Ocean News

When you think of what shark scientists do, it usually conjures up images of tagging sharks and tracking them. Your mind immediately goes to the classic images of a team of scientists working quickly to tag and release…

Scientists are digging right down to the level of DNA to learn more about how to protect sharks. A new paper published by SOSF funded scientists Mahmood Shivji and Demian Chapman, led by lead author Rodrigo Domingues, shows how a better understanding of sharks’ genes can help us make big…

August 23rd, 2018 was the same as any morning at the Shark Lab, but for me, it will forever be referred to as ‘Turtle Day’. We had visiting research assistants at the lab, from the FSU Marine Turtle…

For 18 years, shark spotting aerial patrols have been carried out to the south of Sydney across a ~200 km stretch of coastline that includes Wollongong, Shellharbour, Jervis Bay Marine Park and Ulladulla. Although aerial methods of monitoring…

In 2016, Madeline Green and Lauren Meyer launched Shark Share Global – the first online platform that allowed scientists to share and search for biological samples. It was innovative, useful and connected a community of shark scientists around the world to share resources and reduce unnecessary biological waste. In 2018,…

Living on Fin Island, you must constantly pay attention to your surroundings (the weather and sea conditions, the amount of sunlight or rainfall, the tides, the movement of the sun and moon, and of course cetacean and boat…

Researchers from the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB) have been studying the movement behaviour of spotted grunter since 2004, with more than 120 individuals having been tagged with acoustic transmitters to date. The research initially focussed…

Alissa Barnes is passionate about sharks in her home country of India – and the fact that we know relatively little about many of their threatened populations drives her research. She published the results of her MSc work together with her co-authors Dipani Sutaria, Alastair Harry and Rima Jabado in…

Known for its fascinating Inca culture, the Andes mountains and wide stretches of golden surf beaches, there is much to discover on land in the South American country Peru. Yet the ocean offshore Peru’s coastline holds many treasures,…

       A State of Emergency was declared in August as Florida’s southern Gulf Coast is overwhelmed by an unusually persistent environmental phenomenon called a “red tide”. In a part of the world where red tides are common, this particular bloom has lingered for over 10 months and intensified…

The Casamance River in Senegal was an important habitat for the now critically endangered smalltooth sawfish. Data collected in the 1970s show that this species was common in the river, at least during the months between June and November. It also appears that smalltooth sawfish spent their first year or…

Thirty leaders and experts in the field of manta and devil ray conservation science have come together to identify major gaps in our current understanding and protection of these species. Their paper, published in September in Frontiers in Marine Science, synthesises what we do know about these rays, and highlights…