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 Travel & Outdoors | December 2005 
Seahorse Farm Offers Sanctuary, Chance for Survival
 Associated Press
| | Ocean Riders in Hawaii raises the endangered creatures and seeks to spread awareness. |
Kailua-Kona, Hawaii Marine biologist Carol Cozzi-Schmarr's business is saving some of the planet's most exotic small sea creatures.
In 1998, she and her husband, Craig Schmarr, left shrimp hatchery jobs in Florida and used a small-business loan to establish the only seahorse farm in the country. Now they have 40 huge, royal blue tanks teeming with the colorful marine animals, which have a far better chance of survival in captivity than in the open ocean. They sell for as much as $300 apiece.
Male seahorses bear the young, and strictly monogamous seahorse couples can have as many as 1,800 offspring in a brood. Yet, seahorses are disappearing from the world's oceans.
"This is a labor of love and is not making lots of money, but we're kind of trying to do something a little different," Cozzi-Schmarr said.
She views the delicate little animals on her water farm as pets, saying some of them seem to recognize her touch.
Hawaii's seahorsewoman completed her graduate work at San Diego State University and had been raising shrimp in Latin America. In Ecuador, she met and married fellow biologist Craig Schmarr.
For more than a decade, they watched helplessly as the pristine coastal areas along the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico were trampled, with more and more people moving in and fishing without regulation.
"That's what made us want to inspire others to care about the ocean environments," she said.
So they moved to Hawaii and established Ocean Riders Seahorse Farm on the Kona Coast of Hawaii's Big Island.
"We really wanted to do something for ourselves, rather than work for a big corporation," Cozzi-Schmarr said. "And Kona was always the place to be for me
.We had a lot of expertise between us and a lot of ideas, but not a lot of money."
The Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority was the answer. The state-sponsored aquaculture facility offered a streamlined permit process and ready access to the cool, clear waters of the Pacific Ocean. The couple obtained a Small Business Administration loan and got to work on a three-acre ocean-side lot.
Seven years later, their seahorse farm is raising thousands of the endangered creatures that live an average of eight years. The farm's broods have a survival rate of up to 80%, compared with possibly a 0.1% survival rate in the wild, Cozzi-Schmarr said.
"People don't believe they are real, but they just seem like they are so cool, so intelligent, so enchanting," Cozzi-Schmarr said of a fascination that dates to childhood.
"They have character. They don't mind us touching them, and there seems to be some recognition there. They know when it's time to eat, that's for sure," she said.
Ranging from less than an inch to more than a foot long, seahorses have prehensile tails to hook onto underwater vegetation, protective bony plates in their skin, and a tube-like mouth for sucking in crustaceans.
Of the more than 30 known species, Ocean Rider has successfully raised multiple generations of 13 species, including some that are native to such places as Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, the Caribbean, Brazil and Florida.
Since 1999, Ocean Rider has been selling its creatures to aquarium enthusiasts and ornamental fish collectors around the world. The brown Mustangs sell for $65 and the more exotic Pintos fetch $300 apiece.
A website offers tips and technical help for novice aquarium keepers.
"They travel quite well," Cozzi-Schmarr said, pointing to a white cardboard box with FedEx stamped on the side. "We fill a plastic bag with water and oxygen and ship out pairs overnight."
Ocean Rider sells only farm-raised seahorses propagated at the Hawaii facility and even raises the micro-algae and sea monkeys to feed the babies.
More mature seahorses are weaned onto frozen feed, which makes them easier to care for in home aquariums.
Although other farms have popped up in China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Australia, Cozzi-Schmarr said many of them cull from the wild populations. Seahorse products also are valued in Asian cultures as alternative medicines, resulting in more than 20 million being taken from the world's oceans each year.
Populations in the central Philippines were found to have fallen 70% from 1985 to 1995, painting a grim picture for the future of seahorses. Seahorse environments are so threatened by such practices as dynamite fishing and coastal development that the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species last year extended its protection to seahorses.
The restriction on trade seems to be paying off, as evidenced by a recent package from U.S. Customs. Authorities in California seized a handful of seahorses being smuggled from the Philippines and turned to the Hawaii couple for help.
Those seahorses now are drifting lazily about in the safety of an Ocean Rider aquarium.
Spurred by such positive steps and by the inquisitiveness of their twin 2-year-old sons, Cooper and Dylan, the couple opened the farm to the public this year.
"Our vision is to expand into tourism and education," she said. "It's good business sense to diversify, but personally, it's also where we want to go."
On a recent tour, Linda Burch of St. Maries, Idaho, lagged behind the group to spend a few more minutes peering into a tank of Fire Reds.
"I love horses, so I suppose that's where I get a love for seahorses. They are so elusive and so beautiful," she said. "I could sit here and watch these for hours."
At another tank, Burch carefully holds her hand out and is rewarded when a 4-inch seahorse wraps its tail around her finger.
"I've been scuba diving all over the world and have never, ever seen one in the wild," she said.
"To get to hold one, to actually touch one, is so amazing."
Cozzi-Schmarr knows that look of amazement and is determined to use it to spread awareness of the human effect on ocean environments.
"We need to start early to teach conservation to all children," she said. "We want to see seahorse tanks in classrooms everywhere. Not just here in Hawaii, where children have lots of opportunity for ocean awareness, but in classrooms all the way to Oklahoma and beyond." |
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