We have some beautiful Seahorses here on Lembeh. This one is known as the Common Seahorse, or Hippocampus Kuda and is only one of over 54 species of Seahorses. As you can see, our guest’s, Ludo and Meike, captured a lovely photo of this Seahorse, which is anything but common!

The Common Seahorse is found in tropical waters, mostly around Australia and Indonesia. They grow to about 22 centimeters and reside in depths from around 5 metres to 15 metres. The Seahorse feeds on plankton and small crustaceans no bigger than their snout, they swallow their prey whole as they have no teeth. Having no stomach, they eat almost continuously, up to 50 times per day. They are classified as Fish as they have gills with which they breathe and a swim bladder. They are, however, bad swimmers and tend to stay in the same spot, using their tail to secure themselves.

As for reproduction, the female deposits her eggs into a sac on the male. He then fertilises and carries the young right through to birth. Gestation period can be from 14 days up to 14 weeks. He gives birth to live young, anywhere from 15 to 150 babies for smaller species and up to 1500 young for larger species. The contractions and birth can take up to 12 hours!

The Seahorse have some predators, such as Penguins (not really a problem here in Lembeh!) and Fish. They also have the amazing ability to change colour and camouflage themselves into their environment for protection. However, their biggest predator of all is Humans. Pollution and habitat destruction along with harvesting them for traditional medicines and aquariums are the main reasons the Seahorse is in danger of extinction. We can try to prevent this by not using Seahorses in our aquariums and not purchasing these traditional medicines. We can also help by being aware of what we put down our drains, such as harmful chemicals etc.

Along with the Common Seahorse, our guests also saw the Flamboyant Cuttlefish, Long Armed Octopus, Blue Ringed Octopus, Clown Snake Eel, Painted Frogfish and Flying Gunard amongst many other crazy Lembeh critters!

Lembeh Strait is also the perfect place to do many PADI courses! Our guest, Joe, was here for fun diving and decided he wanted to learn a little on the way. He successfully completed his EFR and PADI Rescue course with us which was a lot of fun. Well done Joe!!

We had beautiful diving conditions here on Lembeh this week and the guests fortunate enough to enjoy it with us were from the USA, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and Belgium.

Happy Bubbles!