THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 1, 1994 TAG: 9407300080
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
SLIP INTO your jeans pardners and let's mosey over to the old H2O Corral in the Virginia Marine Science Museum in Virginia Beach.
The corral ain't on view, yet. It's tucked yonder on the back 40 of the laboratory section. Now that we're here, you can see that the corral is a 50-gallon tank. There are about 35 of the briny broncos in there.
Looks like the herd is doing its morning exercises. Up . . . down . . . up
You're probably wondering how the horses are able to do that without paddling.
The answer is gas. The sea horses release gas in their bladder to control their buoyancy.
Well, here comes the Cool Hand Luke of the sea horses: Ol' Nick Savage.
Nick's a part-time employee of the museum who rounds up sea horses across Hampton Roads and brings them to the museum so that the staffers can study them.
``There are a lot of sea horses locally,'' Nick says. ``Nobody knows how many, but there are plenty of them. Commercial fishermen find them in nets. And crabbers find them in their pots.''
The common sea horse - hippocampus - is the one found here, and Nick has found thousands of them.
``Most people don't think of them as fish, but they are,'' he said. ``Kin to the pipefish. They have fins but they are very tiny. You find plenty of them in areas where there are submerged grass beds. Sea horses have prehensile tails they use to attach to grass, nets or wire. They also like to cling to bryozoans - spongelike things that are popularly known as dead man's fingers.''
One of the reasons folks don't realize the abundance of sea horses is because of their ability to change color like chameleons. They are difficult to spot, even under water. ``The colors they take are very beautiful,'' Nick said. ``I've seen some with a green color over on the Eastern Shore that were a very vivid color of green.''
Nick says the ones around here are pretty small, rarely more than a couple of inches long. ``Seven inches long is the longest one I've seen locally. But other varieties of sea horses, in the Pacific, are over a foot long. I saw one last year in the Indian Ocean that looked like a dragon. Strange.''
Wrangler Nick says the sea horse is the most interesting underwater animal he's run across. ``They are fish but they don't have scales. . . . They don't chew their food but suck it into their mouths which expand and form a tube that takes in whatever they are eating: brine shrimp, plankton, whatever.''
Most of Nick's observations have been made while snorkling. It's commonly believed that sea horses don't see well, but he isn't sure about that.
``I've found that they spot me easily when I am under water, '' he said. ``Even a slight movement of the hand will cause them to move away.''
Nick, the president of Ski World in Virginia Beach, works with the museum's outreach program, taking a van with tanks containing marine life to schools in the region.
``Looking at a sea horse is always a treat for both the teachers and the children,'' he said. ``The sight has the same effect on me. There's something special about those critters.''
The most special thing about sea horses may be the way the young are hatched. The male sea horse has a brood pouch in its abdomen into which the female deposits the eggs. As many as 200 young escape the pouch after an incubation period of 40 to 50 days.
``The baby sea horses come out of the pouch in spurts,'' he said. The male writhes before releasing them into the water. About 30 come out at a time. Some sea horses produce as many as 700 young.''
Sea horses don't make good pets because they must be fed a specialized diet not accessible to most people. But by Friday, sea horse cowboys will be able to view them in a small tank in the museum's exhibition area.
Wrangler Nick will be on hand with a rope of dental floss to lasso any that get away, of course. by CNB