Great to Sea! Council rescues endangered White’s Seahorses

Some of Australia’s most endearing and rarest sea creatures, White's Seahorses, are taking shelter in Northern Beaches Council’s highly popular tidal swimming pools.

And Council pool-maintenance and environment staff couldn’t be more delighted, even pitching in to help the threatened species beat the odds!

White's Seahorse, which has recently been short-listed to be an ‘endangered species’, is just one among an amazing number of marine species that call Northern Beaches nine Council-owned tidal pools ‘home’ - including seagrasses, seaweeds, soft corals, oysters, pipefish and sea urchins, among others.

Sadly, White’s Seahorse (Hippocampus whitei) is suffering serious population decline - with surveys over the past decade revealing decreases of up to 95 percent.

White's Seahorse is unique to the south-eastern and south-western coasts of Australia, occurring in depths down to about 25 metres in temperate marine waters, including in Sydney Harbour.

The seahorse’s soon-to-be-official ‘endangered’ listing means the species is likely to become extinct in the wild - unless something can be done to arrest key threatening processes.

As a result of the decline in their natural habitats, especially near heavily populated estuary coastlines, White’s Seahorses are now more commonly found on artificial structures - such as the shark-meshes in Council’s tidal pools around Manly and Pittwater, which provide an excellent habitat for the little marine animals.

Regular cleaning and repairing of tidal pools by Council’s pool-maintenance staff and contractors has created further opportunities to gather important data on White’s Seahorses numbers.

We have partnered with NSW Department of Primary Industry, Fisheries and contractors to develop and implement protocols to maintain Council’s tidal pools while removing any significant disturbance to seahorse populations, too.

We now also engage seahorse experts to conduct regular ‘pre-works’ surveys of tidal pool structures to identify individual seahorses likely to be disturbed by maintenance works.

Before we commence maintenance work, any White’s Seahorses are carefully relocated to nearby seagrass beds by scuba-divers expert in the handling of the little animals. Mating pairs are, of course, relocated together.

So far, divers have successfully translocated 36 White’s Seahorses to nearby seagrass meadows. A number of the male seahorses were pregnant. That’s right! The male White’s Seahorses were pregnant! It is the male White’s Seahorses that brood the fertilised eggs in a swollen pouch before eventually ‘birthing’ the fully formed juveniles when they are ready.

Guidelines for cleaning of pool nets to minimise harm to the seahorses are being developed by NSW Fisheries Scientific Committee and provided to all NSW councils.

Northern Beaches Council is proud to lead the way by adopting new practices to help ensure the survival of the White’s Seahorse

Special thanks, too, to our contractors, Sea Dragon Protective Enclosures; our partners at the NSW Department of Primary Industry, Fisheries; and of course, our wonderful Construction & Maintenance and Environment staff who are showing great professionalism and dedication in looking out for these beautiful, precious animals.