Amanda Vincent, director of Project Seahorse, explains how overly large trades in seahorses are depleting wild populations. The good news, however, is that poor fishing villages in the Philippines, traditional medicine traders in Hong Kong, and 167 governments around the world are all taking action to make trade more sustainable. Seahorses, among the most charismatic of fishes, are helping establish common ground between conservation and traditional medicine.
Director and co-founder Amanda Vincent holds the Canada Research Chair in Marine Conservation at the University of British Columbia's Fisheries Center. She has a PhD in marine biology from the University of Cambridge and was Darwin Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford from 1994 to 1996. She is considered the leading authority on seahorse biology and conservation, and in 2000 was named a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation. She also serves as lead scientific advisor and chair of the seahorse working group for CITES.