World's smallest seahorse faces extinction after BP oil spill | Environment | guardian.co.uk

World's smallest seahorse faces extinction after BP oil spill | Environment | guardian.co.uk

One of the world's smallest seahorses faces extinction because of the BP oil spill, conservationists have warned.


The minute creatures, barely 2cm tall, were elusive even before the spill, found only among the seagrass in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Now conservationists from the Zoological Society of London's Project Seahorse team are warning populations could fall precipitously because so much of their habitat could have been lost to the spill.


"We have very high levels of concern for this particular species because they have a narrower range," said Heather Masonjones, a seahorse biologist at the University of Tampa.