Sea horses are generally found in tropical and subtropical coastal and reef
waters all over Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans and temperate seas around
the world. With a horse like head, rings around the body that look like armor,
and a curled tail, sea horses are unusual in their appearance. Sea horses have
a long, tube like snout that ends in a tiny, toothless mouth.
Each eye of a sea horse can move independently of the other. Sea horses are
generally fairly small in size. They vary from about 1 to 12 inches in length.
Sea horses tend to stay in one small area for much of their lives. They will
eat only live foods such as brine shrimp and are prone to stress in an aquarium,
which lowers the efficiency of their immune systems and makes them susceptible
to disease.
Sea horses swim in an upright position and tend to be fairly weak swimmers.
A seahorse has highly mobile eyes to watch for predators and prey without moving
its body. Like the leafy sea dragon, it also has a long snout with which it
sucks up its prey. Its fins are small because it must move through thick water
vegetation. Many sea horses also get caught accidentally in shrimp nets. Import
and export of seahorses has been controlled under CITES since May 15, 2004.
