A-LEVEL biology students at Canford School, Wimborne, took time off normal lessons to help save a tiny endangered seahorse found on the deck of a fishing boat in the English Channel.

The skipper discovered the seahorse while bringing up lobster pots from a depth of 55 metres.

And he feared the seahorse, a protected species not normally found this far south at this time of year, would have faced certain death in the jaws of a larger predator on his way back to the sea bed if he had been returned to the sea.

The skipper of the boat contacted Andrew Powell, head of biology at Canford School, where staff and pupils are involved in a number of marine based projects.

They got the seahorse into a special aquarium, and it will be moved to Escot near Ottery St Mary in Devon, to be part of the Seahorse Trust captive breeding programme.

Andrew Powell, the school's head of biology, said: "Seahorses are known to inhabit the habour and we have previously taken several groups of pupils down to the harbour to try to document the British seahorse but without luck.

"To have one brought into the school was fantastic. It has now been safely transported to the Seahorse Trust's captive breeding programme."

It was previously thought that both British species of seahorse, the Spiny (Hippocampus guttulatus) and the Short Snouted (Hippocampus hippocampus) were only seasonal visitors to the British Isles and Ireland.

But results so far from the survey show that they are indigenous and occupy areas ranging all around Ireland and from the Shetland Isles down the west coast to the Isles of Scilly and then along the south coast to Kent.

Usually considered a shallow water species being found just a few metres below the surface, seahorses have also been found as far down as 80m.