Endangered seahorses '˜dried alive and turned into jewellery'

Every year billions of wild seahorses are pulled out of the ocean, die a slow death drying in the sun before their dead bodies are packed up and transported all over the world as part of a million pound trade.

Seahorses are displayed at an "Endangered Species" exhibition at London Zoo. Picture: Getty Images

Most of them end up in countries like China and Hong Kong where it is believed that they have medicinal properties, but a significant number are embedded in pendants and keyrings, put up for sale online and shipped to the UK.

The enormous demand for dried seahorse has depleted the number of seahorses in the wild dramatically. One conservation charity, the Seahorse Trust, says they will be extinct within 30 years.

It is easy to buy them on the online marketplace Etsy.

A screenshot showing rows of dead seahorses for sale on Etsy. Picture: Contributed

The Brooklyn-based site’s 1.8 million sellers flog quirky, one off vintage goods from all over the world, including dead seahorses in miniature glass jars, embedded into lumps of amber, or even sold in packs as as confetti.

There are three types of sellers, says Tami Weiss, a seahorse wrangler from Wisconsin.

“Those that are intentionally being deceptive about whether or not they’re illegal, those that don’t know and don’t care, and those that say they’re legally farmed but are lying,” she says.

In 2002 all 33 known species of seahorse were classified and “vulnerable” by the body that regulates the commercial wildlife trade, the convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and tight controls were put on the trade.

A screenshot showing rows of dead seahorses for sale on Etsy. Picture: Contributed

A spokesperson for the UK’s Animal and Plant Health Agency said that the Etsy sellers, many of which are based in the US, would need a permit to bring dead seahorses in or out of the EU for commercial purposes.

To get the permit they would need to prove that the seahorses had been obtained in a way that was not detrimental to the survival of the species.

They could, for example, get dead sea horses from farms after they died, or ones that had been caught by mistake.

However, there is no evidence that any of the seahorse sellers on Etsy have a permit, or that their seahorses have been obtained in a cruelty-free or sustainable way, the Seahorse Trust says.

Neil Garrick-Maidment, executive director of the Seahorse Trust in the UK, said: “The law says there should be a paper trail of the origin to show where they came from.

“If they cannot prove the origin then it have to be assumed that the seahorses have been wild caught.

“At the moment no one is breeding seahorses for the curio and medical trade because it is not cost effective.”

“The public should be aware that just because wildlife specimens are offered for sale online doesn’t mean that the trade, especially if being shipped from overseas, is necessarily legal or sustainable,” said Dr Vin Fleming, the head of UK CITES Scientific Authority.

“Purchasing seahorses online from other countries will require CITES permits from both the exporting country and the UK. Importing CITES specimens without such permits is a criminal offence.”

Elisa Allen, director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said Etsy should ban the sales of seahorses. “Around the world, millions of gentle seahorses are removed from the sea every year to be sold as “pets”, for Asian pseudo-medicines, and as curiosities, which explains why the species is at risk,” she said.

“Having no fashion sense is one thing, but being callous is quite another.

“Etsy and other online retailers should show some environmental and social responsibility – and some concern for small sea animals – by banning these cruelly produced accessories immediately.”

Recently police have cracked down on some seaside shops which sold imported dried seahorses to tourists, and Ebay removed them from their site.

A spokesman for Ebay said that as seahorses are a protected species, and trading them requires a license, it was decided that that it was in the best interest of the species to prevent all sales on the UK site to avoid prohibited sales slipping through.

Asked about the seahorses on the site, Etsy said it was ‘investigating the issue’ but could not comment on specific sellers and was not responsible for sellers setting up shops without a permit.

• A version of this story originally appeared on our sister site, inews.co.uk