Seahorses: Illegal Trade in the UK

George Eustice Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) on securing this debate and on his support for the protection of seahorses, one of our most unusual and beautiful fish. He has most eloquently described their unique nature and their role in coastal ecosystems, and I join him in paying tribute to the Seahorse Trust and others for their work in raising awareness of their plight. While only two species inhabit UK waters from Shetland to Devon, there are over 50 species that inhabit many of the shallower coastal waters across the globe. As my right hon. Friend said, they are unlike most other fish in the way that they look and the way that they live. This even extends to their reproduction, as it is the males that take on eggs from the female and then take responsibility for giving birth to and raising the young seahorses.

Seahorses do not, however, differ from other species of fish in the pressures that they face and the threats to their survival. Seahorses are caught for the aquarium and traditional medicine trades, or sometimes simply for trade as curios. They are affected by pressures on their environment such as habitat loss, and they can be affected as bycatch as a side effect of fishing activities targeted at other species. Trade in seahorses to the UK is mainly in live animals, the majority of which have been bred in captivity. Between 2010 and 2015, the UK imported around 21,300 live seahorses that had been bred in captivity and 1,700 live wild seahorses.

As I said earlier, there are two species of seahorse in the UK: the short-snouted seahorse and the long-snouted seahorse. Both species are listed on the OSPAR list of threatened or declining species and habitats and, as a contracting party to OSPAR, we are committed to taking measures to protect them. Both native seahorse species have a wide distribution around the UK and are found all around the British Isles and Ireland, right up to the Shetland Islands. Seahorses feed mainly on very small marine crustaceans. Adult seahorses can eat between 65 and 70 of these a day, whereas the fry eat up to 3,000 plankton-sized bits of food every 24 hours. Seahorses are often taken by predatory fish, and they have to rely on their camouflage to avoid detection as they are poor swimmers.

The protection of endangered species around the world is a key priority for this Government. The wellbeing of our society depends on a healthy environment, and that requires policies to deliver healthy ecosystems, global biodiversity and the conservation of species. My right hon. Friend can be assured that we are taking action, bilaterally and through international agreements, to protect wildlife populations both around the UK and further afield, whether they are threatened by poaching, habitat loss or unsustainable use. The United Kingdom is rightly recognised as a global leader on environmental issues, whether by raising the illegal wildlife trade up the international agenda or through our commitment to tackling climate change, deforestation and ocean acidification.

At home in our waters, we are providing increasing levels of protection to marine life, including seahorses, through the designation of marine conservation zones. They provide a means for protecting seabed habitats and the species that live on and in the seabed, such as seagrass beds and the seahorses that live in them. We have so far designated 50 marine conservation zones—some of them, such as Torbay and Beachy Head West, with the specific objective of protecting seahorses. We have consulted on a third tranche of MCZs where we have proposed to designate a further 41 sites. Some of these, such as Studland Bay, Beachy Head East and Bembridge, will again specifically protect seahorse populations. We expect decisions on third tranche site designations by June next year.

As with illegal trade, we are also working to protect marine species on a global scale. The UK and our 14 overseas territories are custodians of the fifth largest marine estate in the world. We have committed to create a “blue belt” to protect and conserve around 4 million sq km of waters around the overseas territories. Seahorses also receive protection through the UK’s Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and through the listing of seahorses under CITES—the convention on international trade in endangered species—and related EU regulations. Trade in seahorses is indeed regulated rather than prohibited. In the UK, it is an offence to trade in species of seahorse native to the UK unless there is evidence that the seahorses have been captive bred. Where there is illegal trade in seahorses—for example, where there is no evidence that the specimens were legally imported—we can prosecute under the Control of Trade in Endangered Species Regulations 2018.

In the UK, seizures of seahorses at our borders are thankfully few and far between. In the past calendar year, there have been 14 in total, and none has been of a significant nature. They have primarily involved traditional medicine products of which seahorses were identified as a component. As we have heard, though, protections are only as effective as the enforcement behind them. I can tell my right hon. Friend that there was a conviction with a fine in 2014 at Bromley for the offence of selling a product containing seahorses. There was a further case in 2015 in which someone was cautioned. Of the 14 seizures I mentioned, one involved five live seahorses for the marine trade in which permit errors were identified, one seizure of 13 dried seahorses that were part of a Chinese medicinal package, and 12 seizures of pills in which seahorses were identified as being one of the medicinal ingredients.

We recognise the importance of tackling wildlife crime and have therefore increased funding for the National Wildlife Crime Unit to provide intelligence and support for local police forces. The unit plays an important role in supporting police forces to detect and prevent wildlife crime, including the illegal trade in seahorses, and it has, for instance, acted on information from the Seahorse Trust, which my right hon. Friend mentioned, on potential illegal activity. Nevertheless, my right hon. friend has suggested that we should evaluate the effectiveness of the protections already in place. He will therefore be pleased to know that we made such a commitment when we hosted the illegal wildlife trade conference in London in October. We committed there to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of preventive and criminal justice responses and other measures related to the protection and monitoring of wildlife and forest products. That will be undertaken by the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime in the coming months and will help to identify any shortcomings in our regulatory regime.

With respect to the illegal wildlife trade, the Government have a strong record of leadership, and the UK is at the forefront of international efforts to protect endangered animals and plants from unsustainable and illegal trade. This trade is not limited to certain countries or regions and is a truly global phenomenon affecting plants, animals, fish, birds and insects, and the Government are committed to tackling all the elements. We are committed to working with our international partners around the world to tackle the growing problem, and our response must rest on international co-operation. It is working with other nations to reduce demand and disrupt this crime that will truly make the difference. To support those efforts, the Government are investing £36 million to try to reduce demand, strengthen law enforcement and develop sustainable livelihoods. We need to eradicate the market for illegal wildlife products, ensure our laws are strong enough to deter the criminals, rigorously enforce those laws and provide sustainable livelihoods for those who might otherwise be tempted by the short-term gains of poaching.

My right hon. Friend raised the fact that the trade in endangered species is being facilitated online, which can present particular challenges. That is why we are working closely with the private sector across the transport, financial, tourism, cyber and technology sectors to increase the levels of ambition and commitment by businesses to assist us in tackling the illegal wildlife trade. Some significant and hugely encouraging steps have been taken recently. In particular, the Global Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online has brought together the world’s biggest e-commerce, technology and social media companies to join forces in shutting down online marketplaces for wildlife traffickers. NGOs and global companies such as eBay, Google, Microsoft and Facebook are working to unite the industry and maximise impact for reducing wildlife trafficking online. They are committed to reducing wildlife trafficking across online platforms by 80% by 2020. The related global wildlife cyber-crime action plan also includes commitments from its partners to work with companies to ensure that policies and reporting mechanisms for customers and users are easy to access and user friendly.

This has been an important debate, with a different conclusion from the debate we have been having all day on Brexit. It shows there is more to life than Brexit. The plight of our seahorses, which my right hon. Friend has highlighted, is important, and I hope I have been able to reassure him of the seriousness with which the Government take this issue, of the steps we have taken and of the global action we are taking to tackle this particular challenge.

Question put and agreed to.