Warmer weather is leading to an increase in “vulnerable and fragile” seahorses being disturbed, conservationists have said.<\/p>\n
Seahorses are legally protected in the UK and anyone intending to seek them out or photograph them must have a licence.<\/p>\n
The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) said it was stepping up efforts to inform people of the law after an increase in reported incidents, both accidental and deliberate.<\/p>\n
Educational activities are being focused around Poole Harbour and Studland Bay in Dorset and Torbay in Devon, where some of the most significant populations are found.<\/p>\n
A MMO spokesperson said: “We have seen an increase in incidents where people have unintentionally encountered seahorses whilst in the water, or whilst crabbing.<\/p>\n
“We’ve also seen people diving or snorkelling with the likely specific intention to film or photograph seahorses. <\/p>\n
“This sort of intentional activity is likely to disturb seahorses, would potentially constitute an offence and would require a wildlife licence.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warmer weather is leading to an increase in “vulnerable and fragile” seahorses being disturbed, conservationists have said. Seahorses…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-729549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}