There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number— living things both large and small. Psalm 104 :25
The seahorse (or Hippocampus, if you want to be scientific!) is a tiny fish that lives in the oceans.
It’s called a seahorse because its head looks like the head of — you guessed it — a tiny horse. This unusual creature often swims with another seahorse, and they link their tails to stay together. It also swims “standing up” and tries to blend in with nearby plants so it doesn’t get eaten.
Because of its body shape, the seahorse isn’t a very good swimmer. So rather than go out hunting for food, seahorses use their tails like anchors, holding on to a piece of sea grass or coral. They then wait for food — plankton and tiny crustaceans — to drift by so they can suck it up with their long snouts.
With its poor swimming and its tendency to stay in one spot, the seahorse doesn’t go very fast!
Seahorses are one of the few animals for which the male bears the young for the female. A female seahorse lays her eggs — sometimes hundreds of them — in a pouch on the male seahorse’s tummy. The pouch is very much like a kangaroo’s pouch. The eggs stay in the pouch until they hatch about 45 days later. A baby seahorse is only about the size of a jelly bean and must start finding its own food as soon as it’s born.
How tragic then that these beautiful creatures are now holding onto pieces of plastic and their babies are eating tiny micro beads of plastic.
Cotton buds
As they are composed largely of the plastic polypropylene, cotton buds are a part of the wider plastic pollution problem.
The Marine Conservation Society have described cotton buds as one of the most prevalent varieties of pollution on beaches in the UK.
In response to this issue, Johnson & Johnson has vowed to stop selling plastic cotton buds in favour of paper, which is far more biodegradable.
So when you buy cotton buds, makes sure they are paper not plastic