In this story, we’re going to look at a weird and wonderful fish, the seadragon.
Seadragons are close relatives of the seahorse but they look even stranger than seahorses. Play the video and have a look.



PIP COURTNEY: While the seahorses are hugely popular, the stars of the show are the rare weedy and leafy seadragons.

GEORGINA WYLD: Well, there's a big race on to see who's going to breed these first, they've never been bred in captivity ever, but we've got Nigel and we've got the likes of Diane and all the students, and I think we're going to be there.

PIP COURTNEY: Rachelle Hawkins would love to help solve the seadragon breeding puzzle.

RACHELLE HAWKINS: Leafies, weedy seadragons are just beautiful. They're not commonplace in aquariums at all by any means.

They're in public aquariums and oceanariums around the world. However, ten years ago seahorses were in the same boat, so we're quietly confident that in several years time perhaps, seadragons just might be found in homes all over the world as well.

PIP COURTNEY: The seahorses are exported to America, Canada, Germany, Japan and Korea. The Tasmania operation was the first to tap the aquarium trade. But it didn't have the market to itself for long. The first competition came from Port Lincoln in South Australia.

In 1998 the wife of a tuna farmer was working out how to raise seahorses in tanks in a garden shed.

TRACY WARLAND: My husband David and I wanted to do something in aquaculture and we saw a documentary that said that there were 20 million taken from the wild every year and we thought we could perhaps have a go at that. We knew we had populations of seahorses in the local waters so we thought we'd give it a try.

PIP COURTNEY: The operation has been so popular the Warlands have plans to expand yet again. Annual production of 8,000 fish will quadruple. As with the Tasmanian operation the seadragons hold pride of place.

TRACY WARLAND: The addition of the seadragons to our facility has actually been the realisation of a dream that's taken us about six years.

It was one of the original motivations once we learnt how to farm the seahorses that we'd like to turn around and farm the seadragons, and we now have the weedy seadragon and the leafy seadragon and hopefully over the next few months we can initiate a captive breeding program for them.

PIP COURTNEY: The Port Lincoln tourists were as enamoured with the marine equines as the visitors in Tasmania.

TOURIST: I was just fascinated by the way they move and the colouring on them and the shape of them was just so different. And as for the leafy seadragon, I'd never seen one live before ever. It was absolutely beautiful.