Seahorse uses in Malaysia 725


TABLE 2 Perceptions of the 637 general public respondents and 552 fisher respondents surveyed from Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo on the valuableness of seahorses.


Valuableness of seahorses


Economical/ monetary


Cultural Ecosystem Recreational


% of public respondents


Health/medicinal 25.3 24.2 50.5 35.8 29.0 35.2


39.6 18.7 41.7 86.7 3.4 9.9 76.9 11.2 11.9


% of fisher respondents


Yes No Unsure Yes No Unsure 30.1 10.5 59.4


13.0 39.9 47.1 14.0 19.7 66.3


52.9 4.3 42.8 42.2 12.7 45.1


ranked bycatch as a major threat compared to the other threats (Fig. 4b). The classification tree identified four variables that were important in explaining the patterns of seahorse use: edu- cation level, region of residence, ethnicity and gender. Respondents with tertiary or postgraduate education were less likely to use seahorses in any manner, with the excep- tion of men of Chinese ethnicity (Fig. 5). For individuals with lower education levels (no formal education, or with primary- or secondary-level education), seahorse use was associated with region of residence and ethnicity: those of Malay or Indian ethnicities, and those belonging to various non-Indigenous minority groups, who lived in the east and south coast areas of Peninsular Malaysia had a greater like- lihood of seahorse use (Fig. 5).


Discussion


Our study shows that seahorse uses amongst Malaysians are closely associated with ethnic groups, which can be


attributed to culturally specific (ethnomedicinal) practices (Choo & Liew, 2005;Boakye, 2018). To our knowledge, this study provides the first documentation of seahorse use by Indian and Malaysian Siamese respondents in Malaysia. Such sociocultural insights could enable conservationists to develop effective interventions that are strategically tar- geted at particular demographic groups (Cheung et al., 2021). That traditional medicine use of seahorses has not previously been reported within the Indian community could be attributed to the primary use of plant-based in- gredients in Indian medicinal practice (Adhikari & Paul, 2018). The practice of traditional and complementary medicine


is relatively widespread; a previous study found that 69.4% of Malaysians (n = 6,947) had used traditional and comple- mentary medicine (Siti et al., 2009). However, we found a low prevalence of the medicinal use of seahorses, which is consistent with results from a week-long online poll administered via the Facebook page of SOS Malaysia, in which 87.0% of Malaysian respondents (54) indicated they had not used seahorses in any way (Lim, 2021). Nevertheless, the reported medicinal uses and benefits in our study are consistent with previous studies that noted seahorses as the most frequently mentioned marine re- source in traditional medicine because of their perceived efficacy for treating a variety of ailments and for promoting well-being (Vincent, 1996; Sari et al., 2018; Salleh et al., 2020). Medicinal use by the Chinese ethnic group, especially amongst the respondents from the general public, could be attributed to the centuries-long strong establishment of seahorses in Chinese pharmacopoeia (Vincent, 1996). Ethnicity influences non-medicinal uses of seahorses,


which, along with medicinal uses, are classified as consump- tion uses of natural resources (Gomez et al., 2022). Amongst the fisher respondents, theMalay ethnic group commonly re- ported consuming seahorses for non-medicinal uses. The in- fluence of psychosocial factors such as perceptions, beliefs, attitudes and cultural values in shaping food choices and be- haviours (Nestle et al., 1998) could have driven their choice to consume seahorses, especially via word of mouth or hearsay amongst family members and friends. A preliminary study showed that seahorse curios represented the second most common type of seahorse trade after traditional medicine on online market platforms in Malaysia (Aminuddin et al., 2021). Thus, conservation strategies should focus on man- aging these types of seahorse use in both physical and online marketplaces (Challender et al., 2015; DiMinin et al., 2019). Our findings indicate that culturally sensitive outreach


FIG. 4 Perceptions of the levels of threats facing seahorses amongst (a) 637 general public respondents and (b) 552 fisher respondents from Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo.


strategies for conserving seahorses need to target themedicin- al uses amongst Malay and Chinese communities, but that this is less relevant for other ethnic groups. A previous study concluded that conservation management awareness campaigns should be targeted at communities of specific eth- nic backgrounds in the context of users of pangolin body


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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