The Port Stephens region is well known for its amazing marine life, particularly within the Port Stephens estuary.
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The habitats such as sponge gardens, kelp forests and seagrass meadows provide home to a range of rare and threatened marine species.
It's within these habitats that the endangered White's seahorse, also known as the Sydney seahorse, can be found occurring.
Unfortunately, the number of seahorses in the Port Stephens estuary has been gradually declining over the past decade, primarily as a result of habitat loss.
For the past two decades, I have been studying the White's seahorse to learn as much as possible about the biology and ecology of the species to help with its conservation in the wild.
One big unknown in the seahorse world, is how long do seahorses actually live for in the wild?
To figure out how long seahorses live for is difficult, as you must be able to individually identify an animal and then hope that it survives and can be found again.
To individually identify a seahorse, they are marked with small paint like tags (called elastomer) that sit just beneath the skin of the seahorse; kind of like a tattoo.
Each seahorse is given three marks in various positions on its body that allow each seahorse to be uniquely identified.
Over the past 15 years, over 800 seahorses have been tagged as part of the research.
One of these seahorses turned out be very special, as it recently featured in a scientific publication for being known as the world's oldest seahorse in the wild.
This seahorse was a gold female that was named 'Dawn' due to her bright golden colour and she lives in the sponge gardens at the Pipeline dive site located off the marina break wall.
Dawn was first found in 2014 and was approximately one year old based on her size. She was marked with three orange tags, two in her neck area and one at the top of her tail as can be seen in the photo.
Dawn was regularly seen by divers and had become a bit of a local icon as divers would regularly go searching for her take a photo.
She had paired up with a dark male seahorse that was accordingly named 'Dusk' and they were regularly seen breeding together for three years.
During the entire time of monitoring Dawn, she only moved a distance of approximately 30 metres from where she was first seen.
The March floods had a devastating impact on the Pipeline dive site, with many of the marine habitats dying leading to a decline in seahorse numbers.
Fortunately, Dawn managed to survive the flood devastation and she was seen in April this year, but there unfortunately weren't many habitats left for her to live on.
Regularly surveys between May and September in 2021 failed to find Dawn and it was feared she was lost.
That was until she was observed in early October 2021 hiding on a gorgonian fan still at the Pipeline dive site by local diver Meryl Larkin.
This means that Dawn is over eight years old which officially makes her the oldest known seahorse in the wild in the world.
She's potentially still hiding out there, so if any local divers come across a large gold female seahorse, make sure you get some photos of our local marine celebrity.
Dr David Harasti is a senior marine scientist with the NSW Department of Primary Industries Fisheries, based at Taylors Beach.
Read more in the Beneath the Surface series
To showcase the Port's incredible underwater world the Examiner has collaborated with regular Nelson Bay divers and photographers on a series that explores life Beneath the Surface.
