Governor Laffan's Fern

Named after Governor Sir Robert Laffan's fondness for this plant, this fern was found in the Walsingham-Harrington Sound area but it died out at the start of the 1900s.

Several specimens were housed at the Botanical Gardens until 2001, when they were moved to Tulo Valley Nursery. However, Hurricane Fabian then destroyed the greenhouse and two of the plants in 2003.

Bermuda Skink

Also known as the Rock Lizard, the skink lives in rocky coastal areas.

The species is threatened by habitat destruction, dogs, cats and rats, and garbage. As they have no friction pads, they cannot climb back out of bottles of soda cans and so die of heat stress or dehydration.

Adults have dark brown or black backs and a pinkish or pale grey underbelly. They grow to up to eight centimetres in length.

Poecilozonites

Circumfirmatus:

This is the sole survivor of a diverse range of endemic Bermuda land snails.

At only ten millimetres in size and living in leaf litter, they are hard to find and only a single colony is thought to remain on the Island.

The Bermudian land snail is under threat from other invertebrates such as the carnivorous wolf snail, which was imported from Florida in 1975.

Hawksbill Turtle

This turtle is found in oceans across the world but is most often encountered in lagoons and coral reefs.

Countries such as China and Japan hunt these animals for their flesh, which is considered a delicacy, while other cultures use their shells for decorative purposes.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species has ruled it is illegal to capture or trade in hawksbill turtles.

The Hawksbill Turtle has a beak-like mouth and two visible claws on each flipper.

Leatherback Turtle

This turtle does not have the bony carapace of other sea turtles. Instead of scutes, its carapace is covered in thick, leathery skin with embedded minuscule bony plates.

The leatherback can dive to more than 1,200 metres and is found worldwide in the open ocean.

It is threatened by the bycatch of commercial fishing vessels and by humans, particularly in Malaysia where its eggs are seen as a delicacy.

Longsnout and Lined –seahorses

The Longsnout or Slender Seahorse are found in coral reefs and seagrass beds in the mid-Atlantic, Caribbean and South America.

They can grow to seven inches in length.

The Lined Seahorse, also known as the Erect or Atlantic Seahorse, grows to about six inches and is found from Nova Scotia to Argentina.

Seahorses are threatened by loss of habitat, unsustainable fishing practices such as trawling, and over-collection for use in Asian medicines or as pets.

Mutton Hamlet

The Mutton Hamlet is mottled red and white in colour and lives in seagrass beds and rocky crevices.

It is now rare in Bermuda's waters.