Ocean News

Recently, conservation film producer Chris Mason attended the 4th International Wildlife Management Congress 2012 in Durban. He had some interesting observations: do we need to manage wildlife, or do we need to manage the people and their attitude? An interesting question, that is also a valid question in ocean conservation.…

Major fishing nation bans thresher landing and sale based on Indian Ocean Tuna agreement Washington, DC. August 3, 2012. Shark Advocates International, a Save Our Seas Supported Organisation, is congratulating the government of Sri Lanka for adopting rules to protect three species of thresher sharks — wide ranging species characterized…

The grant application process for projects to take place next year (2013/14) is now open. Stage 1 grant applications must be submitted by August 26th 2012. This year, SOSF encourages researchers to apply for new projects focused upon mobulid rays and whale sharks. More information is provided below. Unfortunately we…

The first survey conducted before and after a shark attack has found that public support for great white sharks was virtually unchanged. The academic journal Marine Policy published the results online this week in a paper by two University of Sydney researchers, doctoral candidate Christopher Neff and Dr. Jean Yang.…

Following the latest fatal shark bite on an Australian surfer north of Perth, Chris Neff, whose excellent work on shark bites and public policies is supported by SOSF, writes objectively on why shark bites occur and the role of government policy in helping to prevent them: This reality is particularly difficult…

The Oceanic Whitetip is critically endangered in the Atlantic, yet few scientific studies have been undertaken on this species. In 2011 a team of scientists from the Cape Eleuthera Institute, Microwave Telemetry, Inc, Stony Brook University and the University of North Florida initiated a tagging study on this species using…

A new analysis by the Pew Environment Group notes that although 55 percent of sharks that have enough data available to assess them (150 species) are threatened or near threatened with extinction, current shark management is woefully inadequate. The review is being released as most of the more than 190…

In a major development, the world’s main consumer of shark fins, China, has announced that it will ban shark fin soup from all official banquets. The Government Offices Administration of the State Council announced that it will take up to three years to implement the ban, but given the right…

The Pew Environment Group reported last week that Venezuela has created measures to protect sharks in its waters, including a provision that bans commercial shark fishing throughout the 3,730 square kilometers of the Caribbean Sea that make up the popular Los Roques and Las Aves archipelagos: Scientists have identified Los…

We Love Sharks in Portugal! Last week, CEOs Peter Verhoog and Georgina Wiersma visited a new project in the Portuguese province Algarve. Today, Portugal is ranked third in the EU and 16th in the world for catches of sharks (mainly blue sharks followed by rays, makos and deepwater species). Oceanic…

Nicholas Pilcher heads up the Sea Turtle Conservation project in Sabah, Malaysia, and he has been posting some great updates from a recent Malaysian Fisheries Delegation on Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) to the US. Turtle Excluder Devices are fitted to fishing nets to allow Turtles that are caught to escape.…

For the second year in a row, an international team of biologists captured and satellite tagged a record number of rare oceanic whitetip sharks. Once considered one of the most abundant apex predators in all of the world’s tropical oceans, the oceanic whitetip is now listed as “critically endangered” in…

The oceans cover 71% of our planet and are home to 90 percent of the planet’s living biomass. In other words, 90% of life on our planet lives in the oceans, and we still know remarkably little about what’s alive down there: in the past decade alone, the Census of…

The Shark Research and Conservation Program at the Cape Eleuthera Institute, in collaboration with Dr. Edith Widder from the Ocean Research and Conservation Association ORCA), has recently embarked on an exciting new research project, using a deep water baited video camera known as ‘The Medusa’, to document the weird and…

The blindfold lady justice with sword and scales is the iconic representation of objectivity and fairness in the west. Yet, for many West Africans the sawfish is the symbol of justice. Sawfishes are immediately recognizable because of their long toothed rostra or saw, which makes up around a quarter of…