The Seahorseman

For the past week, I've been glued to a four-part documentary about one Irishmman's dream to breed endangered seahorses. An absolutely fascinating, often heartbreaking but an ultimately inspirational story of struggling against the odds.

One of the saddest scenes was when he visited a market in China and was absolutely stunned at the jars upon jars upon jars of dead, dried seahorses including many pregnant males...and this was just one market in one town in one part of China so the scale upon which they're caught and killed from wild stock is only staggering...

Oh I would have like to have seen that, I find seahorses fascinating creatures.

I love nature programmes, but at the same time sort sort of hate them as they inevitably end up with a dire warning about what the future holds, how there are only a handful of (choose a species) left.

I remember one where the narrator was in the rain forest somewhere and was travelling in a car through mile upon mile of dry, dusty, barren land where every single tree and plant had been cut down by loggers and local villagers etc. It looked for all the world as if an atomic bomb had been dropped it was just a huge dead area as far as the eye could see.

There was not a sign of a single bird or animal of any description.

The man presenting the programme was so upset he was in tears, as was I at the end.

I know what you mean, very distressing. Well this one has sort of a happy ending...eventually! If it's ever picked up by one of the English channels, it's definitely worth a look.