Wild Ocean Blue

A few weeks ago at the University Library, here in Cambridge, I made a rather wonderful discovery. I uncovered a forgotten hero of underwater filmmaking (and I found some seahorses).

Cambridge University Library. Photo by Nick in exsilio

I was doing some research for my next book proposal (and no, I’m not going to say what it’s about yet), and I did my usual trick of browsing a few books up and down from the one I came for. Unlike many other research libraries, the UL lets you walk among many of the shelves which means you often stumble on hidden treasures you weren’t expecting.

It’s interesting to see what books the library staff have chosen to catalogue together, using their baffling numbering system that seems determined to keep me wandering the shelves, cursing under my breath when the clockwork egg timer on the light runs out, plunging me into mid-isle darkness.

This time, on a shelf of natural history books I had passed by before, I noticed a title that set my eyes popping:

“Quest of the curly-tailed horses.”

How did I manage to miss this one when I was researching Poseidon’s Steed?

Big belly seahorse. Photo by Doug Deep

I was kicking myself. Surely, I’d been exhaustive in my search for seahorsey literature, and yet here was a neat volume, with a cute seahorse on the frontispiece. Of course the curly-tailed horses came right home with me that day. And over the following week I devoured the book in blissful evening installments while wallowing in the bath (one of my guilty pleasures).

And to my surprise, it wasn’t just the seahorses in this book that I adored, but my discovery of the man who wrote it. This book, it turned out, was the autobiography from the 1960s of an important, but virtually forgotten character in the world of underwater filmmaking and exploration: Noel Monkman. And what a life he led.

Monkman was born in New Zealand at the turn of the 20th century. The book begins in his troubled childhood spent in sullen boarding houses, being shifted from place to place by his father who attempted to keep him away from his mother after she made the unpardonable decision to continue with a music career instead of devoting herself to family life. Times were very different back then.

In delightful early chapters, Monkman describes his time spent on the New Zealand coast where he made friends with a local maori boy and together they discovered the extraordinary wildlife of the beach. They built a rock corral on the shore and filled it with their favourite creatures, including the curly-tailed horses.

Big belly seahorse. Photo by Richard Ling

They must have been Big-Belly Seahorses, Hippocampus abdominalis, since it’s the only species native to New Zealand. And at up to around 30cm or a foot from head to tail, these are the biggest seahorses in the world.

An amusing section in Chapter 6 describes his frustrations in trying to persuade the seahorses to eat. He offered them fish, bits of mussel, and all his own favourite foods: cake, biscuits, strawberry jam, plum pudding, apples, pears and plums. He even thought – being horses – he should try them on oats or bran. But no. The seahorses were having none of it.

Eventually, though, he cracks the puzzle of what seahorses eat, writing:

“As I lay beside the pool watching them, I noticed that occasionally one or other of them would turn slowly sideways as if watching something; then there would be a sudden flick of the head as if it had given a dainty little sneeze.”

Sneezing seahorses. What a lovely image!

Big belly seahorse. Photo by tassiesim

And how thrilled he was when he discovered the seahorses were feeding on minute animals.

“The worry about food for the curly-tailed horses had ushered us into a world of wonders.”

I’m not going to give too much more away because a big part of why I loved this read was knowing nothing at all about Noel Monkman before I started and uncovering so many gems along the way.

What I will say is that his childhood love of the seashore, and seahorses, stayed with him and through a series of jobs and adventures, work as a portrait photographer, building laborer and concert cellist, until Noel Monkman eventually found himself exploring the Great Barrier Reef in the 1930s accompanied by his wife, Kitty, making the first ever underwater films of the world’s biggest reef.

Their story echoes the famous explorations of another husband and wife team, Hans and Lottie Hass, and yet few people have heard of the Monkmans.

When I finished his book and began looking around online for more information about what happened to Noel Monkman, I was shocked to find so little.

So, I definitely recommend you track down a copy of Quest of the curly-tailed horses. Monkman led an extraordinary life with tireless dedication and ambition who we could all learn a thing or two from, and his book gives a vivid insight into what life was like back then. He truly is someone worth remembering.

