Seahorse-Viagra decimates Seahorse populations

In a row of shops in Sheung Wan, on the western side of Hong Kong Island, the seahorses are stored in plastic boxes and glass jars, their elongated, S-shaped bodies stacked like spoons.

In Hong Kong, this district is the center of the trade in traditional Chinese medicine -- an ancient system that uses dried plants and animal parts to treat ailments. Its narrow streets are crammed with delivery trucks and men pushing trolleys loaded with crates of dried fungi, herbs, berries -- and seahorses.


In Chinese medicine, seahorses are believed to have Viagra-like powers. Hong Kong is the world's largest trading hub for the dried animal. Sarah Foster, program manager of Project Seahorse at the University of British Columbia in Canada, said that analysis of global trade data shows that Hong Kong was responsible for around two thirds of all seahorse imports from 2004 to 2017.

The World Wildlife Fund has reported that their popularity as a medicine is also driving sales in China, Taiwan and Indonesia

While nobody knows how many seahorse are left in the world, experts say they are under threat.
With their miniature equine snouts and beady eyes, seahorses look very different than most other fish. And unusually, it's the males that get pregnant.


But perhaps more importantly to conservation efforts, these are hard animals to study. Spread across vast oceans, some seahorses are less than an inch long and some can change color to camouflage themselves -- making them challenging to spot.


https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/06/asia/seahorse-trade-chinese-medicine-intl/index.html

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