Lined Seahorse

On being a Lined Seahorse

Hi!  I’m Roberto the lined seahorse.  (While that’s our most common name, we also are known as the northern seahorse or spotted seahorse.). We seahorses are a unique group that do things a little differently than most other species.  For example, it is us males who carry and give birth to our young. We’re also monogamous – some seahorses like us mate for life and others for at least a breeding season. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to tell you what it’s like to be a seahorse.

On the day of my birth, Dad expelled me from his pouch with a strong muscular contraction.  I was a miniature version of him at .2 inches (5 millimeters) long.  At first, I drifted helplessly in the water, carried by the currents. Like all newborn seahorses, I had to quickly learn to grasp onto seaweed or corals with my tail to avoid being swept away, and to start fending for myself.  And here’s a fun fact:  young seahorses are considered plankton during this initial phase of our lives.

For my first few weeks, I lived near the surface.  This allowed me to keep drifting in the ocean currents to a new home while finding more plentiful food.  As I got a little bigger, I started hanging out on the ocean floor in shallow waters.  Come winter, I will retreat to deeper waters where it’s calmer and the temperatures are more stable.  

Most of my waking hours are spent in pursuit of food.  Here’s a fun fact you may not know about us seahorses: we have no teeth and no stomach, so foraging is an eat-early-and-eat-often kind of gig.  I must nibble at least 50 times a day or the equivalent of ten hours.  However, I’m not a great swimmer.  To compensate, I attach myself to the seagrass or coral, camouflage myself accordingly, and remain as still as possible.  As brine shrimp, mysis shrimp, copepods, zooplankton, and tiny fish happen by, I hoover them in through my snout.  Yum!

While foraging represents the biggest chunk of my day, the sweetest part arrives in the form of my one and only companion and mate, Lincita.  In the morning, she swims the one yard (one meter) from her territory to mine for our ritual dance.   As she approaches, our usual gray and brown camouflage coloring shifts to a vivid yellow.  We begin by circling each other, then I twist around her, and our tails entwine.  And as if we weren’t already too cute, our bodies form the shape of a heart.  As we move, we reaffirm our bond with a series of clicks produced as we lift and lower our heads.  When our dance concludes, Lincita returns to her own territory.

The only times Lincita lingers with me are during courtship, which can begin within hours after I give birth.   As we approach each other, we both turn a paler shade of camouflage rather than our usual vibrant yellow.  We swim together slowly, with our clicks alternating.  As we embrace, our clicks unify and she sprays around 250 eggs into my brood pouch, which I immediately seal.  

Lincita departs after she concludes this maternal undertaking, so her body can focus on producing additional eggs for our next round of children this season. Then I guard our babies, which are known as “fry” (ok, they’re small fries -hahaha) for about 21 days.  When it’s time, I attach my tail to a stationary object and arch back and forth to release the newborns into the water column.  Sadly, less than 2% of our children will survive to adulthood, so we’ve evolved this strategy to ensure we can produce as many progeny as possible.

As my day concludes, I find a stationary object to wrap my tail around.  Once anchored, I camouflage myself and go into a state similar to sleep, but I remain able to respond to my surroundings.  And here’s another fun fact: I have no eyelids, so I sleep with my eyes open.

So that’s the life of a seahorse in a nutshell.  I dance with my mate in the morning then I move on to foraging with a few naps for good measure, and finally I settle in for a good night’s rest so I can do it all again in the morrow.  I may live up to four years in the wild and know that my children will carry on just as I have during my life.