Ocean News

In an average month, the areas of the ocean most used by pelagic sharks will have a 24% overlap with industrial longline fisheries. That’s according to a landmark study: “Global spatial risk assessment of sharks under the footprint of fisheries”, published today in the journal Nature. The findings, which represent…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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.…