IUCN Red List Category: DD (Draft)
Animalia | Chordata | Vertebrata | Actinopterygii | Syngnathiformes | Syngnathidae | Hippocampus | Hippocampus angustus |
Taxonomic notes: The 1996 and 2000 Red Lists included H. erinaceus. This is now considered a synonym of H. angustus.
The species has been trawled from depths of 3-63 m (Lourie et al. 1999) and has also been collected from algal reef habitat from 12-25 m depth (Kuiter 2000). This species may be particularly susceptible to decline. All seahorse species have vital parental care, and many species studied to date have high site fidelity (Perante et al. 2002, Vincent et al. in review), highly structured social behaviour (Vincent and Sadler 1995), and relatively sparse distributions (Lourie et al. 1999). The importance of life history parameters in determining response to exploitation has been demonstrated for a number of species (Jennings et al. 1998).
This species is known to be caught as by-catch in trawls in northern Australia (S. Lourie, pers. comm.).
H. angustus was moved under the Australian Wildlife Protection Act in 1998. Further research on this species is needed. It is listed on CITES Appendix II.
The species assessed as H. angustus in 1996 is now recognized as H. subelongatus. In assessing the species now identified as H. angustus we found that appropriate data on biology and ecology, habitat, abundance and distribution are not available for this species. Further research is needed.
Hippocampus hendriki was merged into Hippocampus angustus as described here: http://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/5298
In lieu of this, Hippocampus hendriki should be removed from the published IUCN Red List and Hippocampus angustus should be reassessed to include animals previously known as Hippocampus hendriki.