WCC 2020 Res 095 - Progress Report

Project Seahorse launched two new field projects on seahorses with in-country colleagues. They plunged into the first dive research of Patagonian seahorses in Argentina, working to bolster an important marine protected area and investigated seahorse fisheries and trade the whole length of Peru to help the government tackle significant illegal trade in these fishes.

Led a big project to analyse how well policy agreements are actually working, using a case study of global trade regulation for marine fishes. Project Seahorse novel approach drove home the clear message that all the information and regulations in the world will make no difference unless they are being actively deployed in ways that affect the fish themselves. They had a notable breakthrough in November in our work with CITES, the global Convention that regulates wildlife trade. With our technical and management knowledge, we catalysed new formal agreements by 183 countries plus the European Union to act on illegal trade in seahorses.

Project Seahorse’s research and consultations underpin the Decisions agreed at CITES CoP19, which include new proposals submitted by several Parties (Maldives, Monaco, Nigeria, Peru, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Togo, the UK, and the US) and a renewed commitment to Decisions from CITES CoP18. We engaged more deeply in constraining non-selective fishing, notably by becoming part of the Steering Group for the global Transform Bottom Trawling Coalition. This is a harbinger of things to come as Project Seahorse pushes to end bottom trawling in 2023.

Please review 2022 updates here https://projectseahorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/2022_PS_AnnualReport.pdf

Project Seahorse's key achievements for the year 2023 were:
- investigation into Asian countries’ seahorse export bans, which uncovered the need for stricter regulations to combat smuggling.
- collaborative efforts with Asian governments and scientists, leading to national action plans for seahorse export regulation.
- the “Saving Mr. Mom” program in the Philippines resulted in seahorses being prioritized for conservation by the Filipino government.
- celebrated 10 years of iSeahorse, with over 10,000 observations revealing new insights into seahorse biology.
- three new graduate students from Brazil, China, and Sri Lanka joined to study the impacts of bottom trawling.

2023 updates are available at https://projectseahorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2023_PS_AnnualReport-web.pdf