Meagan Abele and Clayton Manning got lucky when they went scuba diving off the beach of Little Beach in Nelson Bay, New South Wales, Australia. They just happened to find a once-in-a-million-years underwater sight, which they watched and took photos of.
A small fish with a big belly was moving along the ocean floor. It was hard to see. They decided to shoot this male White’s seahorse because it looked strange and they didn’t know what would happen next.
With their underwater camera, the group got very close to the seahorse. Then, a small green thread was seen coming out of its stomach. When you first watch the video, it looks like a piece of seaweed is holding the seahorse.
But after a few seconds, you can see that it’s actually a baby seahorse trying to get out of his dad’s stomach and into the ocean. Not just that small baby starts to swim easily and float up with the tide, but also its brothers and sisters.
National Geographic says that, depending on the type, male seahorses can have up to 2,000 babies at the same time. Less than five out of every 1,000 seahorses make it to adults. This means that every year, thousands of seahorses are born. Even though it sounds like a lot of work, they only take 10 to 25 days to give birth.
The video shows that seahorse kids are not cared for by their parents after birth. They use whatever they can to stay alive on their own, which may be why they have such a low success rate. A marine protection group called Project Seahorse says that their species is in danger of going extinct because of threats to their habitat and too much fishing.
