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2026-03-31-accounts

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The Seahorse Trust
End of year report
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TRUSTEES REPORT AND ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR TO 31[ST] MARCH 2026

WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP WITH NATURE

Registered charity no 1086027

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Annual report 2021/2022

The Seahorse Trust Year to 31[st] March 2026

INDEX

Index Page No.
Officers, advisers and details 3
Report of the Trustees 4-5
General and Financial Review 6-11
Adoption and membership scheme 12
Website 12
Patrons 12
Financial policy 13
Statement of financial activities 14
Notes to the accounts 15

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Officers, advisors and details during 2025/26 advisors and details during 2025/26
Trustees Tim Haywood (Chairman), Dr Barbara Gainswin
(Treasurer), Lydia Morrison, Jasmine Schofield
Director Neil Garrick-Maidment FBNA
Patrons Kate Humble Chris Packham
Kirsty Jones Mark Carwardine
Ellie Harrison Sir Hugo Swire MP
Registered Charity No 1086027
Registered Address 36 Greatwood Terrace
Topsham,
Devon EX3 0EB
Tel. no 07876513628
E-mail theseahorsetrust@gmail.org
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/theseahorsetrust/
Twitter https://twitter.com/seahorsecharity/with_replies
Web site www.theseahorsetrust.org
Independent examiner Anthony Roberts FTCA
7 Totnes Road
Paignton
Devon TQ4 5JX
Bankers Lloyds TSB
234 High Street
Exeter
Devon EX4 3NL

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REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR 2025 -2026

The Director and Trustees have the pleasure in presenting their Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 31[st] March 2026, which have been prepared in accordance with the Charities Act and The Statement of Recommended Practice.

STATEMENT OF TRUSTEES RESPONSIBILITIES

Charity law requires the trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year, which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charity and of its financial activities for that year which properly presents the charity’s income and expenditure for the year together with its assets and liabilities at the end of the year and adequately distinguish any material special trust or other restricted fund of the charity. In preparing those financial statements the trustees are required to:

The trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time, the financial position of the charity, and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with applicable Accounting Standards and Statements of Recommended Practise and the regulations made under s44 of the Charities Act 1993. They are responsible for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud or other irregularities.

ADMINISTRATION

The Charitable Trust and its property shall be administered and managed by the Trustees under the name of THE SEAHORSE TRUST or by such other name as the Trustees from time to time decide with the approval of the Charity Commission for England and Wales.

There shall be at least two trustees, and future trustees shall be appointed by a resolution of the trustees, passed at a trustees meeting.

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Trustees who acted during the year were:

Tim Haywood, Dr Barbara Gainswin, Lydia Morrison, Jasmine Schofield

The Trust’s bankers are: Lloyds TSB 234 High Street, Exeter. Devon EX4 3NL

The Independent examiner is : Anthony Roberts FTCA. 7 Totnes Road, Paignton, Devon. TQ4 5JX

OBJECTS

The Trustees shall hold the trust fund and its income upon trust to apply them for the following objects (‘the objects’):

LEGAL STATUS

The charity is a registered charity No. 1086027 and governed by the Declaration of Trust dated 12[th] August 2000 as amended by a supplemental deed dated 27[th] January 2001.

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GENERAL AND FINANCIAL REVIEW 2025/2026

Here is a summary of key events and updates from the 2025/2026 year. While we couldn't include everything due to space constraints, we extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed to making this year a success.

To make this report easier to read, we've listed project highlights as bullet points. For comprehensive details, please visit our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/theseahorsetrust and our website at https://www.theseahorsetrust.org/

Volunteers are the backbone of The Seahorse Trust. Without their dedication and generosity, our work would not be possible. We are deeply grateful to each of them for donating their time.

Due to health challenges, our director Neil was unable to dive as frequently this year. However, our exceptional team of volunteers and licensed agents stepped up, conducting numerous surveys on behalf of The Seahorse Trust. Their efforts have solidified our position as the leading seahorse researchers in the UK, if not the world.

Without a doubt Facebook is our major social media platform and this year it has risen considerably in numbers joining the platform to follow our work. As of the 31[st ] of March 2026, we had 12,706 followers. (up from 11,450 in the last report).

British Seahorse Survey

Again, this year we have been dogged by east winds, this is a direct result of global warming, and this has reduced the amount of diving in the early part of the year.

We now have a number of sites that fall under the British Seahorse Survey. In total we have 6 sites from Selsey Bill in Hampshire down to Torbay in Devon, all overseen by an amazing team of agents, who fall under the licence of The Seahorse Trust.

