White’s Seahorse: Matty Smith’s image from the Conservation (Hope) Photographer of the Year Awards

They form long-term monogamous relationships, and it’s the male that gets pregnant. But the most endearing thing about White’s Seahorses, according to a leading researcher? They fall in love.

Beautiful: a White’s Seahorse under the jetty at Clifton Gardens in Sydney Harbour. Photo: Matty Smith

Imagine getting pregnant half a dozen times every summer, and giving birth to 200 babies each time. That’s the lot of the White’s Seahorse, endemic to Australia’s east coast. “Oh, the poor female!” you may be thinking. But here’s the thing: it’s the male that gets knocked up in the seahorse world. And it’s not a ­fleeting ­biological transaction between strangers, either – White’s Seahorses form monogamous relationships lasting years. Dr David Harasti, a marine scientist who has studied these creatures for two decades, even sticks his neck out and uses the L-word. “They fall in love,” he says.

This shot, which took out third place in the international Conservation (Hope) Photographer of the Year Awards, shows a White’s Seahorse under the jetty at Clifton Gardens in Sydney Harbour – a hotspot for this endangered species, named after John White, chief surgeon of the First Fleet and a keen naturalist. (Fun fact: White fought a pistol duel with a colleague, William Balmain, in the winter of 1788; honour was satisfied with the latter suffering a wound to his thigh.)

White’s Seahorses are territorial animals, never straying far from their chosen spot among the soft corals, sponges and seagrass meadows of estuaries; in recent years, floods have destroyed much of their habitat. Harasti, a senior ­research scientist at the Port Stephens Fisheries Institute, has led efforts to restore these habitats, and pioneered a ­captive breeding program that, funded by a commonwealth grant, has seen 1500 juveniles released into the waters off Port Stephens and Sydney this year.

He’s enamoured of the species’ habits. In the summer breeding season, he says, the male and female will perform a courtship dance every morning at dawn, ­entwining their prehensile tails (“It’s like they’re hugging,” he says) and ­fluttering gently up the water column; the stimulation of this causes their ­bodies to subtly change colour. They bond long-term, with the male “churning out” live young, he says. Many scientists would scoff at the idea of ­animals falling in love, but not Harasti. “They stay together, and remain ­faithful to each other, for years,” he says. “To me, that’s love.”