Dave H

LOL Dave. That's a pretty precise head chop... was it the octopus?

Yep, part of my research looked at the predation of seahorses and the octopus was found to be a major predator.

Dead seahorse number 2 underwater:

I double dog dare you to locate a dead hippocampus....they are hard enough to find when they are moving around.

So finding a dead Hippocampus underwater isn't impossible after all, just incredibly rare!!.  

The problem with "scientific" studies is that often they start as a way to prove a persons ideas, not necessarily to find the truth. For every negative study on a subject, you will find an equally scientific positive study. While I will look forward to the article, I will read it with a certain grain of salt until I read it through. Even so, it could easily by negated by someone else's equally exhaustive "study" down the road.

To the poster who made the specious comment about how many dead seahorses do you see... REALLY? REALLY?? I double dog dare you to locate a dead hippocampus....they are hard enough to find when they are moving around.

Dead Seahorse Number 1 underwater:

To answer #2 & 3, you have Dave Harasti , who says he was flashing seahorses frequently for 4 years without any noticeable damage. It was a wasted opportunity, since he could've checked out the eyes after it died to look for damage.
As for #4.... TMI dude!

Hmmmmm, and how many times have you found a dead seahorse whilst diving????  

In the many hundreds of dives that I have done on seahorses as part of my PhD research I've been lucky enough to find 3 dead animals.... two of them had their heads missing and the other was so decompossed that any analysis on the eye structure would have been impossible!!!  And to be honest, given my seahorses managed to survive for at least 4 years I'm pretty sure there eye sight was okay as they obviously hadn't starved to death!

As John is aware, I've just finished a study on the impacts of flash photography on seahorses with the results to be published in a journal shortly.

cheers,
Dave