724 R.M.Y. Ng et al.


TABLE 1 Socio-demographic characteristics of the 637 general public respondents and 552 fisher respondents surveyed from Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo.


Socio-demographic characteristics


Gender Male


Female Both/prefer not to say


Age (years) 18–30 31–40 41–50 51–60 . 60


Ethnicity Malay


Chinese Indian


Indigenous Others


Education None


Primary


Secondary Tertiary


Postgraduate


Region West coast Peninsular Malaysia


East coast Peninsular Malaysia


South coast Peninsular Malaysia


Borneo


Location setting Urban


Rural/semi-rural Not recorded


Public1 Fishers Number % Number %


213 413 11


346 107 99 60 25


204 245 113 59 16


3 1


49


489 95


481 33 37 86


502 135


33.5 551 64.8 1.7


1 0


54.3 8


16.8 121 15.6 182 9.4 163 3.9 78


32.0 486 38.5 55 17.7 9.3 2.5


9 1 1


0.5 12 0.1 35 7.7 493 76.8 12 14.9


0


75.5 189 5.2 220 5.8 143 0


13.5 78.8


21.2 552 100.0


1We did not collect information regarding the occupational background of the public respondents, and they were assumed to be primarily non-fishers (Lennox et al., 2022).


99.8 0.2 0.0


1.5


21.9 33.0 29.5 14.1


88.0 10.0 1.6 0.2 0.2


2.2 6.3


89.3 2.2 0.0


34.2 39.9 25.9 0.0


FIG. 3 Types of seahorse use amongst the 637 general public respondents and 552 fisher respondents of various ethnic groups surveyed from Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo. Percentages of prior use (medicinal use; other uses; both) and respondent group (general public; fisher) are expressed as per ethnic group; sample sizes per group are indicated to the right of each bar.


respondents were relatively well represented in both cat- egories of uses. The Malay public respondents who lived in urban settings reported a greater diversity of medicinal uses (four types) compared to those in rural/semi-rural settings (two types). Regarding the perceived valuableness of seahorses, a


members of the various ethnic groups in Supplementary Table 3.Asmall fraction of respondents who consumed sea- horses (3.6% of Malay and 4.5% of Chinese respondents) were unsure regarding the health benefits. However, medi- cinal use types were not associated with the ethnicity of re- spondents (two-tailed P.0.05). More Malay respondents (92.7%) reported other use types of seahorses than the other ethnic groups collectively. The most common non- medicinal use was as curios/souvenirs (n = 140; see Supplementary Table 4 for an exhaustive list of other sea- horse uses). Types of other uses of seahorseswere closely as- sociated with the ethnicity of respondents (two-tailed P,0.05). In terms of location settings, only the Malay


relatively large proportion of the public respondents were unsure of this with respect to health benefits (50.5%) and cultural values (41.7%). However, over one-third of the public respondents (35.8%) stated that seahorses are economically valuable, and most agreed that seahorses are valuable to the ecosystem (86.7%) and for recreational pur- poses (e.g. scuba diving, aquarium visit or as a pet; 76.9%). Many of the fisher respondents were unsure of the valuable- ness of seahorses (health: 59.4%; economical: 47.1%; cultural: 66.3%; recreational: 45.1%; ecosystem value: 42.8%; Table 2). Perceptions of valuableness were significantly associated with whether respondents used seahorses for the categories of health (χ2 = 151.31,df = 2,P,0.05), ecosystem (χ2 = 38.29, df = 2,P,0.05) and recreational values (χ2 = 8.40,df = 2, P,0.05), but there was no such association for economical (χ2 = 3.72,df = 2,P.0.05) and cultural values (χ2 = 0.80, df = 2,P.0.05). Many of the public respondents were aware of threats to


seahorses, particularly habitat destruction (72.1% of respon- dents) and ocean plastic pollution (65.9%); fewer considered overfishing (42.5%) and bycatch (37.0%) as major threats (Fig. 4a). In contrast, most of the 552 fisher respondents were unsure of the existence and/or severity of the threats to seahorses. Relatively more fisher respondents (38.9%)


Oryx, 2024, 58(6), 720–729 © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605324000425


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