By Juliet Lyon | Director, ParCo
Last year, the community run Indigo Seahorse Adventure, supassed 100 trips on local fishing boats to the seahorse habitat. Thank you to all the tourists that fueled this milestone and continue to make community led seahorse conservation possible!
The April 2026 edition of BBC Wildlife magazine tells the story of how the tours were created as the Mangalisse community decided to the protect seahorses instead of capturing and drying them to sell to traffickers.
Xavier, who guided a recent trip, captured seahorses as a teenager before the seahorse protection campaign in 2018. He said that no one poaches seahorses anymore since the launch of the tour. Xavier used his trusty seahorse finding skills to locate over 10 seahorses in their natual habitat to point out to the children who snorkeled at his side.
In the early days of the tour, we were lucky to find four seahorses in the course of a snorkeling excursion, and now it is normal to find over 10. This is an indicator that the population is bouncing back! The species we identify most is Hippocampus kuda which is listed as "vulnerable and declining" on the IUCN Red List.
It is pleasure to collaborate with all of you to help these charismatic species rebound locally, especially knowing that we are making a difference for species in decline globally. Please send your friends our way!
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