CALL TO PROTECT SEAHORSE COLONY.

A CONSERVATION charity called yesterday for action to protect seahorses after finding the UK's largest known colony of the rare creatures off the South Coast.

The Seahorse Trust warned that Britain's native breeds are under threat from boat anchors destroying their natural habitat of eel or sea grass.

Steve Trewhella, from The Seahorse Trust, and his girlfriend, conservationist Julie Hatcher, captured the first ever photograph of a pregnant seahorse in British waters while diving off Purbeck in Dorset in July 2004. The 6in (14cm) male spiny seahorse, Hippocampus guttulatus, was within hours of giving birth when it was spotted.

Four years later, 40 seahorses, both the spiny and the short-snouted, have been spotted at the same site in Studland Bay - and around 20 of them are pregnant.

Mr Trewhella said: "We are looking for better protection for them. The Wildlife and Countryside Act is inadequate. At Studland, we have 300 to 400 boats mooring off it. The habitat is being destroyed but no one is doing anything about it."

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ENDANGERED A male spiny seahorse, off the coast of Purbeck, in Dorset.