Sea Horses (2019)

This children's fantasy tells the story of a 12-year-old boy who discovers a complex underwater world where young children are held prisoner by an evil shark and an eel.

A stop-motion short film about a seahorse that is swept away from its coral reef and must survive the journey home.

Examines the sea horse, the only fish that swims upright. We watch it use its prehensile tail to wrap around plants and other sea horses. A frontal bulge houses organs including an air ballast. Three fins propel this fish. We see a female place her eggs in a male's pouch where they are fertilized and nurtured until birth in violent contractions. Inside the pouch are nurturing blood vessels. We then follow the growth of an embryo, greatly magnified: we examine its heart beating and its dorsal fin moving. Young sea horses attach themselves to each other. The film ends with images of many sea horses moving on the ocean floor, superimposed on a horse race.

Enter the surreal world of Seymour, a lonely old man with a passion for training seahorses attempts to achieve an unimaginable trick.

With a horse's head, a monkey's tail and sex-swap parenting, seahorses are one of the ocean's strangest and most charismatic inhabitants. In this one hour special, wildlife filmmaker Natali Tesche-Ricciardi sets out to investigate something that most people don't realize - seahorse populations are in crisis from pollution and overfishing for tourist souvenirs, aquarium stock and traditional Chinese medicine. With the help of Project Seahorse, traders and fishermen are changing their ways to help wild seahorse populations. The future for wild seahorses remains uncertain but one fact cannot be disputed - our future generations will want to experience these enchanting fish - in their natural habitat and very much alive.