Ocean News

Date: 12 January 2010 Time: 15:31 Location: Fish Hoek Beach, Western Cape, South Africa Conditions: Bad water visibility, gail force winds, surface water extremely choppy with waves and white water The Save Our Seas Foundation and the Save Our Seas Shark Centre send our deepest condolences to the family and…

Over the past four years Rainer von Brandis has familiarised himself with a population of the usually timid hawksbill turtle in the Amirante Islands, Seychelles. This has allowed him to observe the turtles behaving naturally in their aquatic environment, revealing just how important they are for the maintenance of biodiversity…

Enjoy a spot of golf whilst relaxing by the coast, or relish the swing from a boat deck? Ever lost the odd ball to the inky depths of the ocean in the process? Although it may seem inocuous, every stray golf ball out in the blue contributes to the considerable…

The Save Our Seas Foundation white shark research boat has been at sea today since early morning. Its mission is to track and tag the great white shark that was sited off Fish Hoek beach this morning. The tag will enable the team to follow the shark even when they…

Hollywood catapulted the great white shark into the world’s consciousness in 1975 when Steven Spielberg’s JAWS hit the big screen. Previously confined to an obscure world below the ocean’s waves, the box-office hit created a monster with a lust for wanton killing in the terrified minds of its audiences. As shark-attack…

A colourful festival of music and dance also taking place in December was the highly successful Jungle Theatre ‘Pickup Litter’ campaign on Muizenberg beach, in partnership with SOSSC and Ocean Minded. Using large props of a shark, whale and octopus, all made from recycled plastic picked up on the beaches,…

The communities of the South Peninsula joined together in early December, thanks to funding from the National Lotteries Board, to celebrate their diversity in celebrating land and ocean creatures. Save our Seas Shark Centre took part in this unique festival in partnership with the KELP project. Using the kelp 2010…

The Save Our Seas Shark Centre has run two very successful SeaSmartKidz Holiday educational programmes from Monday 14 to Friday 18 December 2009 and Monday 4 to Friday 8 January 2009. These SeaSmartKidz programmes build on environmental knowledge by introducing young children to sharks and the marine environment in fun…

"Are you a shark? Are you worried about constantly losing your teeth and having to see a dentist? Well don’t be. You don’t need a dentist. You’re a shark!" That is the opening line to a short sketch we are filming called "Your Teeth and You," featuring a 1950’s dentist…

Today’s throw-away culture is a nightmare for our oceans. From the ocean’s darkest depths to tropical blue waters and ice-covered shelves, from sunlit beaches to the shores of the remotest islands – plastic has conquered the world. Plastic items are the most common objects sighted at sea, and this new…

An interesting article from National Geographic highlights a surprising yet substantial source of demand for shark products: the manufacture of vaccines, in particular those used against swine flu. Shark livers have high concentrations of an organic compound called squalene, which happens to be an effective immunologic adjuvant. Adjuvants stimulate the…

Apologies for the notably infrequent posts over the festive period. Rest assured news updates should now return to something approaching regularity, but here’s a brief catch up of stories from the past week or so. The troubled Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in Denmark concluded on December 18th, yielding what has…

When most people think of mangroves, they unfortunately envisage smelly malaria infested swamps full of dangerous and deadly beasts. The mangrove’s bad reputation, which dates back to the age of Victorian explorers is tragic because these tidal forests, which effortlessly straddle the realm between land and sea are one of…

More so than you might think. Amongst marine researchers, the critically endangered hawksbill turtle is notoriously difficult to study in its natural habitat. Like tortoises, turtles are often viewed as slow, lumbering reptiles, but any scuba diver fortunate enough to see one in the wild will appreciate that encounters tend to…

Today the ongoing research into basking sharks off the coast of Scotland by SOSF scientists Dr Mauvis Gore and Dr Rupert Ormond was featured on BBC One programme Animal 24:7. Their work aims to build a comprehensive photographic database of UK observed basking sharks, while simultaneously using satellite tracking to…