Marine biologists from the University of British Columbia were lucky to witness a New Holland seahorse (Hippocampus whitei) giving birth in the waters off of Little Beach in Nelson Bay, New South Wales, in November 2015.
The New Holland seahorse (Hippocampus whitei). Image credit: Sylke Rohrlach / CC BY-SA 2.0.
The New Holland seahorse, also known as the Sydney seahorse or the White’s seahorse, is an endemic Australian species of fish in the family Syngnathidae.
This species grows to about 8 inches (20 cm) in length and occurs in depths down to about 65 feet (25 m) in shallow, weedy, inshore areas, in seagrass beds, on sponges, and often under jetties on kelp holdfasts.
The reproduction of seahorses is extremely remarkable. Unlike most other animals, females deposit eggs into a pouch on the male’s abdomen. The males then fertilize, carry and nourish the developing embryos in a form of pregnancy.
In New Holland seahorse, the male fertilizes the eggs and cares for them for about three weeks, according to marine researchers from the Australian Museum.
“During this time, he aerates the pouch, and most remarkably of all, nourishes the eggs through a capillary network in the pouch with his own placental fluids.”
“At the end of the pregnancy, the male gives birth to 100 – 250 fully formed young seahorses of about 0.4 inches (1 cm) in length which swim away to care for themselves.”
The rare footage of a male New Holland seahorse giving birth in the wild has been captured by University of British Columbia scientists Clayton Manning and Meagan Abele.
“We were doing a survey and found a very, very pregnant male that had a tiny tail sticking out of his brood pouch,” Manning said.
“I had just finished getting his measurements and a baby shot out of the opening. So we sat back and watched the father for a while.”
