Diver finds more seahorses near Long Beach

“Solomon,” a seahorse whose unexpected appearance below Alamitos Bay this past winter surprised frequent diver Roger Hanson, may now have a mate.

Hanson has continued his longtime hobby of scuba diving under the surface of Alamitos Bay since encountering Solomon, a Pacific seahorse, in February. He said Friday he has now seen a total of seven seahorses in the area. Those animals include another seahorse that Hanson has dubbed Bathsheba.

Hanson, who lives in Santa Ana, suspects he observed the animals in the midst of a courtship ritual when he saw them swimming together near a during a mid-June dive.

“Just because they meet, they don’t like each other. Just like if you meet a cute girl and she’s rude to you, it’s like, ‘uh-uh,’” Hanson said.

But in this case, the seahorses appeared to hit it off.

“They started dancing around a shell,” Hanson said.

A National Geographic article and posting from the University of Michigan’s Museum of Zoology both report dance-like movements as being part of seahorse courtship rituals.

Pacific seahorses typically live in waters ranging from Peru to the San Diego area, according MarineBio.org, hence Hanson’s surprise in finding Solomon earlier this year.

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