Affiliation:
1. Spanish Institute of Oceanography C/Varadero 1, San Pedro del Pinatar Murcia Spain
2. Fisheries and Aquaculture Service. Regional Department of Water, Agriculture, Livestock Fisheries and Environment Cartagena Spain
3. Department of Physiology, Faculty of Biology University of Murcia Murcia Spain
4. Hippocampus Association San Pedro del Pinatar Murcia Spain
Abstract
AbstractA 10‐year monitoring program was developed to quantify the population dynamics of the long‐snouted seahorse population in the Mar Menor coastal lagoon. Based on 985 underwater visual censuses, we estimated the long‐snouted seahorse (Hippocampus guttulatus Cuvier, 1829) population size in the Mar Menor lagoon and its reduction in size in the last decades, as well as the effect of eutrophication crises in 2016 and 2019 on the species. The annual recruitment for the 2013–2020 period was estimated by comparing the relative abundance of early seahorse life stages in the ichthyoplankton. The density ranged from 0.0458 specimens/m3 at the beginning of the sampling period to 0.0004 at the end, showing a statistically significant difference between the three analyzed periods (Hgl=2 = 14.0, p = 0.001). The long‐snouted seahorse population from the Mar Menor lagoon exemplifies the impact of fishing activities and human pressure, especially euxinic episodes and habitat destruction. As a result of this, the Mar Menor population has decreased from several million specimens to a few thousand, in only three decades. This species showed considerable resilience, the seahorse population began to recover once fishing activity stopped. In contrast, the long‐snouted seahorse showed high vulnerability to habitat loss and an episodic flooding event. Adult seahorses showed preferences for highly complex habitats, especially Caulerpa prolifera–Cymodocea nodosa mixed meadows and habitats of high complexity and anthropogenic origin, such as harbors, jetties, or breakwaters. In contrast, juvenile seahorses preferred monotonous seabeds with low complexity, such as the sandy beds that are characteristic of the Mar Menor lagoon littoral.
Subject
Aquatic Science,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Cited by
3 articles.
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