Vietnamese expert pioneers techniques to raise sea horses
Vietnamese expert pioneers techniques to raise sea horses
By Robert Templer
NHA TRANG, Vietnam (AFP): Truong Si Ky spends his days as matchmaker and midwife to a tank full of some of the rarest and potentially most valuable fish in Vietnam -- the first sea horses to be bred in captivity.
Ky, a scientist at the Institute of Oceanography in the central city of Nha Trang, has pioneered techniques to raise the strange marine beasts in an effort to save them from extinction and possibly develop a lucrative export market.
By creating the right water and temperature conditions, Ky has managed to get female sea horses to transfer their pouches of eggs to males, which actually give birth to the young.
More importantly, he has found ways of keeping the animals alive in tanks and has now raised three generations of sea horses, the first time this has been achieved.
Sea horses bred in ponds could become an export earner for Vietnam as one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of the dried fish can sell for up to US$800 in Hong Kong, making them one of the most valuable maritime products.
They are used in China as a traditional medicine to cure asthma, high cholesterol and kidney complaints. Many believe the curious horse-headed fish are an aphrodisiac that can give a boost to flagging virility.
Chinese markets buy 20 tons a year of the dried fish and consumption has risen 10-fold in the past decade as the number of people in China able to afford expensive remedies grows ever larger.
The use of the fish in medicine goes back to Roman times when the scientist Pliny the Elder prescribed the ashes of burnt sea horses mixed with soda and pig's lard as a remedy for baldness.
In Europe in the 17th century the spiny creatures were eaten by nursing mothers to improve their flow of milk. Scientists later discovered sea horses contain high levels of the hormone progesterone that stimulates milk production.
Their popularity in China, where they are boiled up with herbs or preserved in alcohol, and the loss of their habitats in coral reefs and mangrove swamps are now putting sea horses in danger.
Vietnam exports about four tons a year even though sea horses are in the country's "red book" of endangered species. Most are caught accidentally by fishermen, but Ky wants to see better measures to protect them.
"In the Philippines, pregnant males that are caught by fishermen are returned to the sea or kept in natural conditions until they give birth," he said.
Sea horses have long intrigued biologists with their sudden color changes and mating battles but they are not a species of studs. "They're the most faithful animals in the world, they never cheat on each other," said Ky.
But beyond scientific curiosity, Ky harbors a desire to use his expertise to provide an income to fishermen who could raise sea horses in ponds.
"The biggest difficulty is providing enough food for them as they will only eat live food," he said.
They live mostly on a diet of algae that could be grown in salt-water ponds but Ky has been unable to find farmers willing to grow enough of the food to make the project commercially viable.
Other factors such as disease -- sea horses kept in tanks can be afflicted by tiny parasites -- have been overcome and only about 30 percent die before they reach maturity and a marketable length of eight centimeters (3.2 inches).
The fish cannot be raised commercially in ponds with shrimp or crabs as they eat too slowly and cannot compete for food. Crabs also have a tendency to nip off the sea horses' curly prehensile tails, Ky said.
He hopes that within a few years his methods could become commonplace as fishermen turn to "ranching" and the wild sea horses can roam their sea grass ranges free and protected.