Louw Claassens

Discovering the hidden life of the Knysna seahorse

The Knysna seahorse is the most threatened seahorse in the world. It was the first seahorse to be listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List in 2004. It is no surprise that this seahorse is so threatened, seeing that it is only found in 3 estuaries along the south coast of South Africa. Even though there have been various studies on the Knysna seahorse in the past, we don’t know much about its life history – how fast does it grow, how far does it move, how many are there?

From poaching to conservation - searching for seahorses in Mozambique

This is the inspiring story of how a large haul of dried seahorses poached from the waters of a tiny town in Mozambique led to seahorse conservation and research! It is also the story of how I came to meet some of the amazing syngnathid species we have along the African coast.