambong and promotes sponsoring seahorse champions in the form of young marine scientists.
“We want corporates to be more involved, not just through CSR funding or giving money,” said Lim. “I don’t want you to [just] adopt a seahorse. A seahorse is a seahorse. But a champion? A champion can protect many more.”
But behind all the focus on seahorses, Lim’s message goes beyond any one group of animals. Rather, he wants to galvanise the public to protect ecosystems.
Marine ecologist Dr Jillian Ooi of University of Malaya agrees. “It’s hard to get people emotionally invested in seagrass” – the rich ecosystem that harbours seahorses and other marine life, she said. “But SOS and Adam’s strategy of using seahorses as a flagship species works.”
An experience worth coming back for
The experience of finding and naming seahorses had certainly worked its magic on Violet Lee. The scuba diver has joined the seahorse surveys many times and named a seahorse on her third.
The surveys have led her to think more deeply about marine conservation. Not just in terms of saving species, but about how to balance development with preserving carbon sinks and fragile habitats like Merambong meadow. And now, she sees a different side of the ocean.
“Before joining, I actually didn’t know anything about Merambong,” said Lee. “That there’s such a place where you can walk around and see so much marine life when the tide is low enough.”
It is these moments, and the thrill of discovering a new seahorse individual, that stays with volunteers long after they board the boat back to Pendas, and keeps them returning.
Update: 7/7–Edited the caption of the seahorse photo to correctly identify it as “female”, replaced graphic of seahorse species with a photo of the Common seahorse.
[Edited by YH Law]
This story was produced with a grant from the Youth Environment Living Labs (YELL), administered by Justice for Wildlife Malaysia (JWM). The contents of this story do not necessarily reflect the views of YELL, JWM, and their collaborators.
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