I am so obsessed with seahorses, I had 26 tanks full of them in my home

The founder of the Seahorse Trust explains how his life-long fascination with the enigmatic creatures helped us to understand and protect them

I saw a seahorse for the first time when I was 14. There is something very unfishlike about the way seahorses swim upright, and their constantly moving eyes - it made me feel completely in awe of them. Fifty-one years later, and that feeling has never gone away. Even now, if I'm on a dive and I see one, I find it amazing.

Seahorses are fish that don't fit into any category; they seem like an amalgam of lots of different creatures. They have horse-like heads, kangaroo-like pouches and prehensile, monkey-like tails - which often seem to have a mind of their own - plus they can change colour like a chameleon. It's quite remarkable.