Seahorses face dual threats from habitat destruction and overexploitation for traditional medicine and the aquarium trade, with over 37 million individuals traded annually.
Seahorses experience welfare impacts throughout their exploitation chain. Wild capture using trawls, blast fishing, or targeted collection can cause immediate physical injury. Seahorses held in crowded, poorly maintained tanks for the traditional medicine or pet trade experience stress, injury from conspecifics, and starvation if not fed appropriately. Shipped animals often endure poor water quality and hypoxia during transit. In the wild, habitat degradation means surviving seahorses must navigate degraded seagrass beds with reduced food availability and shelter. As specialized predators of small crustaceans, seahorses in degraded habitats face nutritional stress. Their reproductive biology, in which males brood young in a pouch, means the loss of individuals has outsized population consequences.