Another Seahorse stranded at Poole has been saved by a quick-witted family.

Lianne Head had taken her two-year-old daughter Jessica to play on swings at Hamworthy Park when she spotted the spiny seahorse lying on the grass.

“I thought it was a toy,” said Lianne, 25, of Manton Road, Hamworthy. “A children’s bath toy, it looked very realistic. Then its tail twitched.”

Realising the creature was alive her partner picked it up and it curled its tail around his hand. They gently put it back in the sea, 30 metres away.

“It floated upright with its head at the top of the water for a while before disappearing,” she said.

The couple’s daughter Jessica was fascinated by the find and they took a photo of the seahorse, probably about 17cms long, before returning it to Poole Harbour.

How it got so far from the water remains a mystery but there were seagulls nearby and it is likely it was washed up on the beach during an ebbing tide and picked up by a seagull.

“That’s quite feasible,” said Neil Garrick-Maidment, executive director of The Seahorse Trust.

“Seagulls can’t eat them, they are so hard. So it would have dropped it and gone after another meal.”

Neil identified it from Lianne’s photo as a male spiny seahorse, whose spines are very short due to his age, but has bred judging by his pouch.

Seahorses have a unique gill system which allows them to survive out of water for perhaps 10 or 15 minutes, said Neil.

The Daily Echo has reported two other stranded seahorse savings in the past few weeks and he said there had been three in Poole Harbour, one at Studland and two at Torbay.

“It’s the weather, because we have had so many onshore winds,” he said. “It's fantastic that all of these have been saved and put back in the water.

“It makes you wonder how many are out there that have not been seen.”

The Seahorse Trust is keen to receive photos and measurements of any seahorses washed up and urges people to return them to the sea as quickly as possible.

More information from theseahorsetrust.org