The Father's Burden

I. The Worst Swimmer in the Sea

Hello, my name is Shu, a three-spot seahorse, or in scientific name Hippocampus trimaculatus. Let me be honest with you. I am a terrible swimmer.

Most fish have a tail fin that pushes them through the water with fast speed. But I do not have a tail fin, all seahorse don't have it. What I have is a small, fluttering fin on my back, my dorsal fin that beats back and forth up to seventy times per second. It is enough to keep me moving, but barely. I cannot chase prey and escape from predators. I drift more than I swim.

So I do not try to be fast. Instead, I hold on.

My tail is not like yours. It is prehensile, meaning that I can curl it around things like a blade of seagrass, a branching piece of coral or a submerged rock. I can wrap my tail around something solid and I stay there, swaying with the current but never letting go. This is how I live. Not by chasing the world, but by finding a good spot and just holding on.

My body is also a master of disguise. I can change my skin color to match my surroundings. If I am hiding among green seagrass, I turn greenish. If I am near brown rocks, I shift to brown. Small spots and lines appear or disappear as needed. I bet most of you can't really see me even you are swimming right in front of me. It is all for my survival. Without speed, camouflage is my only defense.

I am a seahorse. My kind has been called many things, beautiful, strange, delicate. But what most people do know is that we carry a secret. A secret about fathers, and babies, and who does the work.

II. The Father Who Gives Birth

In most of the animal world, females carry the young to give birth. But that's not with us.

I have a brood pouch on my belly, it is like a small pocket with a flap. When I mate with a female, she deposits her eggs into my pouch. I fertilize them inside and I carry them for weeks.

My pouch swells as the eggs grow. I regulate the salinity, the oxygen and the waste removal. I am a father, but my brood pouch was also a womb. When the babies are ready, my pouch opens, and I contract my body. Out come tens, sometimes hundreds of tiny seahorses, each one a perfect miniature of me. They drift away immediately, they become independent from the first breath of their life.

We do not raise and protect them. That is not how we work. But I gave them their start.

This is what makes us famous. Humans find it remarkable, a father giving birth. But for us, it is simply what all of us will do for life.

III. The Home That Is Disappearing

I live in the seagrass meadows of Hong Kong. It could be Hoi Ha Wan, Tung Ping Chau or the sheltered bays, where the water is clear and the current is gentle. Seagrass is not seaweed. It is a flowering plant, like grass on land, and it grows in dense underwater fields. This is my home, the blades give me something to hold onto, leaves hide me from predators, open spaces between the leaves are where I can find tiny crustaceans to eat.

But seagrass is disappearing. Coastal development smothers it with sediment. Pollution clouds the water and block the light it needs to grow. Boat anchors tear them up. And when the seagrass gone, I have nowhere left to hold.

I can move, but remember, I am a terrible swimmer. Drifting from one patch of seagrass to another is dangerous. Predators can see me easily in open water without my camouflage. Currents sweep me off course, I cannot simply pack up and find a new home, I just hope the currents can bring me to a new place suitable for me.

IV. The Medicine That Does Nothing

The greatest threat to my kind, however, is not habitat loss. It is something stranger.

Humans catch us, millions of us every year. They dry us out, grind us into powder, put us in jars and sell us as medicine.

Traditional Chinese medicine has used seahorses for centuries. The belief is that seahorses can treat impotence, asthma, infertility, and a long list of other ailments. I do not know how this belief started. Perhaps because of our shape, something about looking like a dragon, or a horse, or a symbol of male vigor. Perhaps because of our strange reproductive habits.

But here is the truth that science has shown, there is no evidence that seahorses have any medicinal value. Not for impotence. Not for asthma. Not for anything.

Yet the trade continues. Hong Kong is one of the largest markets for dried seahorses in the world. You can find them in medicine shops, sold by weight and displayed in glass jars. Tourists buy them as souvenirs. Locals buy them as remedies. And we die by the millions.

I have seen the fishing boats. They drag nets across the seagrass, scooping up everything in their path. Seahorses are not fast enough to escape. We cannot swim away. We just get caught, along with the shrimp, the crabs and the small fish. Most of those bycatch are thrown back. But we are kept to be dried and sold.

V. A Small Body, A Heavy Load

I am not a large creature. From my snout to the tip of my curled tail, I am about the length of a human hand. My body is bony, not muscular. My fins are tiny. I eat small things and hide away from big things. I hold onto seagrass and hope the water stays clean and the nets stay away.

But the nets do not stay away. The seagrass keeps shrinking and the demand for dried seahorses has not slowed, despite the laws meant to protect us. CITES, the international treaty that regulates wildlife trade lists all seahorse species. Trade is supposed to be limited and sustainable. But enforcement is weak, and the profits are high.

I do not know how many of us are left. The scientists say some seahorse populations have dropped by fifty percent or more in the past decade. That is a number I cannot see. What I see is fewer seahorses around me. Fewer mates. Fewer fathers carrying pouches full of young.

VI. Holding On

I still do what I have always done. I find a blade of seagrass. I wrap my tail around it and wait for prey to drift by. I change color to match my surroundings. When I find a female, we dance, it was a slow, spiraling dance that ends with her eggs in my pouch. I carry them and give birth. I start again.

This is my life. It is not dramatic. It is not fast. It is just holding on.

But holding on requires something to hold onto. And that is what I am losing. Seagrass and clean water. A future without nets dragging across my home.

I cannot swim away from these problems. I can only hope that the humans who value my body, dried, powdered, sold, learn to value my life instead. I hope they will protect the seagrass oneday. Or that they stop buying what has no proof of working. Or that they let me keep holding on, in the only way I know how to survive.