Seahorse Hotels Now Live at Parsley Bay

I am here providing an update on the habitat restoration component of the Blue World funded Valerie Taylor Prize project on "Marine Biodiversity of Southern Sydney Harbour". I am happy to announce that four seahorse hotels were installed by Sealife Aquarium on March 23rd in approximately 6 metres of water at Parsley Bay, just beyond the swimming enclosure. Sealife Aquarium provided these four hotels and installed them "in-kind" as part of their much broader work on habitat restoration for the endangered White's Seahorse (Hippocampus whitei) in Sydney Harbour, Botany Bay, and Port Stephens. We offer a heartfelt thank you to them as this is a huge boon to the project. I would also like to extend a huge thanks to our collaborator Dr David Harasti at the NSW Department of Primary Industries who made this all happen.

The approximate location of the four seahorse hotels is flagged in the Google Earth image displayed above. I encourage everyone to get in for a dive or snorkel in the coming months and report back (with photos) of adult White's Seahorses starting to "move in" to the 5 star hotels.

This journal post was written by project leader and iNaturalist member, joseph_dibattista Dr Joseph DiBattista.