Ocean News

Over a million sharks are killed every year either intentionally or unintentionally. In Ecuador, threatened species of sharks are frequently targeted for their meat, as well as their fins, for example, scalloped and smooth hammerheads (Fig. 1). Most of these sharks are landed without any distinguishing features, for example, they…

Reef manta rays (Mobula alfredi) are homebodies at heart, keen to keep closer than we’d previously imagined to D’Arros Island and the neighbouring St Joseph Atoll. This finding, part of a new study that details the movements of reef mantas in the Amirante Islands of Seychelles using acoustic telemetry, places…

Let’s take a moment to explain some mark-recapture basics. In my last blog, I spoke about using computer vision to aid in identifying and re-identifying individuals from photographs. The ability to use natural markings for the identification of individuals in a population naturally enables the use of mark-recapture methods to…

Our journey to Fin Whale Research Station began on a 12-hour ferry from Port Hardy B.C, the ride up was rocky at best, with a wind strength approaching 40 knots. With all the cabins taken, we spent the night camped out at the bow of the ship. As the night…

Smalltooth sawfish (Pristis pectinata) were once plentiful in the United States from Texas to North Carolina but overfishing and habitat loss during the 20th century led to dramatic declines in sawfish numbers and range. Today, this species is found almost exclusively in South Florida. Following the 2003 listing of the…

Shortfin mako sharks (Isurus oxyrinchus) range widely across the seas, but they respond differently to similar environmental cues in different parts of their range. These sharks responded very differently to water depth, bathymetric slope, sea surface temperature, primary productivity and sea surface height gradient in two regions of the western…

While South Florida, USA is known to host our annual black-tipped visitors (Carcharhinus limbatus) in the winter months, there are a multitude of species that inhabit our nearshore waters throughout the year. We have been able to document interesting encounters using our lab’s aerial drone and underwater cameras. We have…

So, in the last blog post, we established that there’s much more involved with environmental DNA (eDNA) research than simply taking water samples, sending them to a genetics lab, and finding out if your target species was detected. Taking steps to avoid false negatives (e.g., using a small filter pore…

During our sampling expeditions for the project ‘Batoids on your plate’, we noticed the presence of pregnant females of the endemic rough ray (Raja radula) in the North Aegean. The first egg cases (or mermaids’ purses) were collected on 15 March from females caught in nets and were immediately placed…

You’d be forgiven for not knowing the otherworldly creature called the elephantfish. With the odd, trunk-like appendage on its head that it uses to root around for crabs on the sandy seafloor, this relative of the elasmobranchs (sharks, rays and skates) is aptly, if oddly, named. Also known as a…

Winter in North America is over and blacktip shark (Carcharhinus limbatus) aggregations in South Florida (USA) have dispersed. Graduate and undergraduate students from the Florida Atlantic Biomechanics lab are working to process another year’s worth of drone footage. This year was important because we were able to refine our methods…

The broadnose sevengill shark (Notorynchus cepedianus), more commonly known as a sevengill or cowshark, is a large (up to 3 m) and fairly common coastal predator in temperate seas worldwide. In Southern Africa, the known range of these sharks stretches from Namibia to the Transkei region in South Africa. Despite…