Where were they? It was a question that plagued me during my anxiety-ridden dives in the summer of 2008, as I paddled through the bathlike waters of Tampa Bay, Fla., hoping to find enough seahorses to complete my graduate degree in evolutionary biology. After a month and a half of fruitless searching, I finally threw in the rag and headed back to Indiana University with the dreaded “failed field season” added to my resume. But it wasn’t just a disappointment, it was a surprise—just 2 years earlier, working in the same location, I had captured, measured, and tagged 73 animals in just 6 weeks. Where did they go? And, more important, why?
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) has been monitoring the fish of Tampa Bay since the late 1980s. Sure enough, their numbers confirmed my experience: Between 2006 and 2008, the number of lined seahorses (my chosen ...
