Ocean News

This past year has flown by for the global mobulid genetics project. Some of the highlights for me have been delving into sequence data for all manta and devil ray species, conducting field work in Fiji (and in…

In my previous blog, I wrote about why deep-water sharks are so unique and important. These rare and intriguing creatures are poorly understood and have adapted to survive in an environment unlike any other. But how do researchers…

It was an exciting November at the Save Our Seas Foundation’s D’Arros Research Centre (DRC): we identified thirteen new manta rays around the island for the Seychelles Manta Ray Project! Each day, the DRC and Manta Trust team…

Individual sharks that belong to one species but occur in different locations can vary significantly in size, growth rate and life-history traits. Some species, such as the abundant and well-studied reef species, the blacktip reef shark Carcharhinus melanopterus,…

One of the goals of my project was to find out whether sawfishes are, or have the potential to be, a flagship species for the geographical region and ecosystems they are found in. As this first field season…

A lot of working parts and pieces, many of which are very technical, are coming together to create our shark anatomy app for kids. While this is the backbone of the Shark4kids project, its core remains real live…

This summer I spent 39 days on top of four-metre-high wooden lookout towers, scanning the waters of Bimini with one objective: to record the behaviour of juvenile lemon sharks. Although the sharks themselves are an absolutely amazing sight,…

‘Going left!’ ‘Now right!’ ‘Crossing in front of the boat!’ ‘A bit of speed!’ ‘Wait now, slow down…’ Then … splash! Crystal-clear water rushes past my head as I reach forward to latch onto the juvenile green sea…

In addition to being one of the most beautiful countries in the world, The Bahamas is a biodiversity hotspot and an ideal place for undertaking marine research. The focal species of my research is the endangered Nassau grouper.…

August in Belize: calm seas, hot days, and breezy nights. And night sharks. They’re here every year, just off the south tip of Glover’s Reef Atoll. And they’re huge. This is what I’ve been hearing since we first…

Our search for sawfishes in the waters of the northern parts of Queensland, Australia, certainly takes us into some very special ecosystems. Most are classified as arid bush or grassland, but recently our search took us to the…

Since my last update, something has changed: turtle Marco Dalla’s prototype started to work – more or less. As I said in the previous post, the logger didn’t send a signal at first, but after a few weeks…