Torbay was new in 2024, with initial surveys kindly funded by the BSAC Jubilee fund. It has already been successful in finding a larger seagrass meadow than we expected and both species of Seahorse, these were found on the second and third dives.

Weymouth and The Fleet in Dorset are being overseen by Chris Brown from the Sealife Centres, his daughter Chloe and a great team of volunteers under our licence. They are having great

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Annual report 2021/2022

results and have formed a large team to assist. So far, they have repeatedly seen about 20 to 30 seahorses, helping us to build our knowledge of the species in the area.

Chris is undertaking his PhD in Seahorses using the data and knowledge he is gaining from his survey divers in Weymouth and the Fleet in Dorset.

Studland Bay is being overseen by Dr Ken Collins and Jenny Mallinson from Southampton University under our licence. Ken has over 150 volunteers and has had approximately 46 individual seahorse sightings this year. There has been about 3,000 hours underwater put into the project so far, since 2008, when trust founder and executive director Neil set it up.

Studland Bay is still our most important project, Neil and the core team of Kim and Paul often help out there on the surveys (as well conducting all our other surveys) and between us all and the Studland Bay Marine Partnership, co-founded by Neil it has proven to be the most successful survey and conservation project of its type, especially after the installation of the 87 ecomoorings. It is being used by the National Trust and others as the gold standard for marine conservation here in the UK, and we are approached on a weekly basis to share our knowledge with others around the world.

Ali Mayor is overseeing Selsey Bill under our licence and will be involved in the new 3 Harbours Project in Hampshire.

Alongside Torbay, Neil and his core team of Kim and Paul help out in the other areas and also look for new sites, such as in Plymouth.

The National, now World Seahorse Database is the largest, continuously running project of its kind and was founded in 1994 by trust founder Neil. It underpins so much or our research and has allowed us to understand so much about these elusive animals.

Seahorse Survey Greece

Susan Smillie has kindly taken on doing seahorse surveys in the Ambracian Gulf in Greece and we are starting to collaborate with others in the region to study the seahorses and a multitude of other species, such as the Fan Shells and seagrass.

Susan is a fantastic volunteer, and her work is already showing the area to be very unique, it is also one of the last areas for Monk Seals in the region.

Other Seahorse Surveys

We are very lucky to have volunteers around the world surveying or reporting seahorse sightings into us, such as Kirsty-Jo in Malta and Roger Hanson (The Seahorse Whisperer) in

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California. Roger, ourselves, Dr Ian Hendy at Portsmouth University and Leslee Matsushige at the aquarium at Scripps are working with Roger to compile and analysis his data from 10 years of studying seahorses and form building seahorse cities.

.

Media coverage

Every year we are lucky enough to get incredible coverage in the media, and this year has not been any different, below are some of the highlights.

Devon Life has done a feature on our work

https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/magazines/devon/25395991.inside-seahorse-trust-based-

wildwood

Chloe took part in International Day of Woman and Girls in Science and did an interview for the BBC that was listened to by millions of girls and women. Chloe is fast becoming a figurehead for girls wanting to go into marine conservation.

Neil did an interview with BSAC about the work at Studland after receiving a grant from them. https://www.bsac.com/news-and-blog/snorkelling-through-seagrass-searching-for= seahorses/?fbclid IwY2xjawNi_TpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHuKAPAGIUb28pkoorf5QkuRznZGJI1VSY - 2pFfgk3Wt _LC2TPtHWGVLDt5wM_aem_tdsiLMPzUrE8g24i09DPAw

Kirsty Jo who oversees the Malta Project did an interview on podcast https://open.spotify.com/episode/1uLdGQbh4RpXhAgNMS6Eft?si=2A2OLWmERIKmEBXIwAvN Gw&sfnsn=wa&fbclid=IwY2xjawNi_m1leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHhRvH6XZx5tM-7QCk97qR7T- Kf__FBefhIwzXnYxfwlGtD7S7YXefn1QaFPN_aem_cuTAW8cU

gWMhvYHg33xng&nd=1&dlsi=a9d5823ddcda47d8

Roger conducted an interview form America with the BBC World Service.

The Seahorse Trust is now the go to charity for the media and information about seahorses, not just here in the UK but also wider afield.

Teaching

Neil has overseen Kirsty-Jho Muddiman’s Master’s degree through Bournemouth University; he also teaches all levels of students from A level upwards and is a PhD Supervisor in conservation and seahorses.

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Beccy has taught a number of Seahorse Ecology and Survey courses online and she still remains our voluntary Director of Education.

Neil taught the Seahorse survey Course to 20 volunteers who are now listed as volunteers at Studland, helping Dr Ken Collins and Jenny Mallinson out.

