A POOLE fisherman has captured the largest seahorse ever recorded in the wild in the world.

The whopping 34cm spiny seahorse was netted off the Dorset coast by Michael Bailey, who also holds the record for the three largest ever recorded in the British Isles. The other two measured 30cm and 24cm - recorded with an accurate Bass tape.

Doing his bit to conserve the species Michael, who does not deliberately fish for them but finds the seahorses clinging to his fishing net by their tails, gently removes them and after measuring and photographing them, returns them to the sea.

"I normally see maybe 20 to 30 a year," said the skipper of the Karen Rose. "They are everywhere."

He said: "They come up on our nets. We use ring nets. We shoot the net straight out and it comes straight back in. They grab it with their tail."

Using sonar the fishermen find shoals of mullet and he said four to five miles out to sea, where there were features on the sea floor where weed grew, seemed to also be a good place for seahorses.

"We do see quite a lot, it's quite surprising. They are quite cute," added Michael, who has been fishing more than 30-years.

Before 2008, after which seahorses were protected, Michael delivered a pregnant male to The Seahorse Trust - which had lobbied for six years for legal protection for the species - which was homed at a sealife centre.

Neil Garrick-Maidment, executive director of the trust said: "Michael is dedicated to the ocean where he earns his living. He has been very good to us, letting us know when he finds seahorses and always puts them straight back into the sea for the good of the species."

He said: "He kindly records them and lets us know about them, which is then fed into the National Seahorse Database, which we use in turn to help lobby the authorities to get them to enforce the legal protection they have.

"Michael is a good ambassador for seahorses as he talks with his fellow fishermen and lets them know what he is doing and I think he has encouraged others to also put them back into the water. We just need them to also report them in to us."