Ocean News

This month marks a year since BP’s Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico blew out, spewing nearly five million barrels of oil in the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. Much more recent – and still ongoing – is the nuclear aftermath following the 9.0 magnitude Tohoku earthquake…

Accurate estimates of body size are essential for determining the health of shark populations. In the past, this usually involved capturing and restraining animals in order to measure them, with the attendant risk of injury to both researchers and the sharks. Fortunately, new technology has overcome this problem and we…

Recently the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF) was presented with information that alleged that over a ton of sevengill sharks were caught off Cape Point and transported to Gansbaai to primarily supply the White Shark Cage Diving (WSCD) industry with shark livers to be used as chum. Consequently, we sent…

Last month saw the release of "Reefs at Risk Revisited", the most detailed and comprehensive analysis yet of the state of the world’s coral reefs. There are some bright spots, but overall, the findings are grim: "75 percent of the world’s coral reefs are currently threatened by local and global…

Our friends at Wetpixel have posted news that there will be an exclusive screening of "Man to Manta", a new ITV documentary, held in London’s May Fair Hotel on Thursday 24 March 2011 at 7.30pm. There will be an introduction by Martin Clunes (Doc Martin, Reggie Perrin, Men Behaving Badly),…

Last December, Mauvis Gore and her team studying the large sharks in Grand Cayman’s North Sound managed to tag a 3.5m female tiger shark, nicknamed "Tina", with a SPOT satellite tag, allowing them to track her position whenever she surfaces. Since then, they’ve been following her movements around the North…

While it may seem like we’ve gone off the deep end, this isn’t quite the case. It’s just that two of our sponsored projects have been particularly productive: podcasters extraordinaire Naked Oceans have launched a new episode just in time for Valentine’s Day titled, aptly enough, "Sex on the Sea…

Compared to other commercial fisheries, the shark-fin industry is opaque, secretive, and often operates in a legal grey area, exploiting loopholes in anti-finning laws and keeping few records. In addition to this, reporting can be unreliable and misleading, as member countries of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report…

This month’s Naked Oceans podcast delves deep into one of the five major threats the oceans face, and one that has been getting considerable attention lately – overfishing. With the success of the Fish Fight campaign in the UK, which is drawing the public’s attention to fishing discards at sea…

Save Our Seas is proud to announce that Outdoor Photographer Magazine has named SOSF Chief Photographer, Thomas P. Peschak as one of the 30 most influential nature photographers in the world. He is being recognized for his hard-hitting reportage work on shark fisheries and his inspirational documentations of our planets…

Scientific discussion on the controversial topic of shark feeding, an interview with Guy Stevens about saving manta rays in the Maldives, and Shark Truth drawing attention to finning in Vancouver’s Chinese community. Juerg Brunnschweiler, who’s been studying bull sharks in Fiji for several years, has posted on the perenially controversial…

In October this year, numerous events during European Shark Week 2010 aimed to raise awareness of Europe’s contribution to the shark fin trade and prompt people to encourage their local MEPs to support a Written Declaration that proposes to prohibit the removal of shark fins on board vessels. By December…

There’s been some exciting news from the Cayman Shark Study project – last week, project leader Mauvis Gore and the rest of the team attached a SPOT satellite tag to a 3.5m long Tiger shark, which they’ve nicknamed Tina. What makes this tagging so interesting is that, unlike regular satellite…

The Save Our Seas Foundation Board has made the announcement today that Peter Verhoog and Georgina Wiersma are taking the helm of Save our Seas Foundation starting January 1st, 2011. Here is the full announcement: “The Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF) wishes to announce that Peter Verhoog and Georgina Wiersma…

The Maldives are home to some of the biggest manta ray feeding aggregations in the world. The sight of dozens of these majestic animals gliding underwater draws a rapidly growing number of tourists every year. Thanks in part to project leader Guy Stevens’ work, one major manta feeding site has…