Awards

Chloe was awarded the Young Coastal Champion by Dorset Coast Forum for her work with The Seahorse Trust in surveying seahorses in Weymouth, at the time she was only 16.

Neil was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the British Naturalist Association in recognition of his work in natural history.

Fund raising

We have a number of business such as Sea Adora, Wildflower Favours, Scapa Joe, Sails and Canvas, Bare kind amongst so many others that kindly make donations to our work. These regular donations make all the difference to our work and a massive thank you to them all for this. Theses shops and websites can be located through our website @ - https://www.theseahorsetrust.org/sponsors page/

Our long-term relationship with Salcombe Brewery which sells Seahorse Ale (does not contain seahorses but is a finely crafted ale), raises funds for us through the sale of their bottled ale which raised just over £2,311 this year.

The Annual Studland Bay Seahorse Swim raised £1,000 for us, which is the highest yet, and Michael Prideaux advisor to the trust represented us .

The BSAC Jubilee Trust donated £2,088 to hire a boat 3 times to start our project in Torbay. This project is already a success and a massive thank you to them for this donation.

Harbour Hounds raised £5,000 from the sale of its dog products, making The Seahorse Trust a beneficiary of its donations.

We now have a QR code so that donors can donate to our work online and already we are finding people using this way of donating which is great news. A massive thank you to Ellen from Seahorse Communications for putting it together for us.

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Annual report 2021/2022

An unusual fund raiser for us was to collect Ferrero Roche boxes to keep dried seahorse specimens in, which we use for our ongoing research with Universities such as Bangor in Wales. We ended up with over 150 boxes and luckily some of them came with chocolates in.

The family and friends of Judith Cochrane raised £196 in her memory instead of buying flowers for the service. Thank you to them all for thinking of us, apparently The Seahorse Trust was one of her favourite charities.

Blue Reef aquariums at Newquay, Bristol, Portsmouth and Hastings raised just over £1,000 from their visitors for our work. Thank you for all their hard work.

We also had two large private donations, one of £5,000 and one of £20,000 towards our ongoing work. Both parties want to remain anonymous.

Projects

Hydrophones were placed by student Annabelle from Southampton University into Studland Bay and initial results have shown it to be the noisiest place on earth underwater.

With our partners in Denmark, we have proven seahorses are in the North Sean including in countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland and France. This was groundbreaking research and most ‘experts’ assume them to be tropical, whereas all of our work at The Seahorse Trust has proven this is not the case. We even have a record off Nova Scotia.

Volunteers

Volunteers are the backbone of the trust and every year we have hundreds of them working in various capacities, but a special mention should be made to Kim, Paul, Chris, Chloe and Ali in diving here in the UK and Teresa and Kim for their work on the curio trade.

Curio Project

Kim and Teresa have worked hard on the Curio trade project this year and managed to get many items taken off the internet. We have formed a fantastic partnership with eBay, and they have appointed an agent who removes illegal sales very quickly on the platform. It’s a great collaboration and one that has worked well.

Sadly, Facebook has failed to communicate with us for over 4 years, even though we are a Trusted Partner. Where we are failing on Facebook, we are succeeding strongly on eBay and luckily now have a personalized contact who removes items for us.

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Neil, worked with BBC reporter Angus Crawford on exposing the illegal sale of seahorses by suppliers here in the UK and this will be an ongoing piece of work to stop this trade.

Seahorse eco course

Have you ever wondered why a seahorse is like it is? What makes these ‘little horses of the sea’ so unique and so well adapted to their watery world? Are they a fish, a monkey or a chameleon? seahorses show so many traits from so many different species, it is hard to decide exactly what they are; the Victorians thought they were insects. In this unique online course, you will find out the answers to these questions and many more. Our new online Seahorse Biology, Ecology and Conservation course allows you to learn about this enigmatic species at your own pace and includes 12 sessions on topics such as Taxonomy and Diversity, Camouflage and Colour Change, Migration, Human Impacts and Conservation Measures to name but a few, along with an online Learners Community.

The full online course costs just £65 – giving you unlimited access to 13 learning modules. The Introductory Session is free to access, so if you wish to learn more about the course and what we do at the Trust please click the image above and to get in touch with is please email Beccy seahorsesurveycourse@aol.co.uk

This course was kindly funded by Sea Changers ,

Seahorse Survey Course

Like the ecology course above we have designed an online course to teach about how to survey seahorses and what to do and most importantly what NOT to do, when you find one in the sea. This vital course directly helps to conserve seahorses by stopping stress and disturbance to seahorses when divers do a survey for seahorses.

In the UK it is a legal requirement to have a license issued by the Marine Management Organisation to seek out seahorses in the wild.

This course is £65 but if you choose to do both courses together it is £120.