A few more details:

• Noel Monkman died in 1969
• He wrote another book, Escape to Adventure, which is next on my reading list.
• This is the only other description of Monkman’s life and works I’ve found online so far. Don’t read it until after you’ve finished Quest of the curly-tailed horses, otherwise it might spoil the ending.

When it comes to measuring the benefits of marine reserves (or Marine Protected Areas aka MPAs, or marine parks, or no take zones, or whatever you want to call them) it’s usually fish populations or marine habitats that we focus on. Now it seems that protecting areas of the sea from fishing pressure can very quickly help ocean predators – including penguins.

African penguins. Photo by ClifB

A new study from South Africa reveals that when a 20km stretch of ocean – not a lot really – was declared off-limits to fishing fleets, a local colony of African penguins spent on average 30% less time out fishing for themselves. Within 3 months of the fishing ban, the penguins found more to eat inside the protected area now that the human hunters weren’t competing for fish.

Spending less time hunting for their dinner is good news for penguins because it cuts down their exposure to other ocean predators that are partial to a penguin-dinner including great white sharks, orcas and cape fur seals.

African penguins. Photo by Paul Mannix

At the same time, another penguin colony 50km away weren’t so lucky. With no protection of their local fish stocks, they had to spend longer in the sea finding enough food for themselves and their youngsters.

African penguins are considered to be vulnerable to extinction, so it’s certainly very encouraging that they can benefit so rapidly from the careful siting of relatively small marine reserves.

Hopefully more reserves like this will be created to help secure the penguins’ future.

In detail:

• African penguins, also known as the black-footed penguin live on the SW coast of Africa.
• They are listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Redlist.
• Population declines are mainly blamed on overfishing of their target prey including sardines and anchovies by purse-seine fleets.
• In 2000, a catastrophic oil spill affected nearly half the entire population of African penguins and spawned the world’s largest sea bird rescue operation.
• The paper by Pichegru et al is published in the journal Biology Letters.

Did you know that the world’s largest coral atoll is British, and that it could become the world’s largest marine reserve?

View from Diego Garcia. Photo by sushicam

Those are two impressive facts and they apply to the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, some 300 miles south of the Maldives.

The coral reefs of the chagos are among the most untouched and healthy reefs left on the planet, mainly because they happen to be a long way from any major human settlements.

I’m writing this post partly just to tell you about the Chagos – if you haven’t already heard of them – and also to ask for your help.

We have until Feb 12th – this Friday – to show support for the protection of the Chagos Archipelago and all the thousands of marine species that live there. The UK government – in a rare demonstration of expansive environmental thinking – is considering plans for a marine reserve that could cover 500,000 square kms. That is truly huge and far, far bigger than any other marine reserve anywhere today.

Containing hundreds of coral species and thousands of fish species (including, it’s thought, important tuna breeding grounds), this area is of extraordinary biodiversity value. And yes, as I’ve mentioned a few times already, this is the International Year of Biodiversity, so what better time to make this monumental pledge to the natural world.

Specifically, there are three proposals under consideration:

• Strict protection for the entire archipelago i.e. no fishing at all, anywhere
• Moderate protection for the entire area, with some deep sea fishing allowed
• Protection of only the “most important” areas of reef

Conservationists are united in their support for option one. Over 10,000 members of the public have already showed their support, signing a petition urging the UK government to Protect Chagos.

The Chagos archipelago is part of the British Indian Ocean Territories and consists of 55 islands, including Diego Garcia, home to a joint UK/US military base since the early 1970s when the native Chagosians were relocated to Mauritius and the Seychelles. This, quite rightly, stirred up a huge human rights debate that continues to rage on today.

I don’t mean to brush the human issues aside, but I’m not going to talk more about it in this post. Only, I do want to point out that plans for a marine reserve should not go against plans to allow Chagosians to return. If or when that happens, there is flexibility in the marine reserve plans to make allowances for the native islanders to come back and make a sustainable living from the seas around the archipelago. So this isn’t a case of people versus wildlife – there should be room (to some extent) for both.

Please join over 10,000 other people in signing a petition calling for the highest level of protection in the proposed marine reserve: no fishing at all.

I’ve signed it. And I urge you, dear, thoughtful, planet-loving readers, to do the same.

And don’t just take my word for it. Here is veteran environmental campaigner Tony Juniper saying much the same things as me.