Ocean News

SOSF Advisory Committee member Tom Campbell has taken the Grand Prize at the Ocean in Focus Photography Competition. The competition which is run by Seaweb’s Marine Photobank and the Project Aware Foundation challenged those who care most about the ocean to enter their most striking images which related to marine conservation. Campbell…

On Wednesday 26 November a large whale carcass washed to shore at Muizenberg. The carcass was evidence that some out-of-the-ordinary feeding activities had been taking place at sea. Shark bites were evident all over the dead whale and five shark sightings were recorded by Shark Spotters that day. On inspection of…

One of the most unique things about the Cape Eleuthera Institute (CEI) is its direct connection to education through its sister organization, The Island School.  The Island School is a semester based study abroad program for US and Bahamian high school students.  One of the core aspects of The Island School curriculum is the…

Welcome to the new SOS HD productions blog. I want to use this first post to introduce myself and explain what I’ll be using this blog for. What do I do? I’ve been working for SOSF as a camera operator for around four years now, I’m originally from Didcot in…

SOSF Researcher Alison Kock appeared on ABC’s Nightline last night discussing her work into great white sharks. ABC’s Nick Watt spent a day out with Alison and fellow Shark Angel Julie Andersen cage-diving with these amazing creatures, hopefully learning enough along the way to dispel some of negative connotations that accompanying these greatly…

Just a little update to say one of the research scientists we support working on whale sharks in the Seychelles, David Rowat, is featured in the BBC’s Natural World special, Whale Shark! which aired yesterday on BBC2 in the UK. The programme appears to have caught the media’s attention, with articles discussing…

Scientific longline surveys inherently carry a low level of mortality for the target species.  Some species generally do better than others during capture, usually split between those that can pump water over their gills (e.g. tiger and Caribbean reef sharks) and those that have to be swimming in order to ventilate…

On Saturday November 8th I had the privilege to talk at the Ocean Optics Shark Day, held at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. The day brought together people with a common interest in sharks to discuss both their passion for the humbling experience of encountering these leviathans first hand, but…

Among the projects presented at this year’s EEA meeting are a few that are funded by the Save Our Seas Foundation. For example, the Bull Shark Tagging Programme will be presented with a poster and a talk will focus on shark feeding in Fiji. To find out more about the programme,…

The Ocean Optics Shark Day, is being held at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich on Saturday November 8th. The day aims to celebrate and explore the world of sharks and those who work with and photograph them. Among the prestigious speakers are Amos Nachoum, Chris Walter and Michael Aw, …

There is a hoax email currently making its rounds. It shows a picture of a white shark swimming near Fish Hoek beach and says it was taken on the Saturday 25 October 2008. This photograph was actually taken on 28 September 2006. On that day the white shark research team…

The wind has been causing us some issues for the last couple of weeks – 20 knot winds are not ideal conditions in which to run longline surveys. As such things have been a little slow following the completion of the baited video survey component of this quarter. We have…

An interesting article appeared in the British newspaper The Guardian today, highlighting recent research into the possible effects of climate change on the ocean’s salinity levels. I guess at a very basic level I had always assumed that the hotter the climate, the greater the rate of evaporation, and hence the…

2008 is proving to be a very trying season…. This year the South East trade winds which generally blow constantly from May to October decided to take a two week break in August…. The end result of which was that the seas around Seychelles have remained clear and blue with very little plankton…

This week we once again had the enormous job of retrieving and deploying acoustic receivers used to monitor white shark spatial patterns throughout False Bay for maintenance and to download the season’s data. We had to travel to the four corners of False Bay and on the way we had the…