Project Seahorse, The University of British Columbia, 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, Canada
Corresponding author
s.foster@oceans.ubc.ca
,
Angelie C. Nellas2
,
Myrtle M. Arias2
,
Charity M. Apale2
,
Amanda C.J. Vincent1
The catch and trade of seahorses (Hippocampus spp.) has been illegal in the Philippines since 2002, but the revision of the Philippines' domestic Fisheries Code in 2015 opened an opportunity to legalize seahorse fisheries and exports if they could be managed for sustainability. To generate vital knowledge in support of this option, we conducted 268 interviews with fishers and traders across seventeen coastal provinces in 2019. We observed a total median annual catch of ~1.5 to 1.6 million individual seahorses, with the tally depending on the method used. Fishers reported catching seahorses from ten different types of fishing gears. The gear with the highest CPUE was a modified push-net, which is pulled across the ocean floor (locally named a “micro-trawl”), with 100 seahorses caught gear-1day-1, while compressor divers contributed half the total estimated catch. Other important gears were spear/skin divers and standard push nets. The provinces of Iloilo, Masbate, Sulu, Bohol, and Palawan together accounted for over 80% of the total national catch estimate. We photographed little evidence of live trade or domestic use, suggesting that most captured seahorses were exported dried. Buyers reported selling seahorses for between three and five times the price they paid fishers. Of conservation concern, nearly all (98%) fishers reported a decline in seahorse catch over time and highly skewed sex ratios across all species. Our data will help the Philippines’ management agencies decide whether to support the re-opening of legal trade and, if so, how to make it sustainable.