Babies into the new year…

I’m happy to report that we still have a good number of our babies. Fortunately, through the Christmas break, Kim, Mikey and I were able to share the feeding responsibilities. I’m “on” all this week. Special thanks to Mike Patricio who has stepped in to feed when needed. Mikey has also provided the lab space, live algae and air we need to hatch and raise our brine shrimp. Soon we will be moving into our own small space so that Mikey can get to conditioning shellfish for the upcoming spawn.

At this point we have approximately 40 healthy looking guys “happily” swimming around and hunting for food. We are losing one every other day or so for no apparent reason. The ones that die look just as healthy as their living brothers and sisters still swimming. I no longer see any trapped on the surface suffering from air trapped in there pouches or some similar malady. Many now gather near the bottom of the tank seaming to be looking at their reflection in the glass or just hunting for food down there.

I would like to think that we can begin to supplement with some non-live food such as chopped glass shrimp, but I’m a little concerned about fouling the water in the tank. I may try later this week to see what happens. If we do augment the feeding this way we will surely have to up the water change schedule. Another concern is that we want to keep these guys accustomed to hunting for food if we have any chance of successfully releasing them when they get large enough.

Oh yeah, our pregnant male looks about ready to pop any day now…

-ChrisP

Blondes have more fun?

I reported last week on our latest batch of seahorse babies and the fact that we had one light colored individual in the bunch. The next day I looked in the tank and I saw 2, but I thought miscounted. Well now its almost a week later and we have 5!

I’m not exactly sure what is happening, but we seem to be gaining blondes somehow. Three of the 5 are almost yellow while another has some dark highlights on a light background and another is a more brownish blonde. All of these light “guys” stand in stark contrast to the nearly jet black coloring of the other babies.

I knew the adults changed color in response to mood and activity, but I didn’t know that the babies changed color as they matured. Learn something new every day…

At this point we have about 30 individuals of various sizes with some really large ones in the dark group. The blondes appear to be among the most active so hopefully they will make it through to adulthood.

We’re looking to begin to feed some chopped shrimp and other “meat” soon to get these guys growing even faster.

I will report on how they do.

Merry Christmas!

-ChrisP

The Ponies are Growing!

I’ve been out for a couple weeks now, but just before I left we had another batch of baby seahorses arrive. We’ve been through a few of these events and unfortunately, we have not been able to get these little guys past about 10-14 days. This time is different.

The big difference was the fact that Kim Petersen took the babies home at the end of week one and was able to keep them fed. Past broods have suffered major losses after the first weekend as I was only able to feed them a few times. Also, I was putting too much food in the tank at one time. This time Kim fed them several times each day and got them past what has been a major bottleneck.

I came back to the office today to find about 50 healthy looking, large ponies swimming in a 10 gallon tank. All are jet black except for one “blonde”. Since I didn’t observe this batch closely from the beginning, I don’t know how many were light from the start, but I have seen maybe 10% of the lighter colored individuals in past batches.

There is no guarantee that we will be able to raise these guys to adulthood, but from the looks of it we are on the right track. The fact that they have more than doubled in size and are eating well is a good sign.

For now, I will cross my fingers and hope that we have figured this out.

-ChrisP

Another batch of Ponies has arrived…early!

A full week ahead of when we expected, the babies have arrived. We were prepared for delivery the end of this week, but our male seems to think that 14 days is a more suitable gestation period than the “typical” 21 days.

If you look in the top righthand corner of this photo you can see a “Sharpie” mark on the side of the tank that provides a scale. If you look even closer around the seahorse you can see the tiny brine shrimp that the ponies are feeding on.

As with the last batch, it is interesting to note that there seems to be range of colors in the seahorses. I don't know if these are just random individuals changing color based on "mood", as the adults do, or if some are just lighter or darker.

Given the early arrival we didn’t have food ready right away, but 24hrs later (this AM), we have all the baby brine shrimp the ponies could ever want. Mike Patricio (the shellfish hatchery manager) has been nice enough to not only hatch the brine shrimp, but also provide algae to feed the shrimp so that, hopefully, we can make them that much more nutritious to the ponies.

We’ve come to realize pretty quickly that there is a VERY steep learning curve when it comes to getting the seahorses beyond the first couple weeks and we hope that this time we will be more successful.

All we can do is sit back and watch them eat and hope that what we provide is enough. We are also looking into raising copepods and gathering wild plankton to feed, but we weren’t too successful in pulling our plankton net last time out. I don’t know that there is much in the water this time of year.

The male is busy chasing around the female so I have not doubt that we will have another batch of babies in 2-3 weeks from now.

-ChrisP

New Arrival!

Things continue to fall into place for our seahorse project as if by design.

While I was on a brief vacation my father called to report that he had found yet another seahorse in his aquaculture gear in the Peconics. It seems that the general lack of grass in the area makes the cages some of the hottest real estate for the few seahorses that pass through.

This time it wasn’t another female but a pregnant male. Just what we were looking for! The photo above isn’t great, but I didn’t want to disturb the expecting father just for a money shot.

As I write this, Kim is busy getting the lab ready for what we hope will be the arrival of a bunch of new “ponies”. These little guys are notoriously difficult to raise, but we are gearing up for rotifer and artemia culture so that we can give them the best chance for survival.

I hope to be able to report that we have been able to get a heard of little ones through the first couple weeks of their life and to the point where they are easy to feed.

