What we see is that sharks are being targeted by international factory fleets around the world who trail millions upon millions of baited hooks through their realm, trawl the sea floors for rays, skates and other bottom dwellers to 4,000 metres, and slaughter them by the millions. Sharks are the only profitable prey remaining, now that ninety percent of the original (fish) fisheries are fished out.
The Wildlife Trusts, which comprises 46 individual wildlife trusts around the country, reports record numbers of more than 800 sightings of whales, dolphins and seals in the waters of the United Kingdom in 2019.
Its Yorkshire project reported hundreds of individual sightings by trained citizen scientists. Among these were a pod of bottlenose dolphins making their way from Scotland to Flamborough Head in East Yorkshire-the farthest south they had been officially identified.
Lunge-feeding humpback whales plunge into dense schools of small fish to feed on them. However, these small fish tend to be pretty fast. So, just how do huge whales sneak up on such speedy prey if they are as huge and overbearing as a ... well, whale?
This question became the focus of a study at Stanford University. Its findings was subsequently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
As always, the best thing to do is to get the proper exposure of your underwater images while shooting them. But sometimes this is easier said than done, and there are shots with insufficient exposure, which we, for whatever reasons, simply want to keep and “rescue.”
For the study, an international team led by researchers at KAUST's Red Sea Research Center collected a total of 88 mucus samples from the back and gill skins with lesions as well as from healthy skins of 44 wild-caught blacktip reef sharks caught in the wild around the Seychelles Islands.
Researchers sequenced the samples to identify the bacteria present in them, then compared the samples from the different sharks and tested them to detect changes in response to injuries.
Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Centro de Investigaciones Marinas—Universidad de La Habana (CIM-UH) have discovered that offshore coral reefs that are also protected tend to be healthier than nearshore ones.
In the study, seawater from 25 reefs in Cuba and the Florida Keys in the US were tested for nutrients and other parameters that would give researchers a glimpse into the microbial community present.
“With the popularity of spearfishing on the rise, NAUI thought this was the right time to partner with Jon Brunson and his team for the show,” NAUI’s CEO Rick Lorimor said. “What got our attention with the show is not just the spearfishing, it’s the opportunity to showcase scuba diving and all the opportunities there are to explore the ocean.”
Greek archaeologists have discovered the remains of a massive Roman vessel believed to be the largest classical shipwreck found in the eastern Mediterranean. Believed to have sunk some 2,000 years ago, the 35-metre vessel was discovered at a depth of around 60m during a survey off Kefalonia, one of the Ionian islands off Greece’s west coast. The site is situated 1.5 miles from the entrance to the harbour of Fiscardo, the island's only village to not be destroyed during World War II.
