Three scuba divers in Cork had the \u2018encounter of a lifetime\u2019 this week after discovering a rare seahorse in Irish waters.<\/p>\n
Local divers James Northover, Luke Cuddihy and Martyn Mannion were diving at Oysterhaven on Monday night when they came across a long-snouted seahorse in the seagrass beds.<\/p>\n
The National Biodiversity Data Centre says that seahorses are a rare species in Irish waters, holding only eight previous records of two species present here.<\/p>\n
However, most of these records are more than 100 years old.<\/p>\n
It is believed that seahorses have never been filmed in the wild in Ireland before this encounter, marking it an exceptional event.<\/p>\n
A previous sighting of a dead long-snouted seahorse was recorded at Ballynamona Strand at East Cork in March, leading marine enthusiasts to believe there is a cohort of the living creatures beneath the surface.<\/p>\n
This was the first sighting of the species in Ireland since 1990, until the discovery on Monday night.<\/p>\n
Mr Northover, owner of the Discovering Scuba dive centre, said the sighting was \u201cso exciting\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy buddy, Martyn Mannion, spotted it first and was waving frantically to me and Luke to come over to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I went over to him I could not believe what I was seeing and luckily was able to get some video footage.\u201d<\/p>\n
The seagrass meadows at Oysterhaven have been the subject to intense research in recent years from a dedicated team of citizen scientists at Cork Sub Aqua Club.<\/p>\n
Ecologist and club member Dr Tim Butter said the seagrass beds in Kinsale and Oysterhaven are \u201cvaluable resources\u201d, and should be maintained to encourage marine biodiversity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a biodiversity hot spot that supports a diverse range of marine life, but not in my wildest dreams did I think we would ever see a seahorse,\u201d said Dr Butter.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is such an iconic species. Seagrass is garnering significant attention as a key inshore habitat, and not only does it support lots of biodiversity, but it has a huge capacity to absorb atmospheric carbon, supports local fisheries, and helps to dampen the impact of storm events.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three scuba divers in Cork had the \u2018encounter of a lifetime\u2019 this week after discovering a rare seahorse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[18896,79,61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-665103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-sustainability-biodiversity","tag-cork-news","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}