Ocean News

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…

Ocean 2012, a coalition focused on ensuring that the 2012 reform of the EU Common Fisheries Policy stops overfishing and ends destructive fishing practices, has produced an excellent, informative video that succinctly summarizes the problem: You can find out more about overfishing and the actions you can take to help…

Today, we had the incredible privilege of receiving a cheque for 650 USD from Evan Smith, who ran 100 miles to raise money and awareness for sharks. Evan lives in Long Grove, United States, Illinois, and running is one of this second-grader’s passions, but not the only one… When he’s…

Douglas McCauley and Paul DeSalles did not set out to discover one of the longest ecological interaction chains ever documented. But that’s exactly what they and a team of researchers — all current or former Stanford students and faculty — did in a new study published in Scientific Reports. Their…

More than 20 meters beneath the seafloor, microbes have adapted to an environment almost entirely devoid of nutrients and energy by slowing their metabolisms to the point where, up until recently, scientists assumed that they were dead. A new study published last week in the journal Science sheds light on…

Last week, the long awaited SHARK Exhibition at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale (www.moafl.org) was officially opened with several events, including a Shark Family Day. Long before humans first appeared on Earth, sharks were swimming the seas. They predate dinosaurs by about 200 million years and were revered…

The oceans have changed more in the past 30 years than in all of human history. In many places, more than 75% of marine megafauna has been lost, and almost nowhere shallower than 3,000 feet has been untouched by commercial fishing. These are just some of the stark facts presented…

Peru’s northern coast is currently the site of one of the biggest Unusual Mortality Events for dolphins ever recorded. As many as 3,000 dead dolphins have been found since January 2012, and more than 1,000 dead seabirds, mainly pelicans, have washed up on shore in recent weeks. And nobody seems…

This weekend saw the official launch of theBlu, a globally shared art and entertainment experience. Inspired by the world’s oceans, "theBlu" is a living and breathing digital art exhibit of ocean habitats and species, created by artists and developers from all over the world. Its aims are to: Use the…