Sharks, among the fiercest predators in the ocean, are also some of the most vulnerable. Three-quarters of open-ocean shark and ray species are threatened with extinction, primarily because of overfishing. For years, scientists have warned that these plummeting numbers could be catastrophic. Because sharks are top predators that help keep the food web in check, […]
Tag: turtles
Hundreds of dead turtles wash ashore in Sri Lanka after cargo ship wreck
Hundreds of turtles have washed ashore after a ship caught fire and sank off the west coast of Sri Lanka in June in the country’s worst-ever marine disaster, a court in the capital Colombo has heard. A fire erupted on the Singapore-registered MV X-Press Pearl on 20 May, carrying 1,486 containers, including 25 tonnes of […]
Chinese special economic zones hotspots for wildlife trafficking, surveys say
SINGAPORE — Special economic zones set up to promote trade between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors are facilitating a black-market trade in wildlife products, according to watchdog group TRAFFIC. Tens of thousands of prohibited wildlife parts and products are being sold across open and unregulated markets in five Southeast Asian countries, with a significant […]
Reptile traffickers trawl scientific literature, target newly described species
“What happens when a new species of gecko is discovered? Two Germans grab their suitcases and get on a plane,” says Sandra Altherr, telling an in-house joke. Altherr is a co-founder of Pro Wildlife, a conservation NGO in Germany. In the joke, the anonymous men with suitcases are reptile traders. Their objective is to get […]
Researchers take up the cause of the mysterious and maligned Chaco eagle
Fénix, a female Chaco eagle, lived at San Rafael Zoo in Mendoza province, Argentina, until the zoo shut down in 2016. She was later transferred to the Buenos Aires Ecopark, an old zoo that had been converted into a research center, hospital and shelter for animals without a destination. There, she began a difficult training […]
European tuna boats dump fishing debris in Seychelles waters ‘with impunity’
In 2019, when Jeremy Raguain turned up for a cleanup campaign on Aldabra Atoll, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, he bagged a marine monstrosity like no other: a beached fish aggregating device, or FAD. It was a massive tangle of buoys, netting and fishing ropes weighing hundreds of kilograms. The fishing aid, like most FADs, […]
Sharks ‘critical’ to restoring damaged ecosystems, finds study
Sharks are critical in helping ecosystems recover from extreme climatic events, according to a new study. The conclusions came after scientists were able to determine the importance of the apex predator to a unique ecosystem following an extreme marine heatwave in 2011, which wiped out a quarter of one of the world’s largest and most […]
Could a million freshwater turtles help clean up some of Australia’s polluted rivers? A team of scientists believes, they could!
For well over a century, freshwater fish from Europe – the carp (originally from China), have been released, either deliberately or accidentally from fish farms, into Australian waterways. The fish, now widely regarded as pests, are thriving. Their habitat includes rivers flowing through the Murray-Darling Basin of New South Wales. Those vast waterways support, through […]