According to Greek mythology, seahorses are the descendants of the horse-like hippocampi that are said to have pulled the chariot of Poseidon, the god of the sea. The hippocampi are a mythical creature with the upper part of its body like a horse and the lower part like a fish. Its unique appearance has always inspired artists and fascinated marine biologists and us divers.

Seahorses are fish, although they don’t look like fish at all. Like all fish, they have gills and a swim bladder.
Seahorses live mainly in tropical waters. Their habitat is coral reefs, mangroves, estuaries or seagrass beds.
About 80 species are known worldwide. Exact numbers are not available, as biologists are constantly discovering new species.
Typical of seahorses is the head, which resembles a horse’s head. Instead of the tail fin typical of fish, the seahorse has a worm-like tail. Likewise, they have no scales, but a thin skin stretched over bony plates arranged in a ring.
Seahorses are poor swimmers. They move upright. To avoid drifting, they cling to something with their prehensile tail and look out for prey. Their food is amphipods, floating shrimps and other tiny sea creatures. These are sucked in like lightning with the long tube-like snout,
The size varies from 1 cm to around 30 cm. With their small size and good camouflage, seahorses are difficult to spot.
With a bit of luck and especially a trained eye, you can spot them in the seagrass beds of our bay in Sahl Hasheesh.

The Red Sea is mainly home to the spiny seahorse (Hippocampus histrix). Typical are the sharp and long spines from the head to the trunk.
When fully grown, they reach a maximum body length of approx. 17 centimetres.

Depending on the environment, it is brown, yellow or green.

The special thing about seahorses is their reproduction.
It is not the females, but the males that bear the offspring. For this purpose, male seahorses are equipped with a belly pouch. This is also how you can distinguish males from females.
The females produce the eggs and, during the sexual act, inject between 150 and 2000 eggs into the male’s designated belly pocket, where they are fertilized by the male sperm. From fertilization to birth takes about 10 to 45 days.
At birth, which usually takes place at night, the little seahorses are pushed out of the belly pocket.

After birth, the parents no longer care for their offspring The freshly born seahorses are left to their own devices and start hunting for small, planktonic crustaceans. Because only a few survive the first days of life, up to 1000 young are born per birth.

Seahorses belong to the endangered animal species. According to the Washington Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), trade is prohibited.
This is a good thing because the fascination of seahorses will hopefully remain with us for a very long time.