
An ancient chief was buried with a golden seahorse pendant. Are seahorses the key to unlocking ancient wisdom?

Weak will die and land will all be burnedThis could be interpreted as a scary story about a mean monster. But in fact, it is a grave warning of the consequences of defiling the underwater realms. Lakes and oceans are supposed to be clean, clear, pristine places for fish and seahorses to enjoy. And you know what? If you mess that up, Mustakrakish will rise from his thousand year old sleep to devour you!
Mustakrakish king and death to worlds
Generally what is agreed is that there are around 39 or 40 species of seahorses.
The chances are, if you go to a piece of coastline, and your toes aren’t completely freezing when you dip them in the sea, you might see a seahorse. They live along most of the coastlines.
They have this reputation for being this wonderful exotic creature but they do live all the way through the oceans.
The biggest is the Big-belly seahorse (Hippocampus abdominalis) from Australia. They are a foot long from head to tail. The smallest ones are these pygmy seahorses [there are nine species], which can be just infinitesimally small, less than an inch. They would stretch out on a penny; they are really tiny. On average, most seahorse species are around two or three inches long.
Seahorses have the honor of being the only fish in the seas that have a neck.
If you watch a seahorse, you’ll see that it puff its cheeks in and out. That’s it breathing.
You can come back to the same spot and, three years later, see the same seahorse sitting there.
It’s the men that get pregnant, not the girls. Seahorses are the only animal we have ever found throughout the animal kingdom in which this happens.
They will dance these beautiful, mesmerizing courtship dances together. They twine their tails and spin round and round while [both] he male and female change their skin to different colors.
Seahorses have skin, not scales. That’s another strange seahorse fact. Most fish have scales but seahorses just have skin.
Seahorse can line up that snout with a tiny minute shrimp and then all of a sudden it sucks in a vortex of water through its mouth with those big cheeks, and the shrimp comes with it, and before it knows it, it’s become a seahorse snack.
There’s so much we still don’t know about seahorses.
If the Scottish Government goes ahead with recommendations to add the species to the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, killing or harming them would bring a maximum penalty of a £5,000 fine or a six-month prison sentence.
The world's four dozen or so species of seahorse have had a rough time of the last few decades, as coastal development, international trade and commercial fishing took their toll.
The seahorse's admirable family values, particularly for a fish, make them especially vulnerable to fishing, said Curry, of the Center for Biological Diversity.
"They're monogamous at least for the breeding season, and if one gets kidnapped by a human the other isn't going to breed," she said.
"The dwarf seahorse is not endangered," said Ken Kull, a Big Pine Key commercial fisherman who calls himself the "Seahorse King" of the Keys and sells them for $2.50 or so to aquarium fish wholesalers. "One day I'll get 50, another day 250. If you need 100 dwarf seahorses, give me a week and I'll go and get them."