Studland Tagging Project

The Studland Tagging Project has now been running since early 2009 and in its first year has been mainly funded by the National Lottery’s, Your Heritage fund. This funding has allowed us to tag a number of Seahorses and learn a great deal about them. In this first season we had many seahorses getting pregnant and giving birth a number of times and we have also learned that then definitely form partnerships for at least one season and keep to the same territory for the breeding Season.

Seahorse Tagging Project at Studland Bay

Seahorse Territory Paper

Movement of a pair of Seahorses during the summer of 2010

As can be seen from the pictures we put a small non intrusive numbered tag onto each seahorses so that we can identify individuals on the study site, this allows us to build up an intimate picture of each seahorse and their ecology. The project is proposed to go on for a number of years so that we can gather a great deal of information about these amazing animals, particularly as there site is under threat from overuse. We hope that the data we collate will allow us to put together a management plan for the site so that there will be seahorses there for generations to come.