Thanks goes to the Postcode Local Trust who kindly funded the writing of this course.

Wildwood Trust

Thank you so much to Wildwood Trust who kindly hosts our office free of charge at their centre near Ottery St Mary in Devon. Wildwood Escot has a number of native British and European species such as Wild Cat, Lynx, Red Squirrel, Boar, Fox, Beaver and now Wolves and we worked with them on the native Triop, which the trust has specialised in for a number of years.

They are a progressive charity that supports Rewilding projects throughout the UK and are involved in bringing back former native species to our countryside, such as Red squirrel and Beavers and hopefully in the future Lynx.

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Newsletter

Spreading the word about Seahorses, the natural world and the work of the trust is very important and we have a website with a newsletter page. The newsletter is sent out to over 2,000 people by email each time we publish one. We no longer send newsletters out by post due to costs.

We also post our newsletter on our Facebook page and website, and we know that on a regular basis over 15,000 look at these two sites, with one post in Facebook having 59,000 views.

Adoption and membership schemes (UK only)

Our adoption and membership scheme has increased considerably this year in numbers mainly because we are becoming internationally recognised now for our work with seahorses and because we have changed the format of how to adopt or become a member.

The figures for Adoption and Membership are encouraging, in 2025-2026 it was £14,327.55 whereas in 2024-2025 it was £12,762.32 which is up by £1,565.23

It shows that although the scheme has been and is successful in terms of funds, we need to increase numbers of adoptions and memberships, more work needs to be done on this.

Website

We would like to say a special thank you to Gavin who often does work for us for free and without his input we would not have such a great website. Here at the Trust, we highly recommend him, and he can be found on his website at http://www.gslsolutions.co.uk/

Patrons

We are very lucky here at the trust in having the support of some well-known names as patrons and I would like to thank one and all for their superb help and support over the last twelve months.

Kate Humble http://www.katehumble.com Chris Packham http://www.chrispackham.co.uk Kirsty Jones http://www.kirstyjones.com Mark Carwardine http://www.markcarwardine.com Ellie Harrison http://www.ellie-harrison.com/ Monty Halls http://www.montyhalls.co.uk/ Sir Hugo Swire https://www.hugoswire.org.uk/

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FINANCIAL POLICY

RESERVES POLICY

It is the intention of the Charity only to maintain reserves at the level required to fund its ongoing commitments.

RISKS ASSESSMENT

The Trustees have reviewed the major risks to which the Charity may be exposed and consider measures have been taken to mitigate such risks.

INDEPENDENT EXAMINERS REPORT TO THE TRUSTEES

I report on the accounts of the trust for the year ended 31[st] March 2026, which are set out on pages 14 to 15.

RESPECTIVE RESPONSIBILTIES OF TRUSTEES AND EXAMINER

As the charities trustees you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts; you consider that the audit requirement of s43(2) of the Charities Act 1993 (the Act) does not apply. It is my responsibility to state, on the basis of procedures specified in the General Directions given by the Charity Commissioners under s43(7) (b) of the Act, whether particular matters have come to my attention.

BASIS OF INDEPENDENT EXAMINER’S REPORT

My examination was carried out in accordance with the General Directions by the Charity Commissioners. An examination includes a review of the accounting records kept by the Charity and a comparison of the accounts presented with those records. It also includes consideration of any unusual items or disclosures in the accounts, and the seeking of explanations from you as trustees concerning any such matters. The procedures undertaken do not provide all the evidence that would be required in an audit and. Consequently, I do not express an audit opinion on the view given by the accounts.

INDEPENDENT EXAMINER’S STATEMENT

In connection with my examination, no matter has come to my attention:

  1. That gives me reasonable cause to believe that, in any material respect, the requirements:

  2. To keep accounting records in accordance with s41 of the Act; and

  3. To prepare accounts which accord with the accounting records and to comply with the accounting requirements of the Act.

  4. Have not been met; or

  5. To which, in my opinion, attention should be drawn in order to enable proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

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INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31st MARCH 2026

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NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR TO 31[ST] MARCH 2026

• ACCOUNTING BASIS

These accounts have been prepared under the Historical Cost Convention, applicable accounting standards and the Statement of Recommended Practise, accounting and reporting by charities.

• INCOMING RESOURCES

Income is credited in the period it is received.

• STAFF EMOLUMENTS

Total cost of administrator’s fees inclusive was £36,256.77

No employee received emoluments above £50,000

• INDEPENDENT EXAMINATION

Cost £396

• VOLUNTEERS

No value is placed on volunteer’s time.

• TRUSTEES

No trustee received any remuneration or reimbursement of expenses in the year.

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