Seahorse kebabs spur fishing ban
The Fisheries Department plans to prohibit the fishing of seahorses in Thai waters after the small marine fish were found grilled on skewers for sale to Chinese tourists at a floating market in Pattaya.
The department has sent officials to investigate whether they were farmed or fished from the wild, said its deputy director-general, Umaporn Pimolbutr.
Until that is confirmed, vendors have been urged not to sell them, she added.
Thailand agreed to suspend trading seahorses with other countries at a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 2016.
But even though it vowed to keep the ban in place until the authorities had found a sustainable way to sell them abroad without damaging their wild populations, it is still legal to sell dead seahorses in the country.
“It is not a protected species yet,” Ms Umaporn said.
“Right now we can’t press any charges against domestic traders but the department plans to issue a ban on fishing for seahorses in all Thai waters soon.
“This means fishermen and trawlers will not be able to target them primarily. They can only sell them if they are caught accidentally.”
Mrs Umaporn said the proposed measure is still too weak to completely eradicate trading but it should give the species breathing room to repopulate to sustainable levels. “Listing seahorses as a protected species is not the best solution because that would penalise all trawlers that catch them by accident,” she said.
Preliminary research suggests that hundreds of thousands of seahorses are scooped up mistakenly by Thai trawlers each year while fishing for other marine species.
The Fisheries Department does not have to add all seahorse species to its list of protected species but it should add those facing the threat of extinction such as the spiny seahorse, according to Thon Thamrongnawasawat, a marine ecologist and lecturer at Kasetsart University.
“Seahorses are important to the marine ecosystem because they help balance the quantity of plankton on the seabed,” he said. “If they keep being caught in such large numbers and sold commercially it will affect the entire marine food chain.”
Mr Thon said Chinese tourists are the main buyers in Thailand as they believe consuming the animal can give them curative powers and combat erectile dysfunction.
“Millions of Chinese tourists visit Thailand every year so if we start to offer them seahorse products demand would increase rapidly,” he said.
The seafood stall in Pattaya was initially ordered to stop selling grilled seahorses and is now being shut down after photos surfaced on social media showing the exotic snack being sold on sticks for 150 baht apiece.
Paisi Worawong, the vendor, said she had been selling the seahorses for the past month. She bought them from a medicine shop in Yaowarat (Bangkok’s China Town).