A Note on the Occurrence of Spotted Seahorse, Hippocampus kuda (Bleeker, 1852), Along the Sindhudurg Coast, Maharashtra

Seahorses belonging to the family Syngnathidae under the single genus Hippocampus are found throughout the world in shallow, coastal tropical and temperate waters and are more abundant in the Indo-Pacific region. The taxonomy of seahorse is confusing due to limited morphological variation among species, ability to changing their body colour and growing skin filaments to match their surroundings, poor type description and independent designation of the same name for different species. As per Lourie et al. (1999), the standard morphometric and meristic character analysis may clear the taxonomical ambiguity. Recent taxonomic revisions of seahorses have been dwindling in the number of species described. It has been reported that around 70 valid seahorse species exists worldwide (Kuiter, 2000, 2001), while recent publication recognises around 48 species of seahorses (Vincent et al. 2011). Currently, Froece and Pauly (2015) treated 54 species of seahorses as extant in the world. Nevertheless, there are more than 7 species of seahorses reported from India (BOBLME, 2015) of which Hippocampus kuda is one of the predominant species distributed along the southeast and west coast of India. This species is known to be overexploited in an unsustainable manner.