-ChrisP

Catch and Release Seahorse

If you remember back to an earlier post I mentioned that we had initiated a Seahorse Project. We chose this species as it relies heavily on eelgrass for its prime habitat and it is clearly more charismatic than any other species we deal with. Although we work with them all the time a “Snail Project” doesn’t sound half as interesting…

Our goal is to link habitat restoration (eelgrass plantings) with species enhancement (seahorse breeding and release). Our first goal was to determine the minimum plot size that would support an individual or pair of seahorses. This way we could target future plantings as dedicated seahorse habitat.

In June, a lucky find, gave us the opportunity to begin this process. My father, who has oyster bags in Peconic Bay called to tell me that he found a healthy seahorse IN one of his bags. I made arrangements to go over to Water Mill and pick the little guy up fully expecting him to be a little worse for the wear given he was dropped to the deck with a couple hundred oysters.

Upon arrival, I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was in perfect health and had an interesting and unusual yellow/orange color. The others that we have observed are typically gray, black or brown. This little guy really stood out in a crowd.

What to do with this guy? At first we kept him in our greenhouse for a few days to observe him and see whether he would eat in captivity. Sure enough, he started to feed on small shrimp (actually amphipods) in the large tank he was held in. However, I was concerned about the extreme temps in this tank and the fact that it could harm him in some way.

It was time to get him back in the bay. We quickly decided to place him in one of our transplant plots at Robins Island. This site seemed ideal in that the grass was thriving and shallow, relatively calm waters.

On June 18th, we delivered the seahorse to his new “home” with the hope that we could return in future weeks to check on his progress.

In the weeks that followed, we observed our little friend in or adjacent to the original plot on a couple occasions. Outside of the plots there is basically nothing on the bottom except for the occasional clump of Codium, but even these are few and far between given the lack of rocks or shells. On our last visit in late July we did not find him in the original plot or on the adjacent Codium.

Fast forward to last week (August 8th) when we went out to do our regular plot counts at a number of our sites in the PE. The summer heat and crabs have wreaked some havoc on our plantings in the bay, as it always does, but the plots were still there.

Unfortunately the shallow plot, where we placed the seahorse, was almost entirely lost, reduced to only a few shoots. This is not surprising as we fully expect to lose the shallow and/or the deep plots for these plantings. Unfortunately, the seahorse was also not visible.

Fortunately, as Kim counted the second plot she found our seahorse. With this we decided to bring him back to the lab to reside in a specially designed tank with temperature control and a good supply of food.

Our firs foray into the world of seahorses proved to be productive. As a result we have learned a few things. First, our 1m2 plots appear sufficient to support at least one individual seahorse. Second, these guys seem to have a certain amount of site fidelity once they get to suitable area. In this case this individual stayed in our plots for 50 days.

Over the next few months our Project Seahorse will become a reality...

-ChrisP

Seahorses off Shelter Island!

Call it luck…call it an amazing coincidence, but on the year when we planned to initiate a Seahorse Research project in the Peconic Estuary we found natural seahorses! That’s right, natural seahorses happy and healthy in the PE!

This past January I had met Todd Gardiner from the Atlantis Marine World Aquarium when we gave back-to-back lectures at the Friends of Flax Pond Winter Lecture Series at the Childs Mansion in Old Field. I had never participated in a “tag team” lecture before, but this one was arranged in such a way that I presented the habitat side (eelgrass) and Todd discussed the fisheries (seahorses).

While listening to Todd’s talk I became aware of the plight of local seahorses (Hippocampus erectus) and the fact that their numbers appear to be dropping, even in the Great South Bay where he regularly finds them. He also discussed that there was no current protection for this species and that large numbers are being harvested for the pet trade.

As usual, my mind raced with new project ideas. If we are already planting eelgrass in the PE why not team up with Todd and introduce seahorses as we plant our eelgrass? If this works we could introduce habitat and the animal it supports almost simultaneously. Not really, since there would have to be a delay as the grass becomes established and attracts suitable food for the seahorses, but that is the basic concept.

As a follow up, Ali and I had a meeting with Todd to see how we could coordinate our efforts. It was decided that we would work with Todd as he is THE local expert and he typically has a supply of both hatchery reared and wild caught seahorses on hand at the aquarium during the summer.

This year we planned to introduce a number of seahorses into different sized natural and/or planted plots in the PE to see what size is big enough for these little creatures. For obvious reasons we want to find the smallest size that will still support an adult pair. This way, when we plant this fall we know what sized plots to establish so that the seahorses get what they need.

On May 28th part of our project took a quantum leap forward. While scouting for new planting sites off of Little Ram Island Kim found a very small remnant patch of grass. As she was taking pictures of this dwarf (6”) tall grass she found a pair of seahorses clinging to the base of the plants. As you can imagine she was more that just a little excited.

On the same day a dive at another site with very short grass in shallow water also yielded a number of healthy looking seahorses. Apparently seahorses are alive and well in the Gardiners Bay.

On the following day and early this week we found additional animals, all in small patches of grass east of Shelter Island. In my 15 years of diving in the PE I have NEVER seen a seahorse and now we know exactly where to look for them!

We look forward to following these guys and learning more about them. Hopefully, what we learn this summer will allow us to adapt or eelgrass planting methods to the point where we can introduce seahorses back into the central and western PE at one of more of our planting sites…

-ChrisP