May 2022

A global breakthrough in recording manta ray information has been made by an Auckland University doctoral candidate. In a study entitled “How Big Is That Manta Ray?” published in Drones, Edy Setyawan outlined how a drone camera, with the addition of a PVC pipe in the ocean, can be utilised to accurately measure the world’s largest ray species. “I could see that from the drone there was some size variation, some mantas, they are bigger than the others,” said Setyawan. “It’s quite cheap using a small drone, but it can give us a big impact on manta ray conservation.”

In the study, researchers reviewed some of the ground­breaking and recent coral-bleaching discoveries from an ecological, molecular and physiological viewpoint.

The “whup” and “grumble” sounds recorded by hydrophones moored in the Vema Seamount in the Atlantic Ocean, 1,000km northwest of Cape Town in South Africa, suggest this location could be an important stop on the whales’ migration route to polar feeding grounds.

Most of the calls were recorded over a period of three nights in the spring of 2019, with low “whups” being heard most frequently. This is an important discovery as the “whup” is a contact call used by mother-calf pairs to help them locate each other. Furthermore, humpbacks also “whup” while feeding.

The vaquita is the world’s smallest marine mammal, measuring between four to five feet in length. A comprehensive survey conducted in 1997 counted 570 vaquitas, but today, 25 years on, a mere ten surviving vaquitas have been counted in the Sea of Cortez, the only place that the vaquita can be found.

It supports an improved in-body image stabilization (up to 7.5 stops) and upgraded video features. The new sensor delivers 14fps in AF-S mode (8fps in AF-C mode) when using the mechanical shutter, and 75fps (in AF-S mode) with the electronic shutter. The GH6 can record 4K/120p video at 10-bit 4:2:0. Furthermore, full V-Log/V- Gamut has been added, providing up to 13+ stops of dynamic range.

The GH6 features a 3.68M-dot OLED electronic view- finder and is equipped with dual card slots: a CFexpress (Type B) slot and an SD UHS II

slot.

Florida’s seagrass flats used to be the place where anglers from around the world would congregate to catch the bonefish. However, this is no longer the case, as populations of the fish—nicknamed “grey ghosts”—have fallen by more than 50 percent over four decades.

In an article published in The Guardian, according to Dr Jennifer Rehage, a fish ecologist and associate professor at Florida International University (FIU), many anglers had said they could not find bonefish in the seagrass flats anymore.