Seahorse Hotel Network Launched!

Many people are surprised to learn that we have our very own native species of seahorse, the Northern Lined Seahorse, that is indigenous to our waters here off the shores of Long Island.  While they do migrate, they also have site and partner fidelity meaning they like to return to the same areas each year, and spend time with the same mate throughout their lifecycle.  

The preferred habitat of seahorses is eelgrass, an underwater plant species that has been in decline in our waters due to a variety of factors. While we have developed successful restoration methodology and our Habitat Team experts here at Cornell Cooperative Extension Marine Program have had much documented success bringing back our marine meadows through carefully targeted adult shoot transplant and seeding activities, there are some areas where eelgrass restoration efforts are just not feasible.   

To help address this critical seahorse habitat shortage our resident seahorse expert Kim Manzo has been working for years on conservation and monitoring efforts to better understand where “seahorse hot spots” are and develop a strategy to implore the use of artificial habitat to serve the needs of our beloved local seahorses. This is where the seahorse hotel concept comes in!  

Kim has been fielding reports by local oyster growers for years of seahorses being seen on their farms utilizing the cages they deploy to grow oyster in an aquaculture setting as habitat. While it’s a great sign that seahorses are among us and making use of the habitat these oyster cages provide, the nature of sea farming means these cages get pulled up during oyster maintenance and harvests, and moved around the farm as needed so it’s not the most ideal long-term habitat situation for the seahorses.  Here is where observation, innovation and applied science comes in…seeing that the seahorses seem to like the mesh cage substrate, we have designed prototypes using the same materials used to make aquaculture gear to build suitable structures, or seahorse hotels!   

Kim Manzo with her seahorse hotel prototype

We have been refining this concept in recent years and this summer marks the first season we will have a seahorse hotel network deployed throughout several of our Back to the Bays Stewardship Sites. We will be monitoring and collecting data at these sites, and hopefully documenting seahorses utilizing these structures.  The first round of seahorse hotels were deployed on June 23rd in the waters off of our Cedar Beach facility in Southold.  Kim Manzo has documented seahorse activity here through the years, and it is also an area that is not suitable for eelgrass restoration making it an ideal candidate site for us to launch this effort.  

One “creative” hotel design was paired with one “control” hotel design prototype at each station and deployed using SCUBA, for a total of 3 stations placed 50 feet apart parallel to shore at a depth of ~8 feet.  

The hotels were monitored on 7/2/25 and all 6 hotels were full of juvenile sea bass upon monitoring! A bay scallop was also found attached up on the frame of one hotel. No seahorses documented yet, but monitoring will continue for the duration of seahorse season and we are truly hoping to get some special visitors checking in. 

This effort was made possible thanks to our Southold Stewardship Site sponsors, the North Fork Polar Bears.  Funds raised from their North Fork Polar Plunge fundraising event back in January have enabled this new Stewardship Site to be launched. The work at this new site includes this seahorse hotel network, in addition to the establishment of a new spat-on-shell oyster reef to be planted on July 14th, and a hard clam seeding to be conducted this fall in Cedar Beach Creek!  

Our other two seahorse hotel network sites will be Sag Harbor and Hampton Bays, more to come on those efforts soon!  

If you’d like to learn more about seahorses be sure to follow @backtothebays on social this month as our featured species for July will be, you guessed in, seahorses! And of course if you’d like to support this work we encourage you to consider contributing to our Seahorse Fund.