Personal ads for seahorses?

Posted by Rill on Sep 7th, 2009 in News | 0 comments

A clever advertising campaign for the seahorse exhibition at Monterey Bay Aquarium highlights the extremely unusual breeding habits of seahorses.

To promote The Secret Lives of Seahorses the aquarium has run a series of mock personal ads for each of the fish featured in the exhibition.

Each fish's name plays on its scientific name and gives clues about the seahorse's life: Eartha Excises sums up her Political Views as "Men should not only be pregnant, but should clean my house". Ken Kuda lists his Interests as "Hanging around, eating brine shrimp, dancing."

seahorse-personal-ad

You can even become a Facebook friend of the poster boy of the campaign, Herbie Hippocampus. The aquarium has really taken some time to create a great profile with mock info including things like Favourite TV Programmes - CSI:Reef.

Not everyone is fond of the campaign - some have even labelled it "creepy". Andy Wright in his post on San Francisco Weekly's Snitch blog is most definitely not a fan, listing seahorses alongside tapirs, baby ducks and hamsters as "non-sexy animals".

I don't really know what my criteria are for "sexy animals", but I do know that seahorses and their relatives are among the most unusual and I applaud the Monterey Bay Aquarium for their inventive campaign. It's certainly got people's attention!

The Secret Lives of Seahorses opened in April of this year and is set to run until 2012. I'm hoping to be in the area next year and will definitely check it out!