Great start to today at @thefsbi.bsky.social symposium! An interesting keynote from @bd-stew.bsky.social on the importance and value of citizen science in a changing climate, lots to think about! #FSBI2026

It took social media by storm, but it didn’t work for all the reasons that ocean plastic pollution experts said it wouldn’t work all along. My latest for The Revelator tells this important story and asks what we can learn from it. Please enjoy. therevelator.org/why-ocean-cl...

Why The Ocean Cleanup Hasn’t Solved the Plastic Pollution Crisis • The Revelator

Global problems are rarely solved by one person or invention. The Ocean Cleanup didn’t work, for the reasons experts said it wouldn’t. What can we learn from this?

therevelator.org

Last week, we were out tagging tope in the Bristol Channel with acoustic tags - the first tope tagged by the Swansea Fish Tracking team! 🎉🦈 BIG thanks to ZSL/Project SIARC for teaming up with us on this & showing us the ropes with tope - now to sit back and wait to see where they go!

‘The Antarctic is the last frontier’: the quest to save Shackleton’s Endurance Amid fears the wreck will be more accessible to explorers – and new species – as the climate warms… @antarcticheritage.bsky.social @bas.ac.uk www.theguardian.com/environment/...

To support participation in the ISRA process for the African Atlantic region, we are organising an introductory webinar on 19 May 2026 from 9:00–10:30 (GMT).

Excited to share I've been awarded the @thefsbi.bsky.social PITF Outgoing Fellowship this year! I'll share more about my project & the research I'll be doing nearer the time (it's several months away though I'm already prepping) but I will say it's a very very VERY cool project 😎🦈

Happy to share our new publication online last month (& the first in my current role @ Swansea uni!!) - looking into variability in detection range & efficiency with acoustic telemetry, focusing on tidal effects link.springer.com/article/10.1...

First confirmed cases of High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza Virus (HPAIV) on Gough Island represent one of the most geographically isolated detections of HPAIV to date. But how did it get there? Read on for a summary Full paper: doi.org/10.1080/2222... 🧪🪶🌍 #seabirds

Scientists have captured footage of a sleeper shark farther south than ever before, suggesting this Antarctic ocean is not shark-free

Elusive sleeper shark seen off Antartica in a first

Scientists have captured footage of a sleeper shark farther south than ever before, suggesting this Antarctic ocean is not shark-free

scientificamerican.com

🌊Our latest research suggests releasing pollack close to their catch depths can result in their survival rates increasing from 56% for surface-released fish to more than 80%! #MarineScience #Fishing #OceanResearch #Plymouth #PollackFISP www.plymouth.ac.uk/news/releasi...

Releasing pollack at depth could benefit their long-term survival

University of Plymouth news: New research led by the University has suggested changing how pollack are released after being caught by recreational...

plymouth.ac.uk

Really nice to have our #pollack paper out 🎣 full paper here! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Recompression Improves Release Success in Pollack (Pollachius pollachius): A Step Towards Assessing Post Release Mortality in a Recreational Fishery

The recreational fishery for pollack (Pollachius pollachius) in the northeast Atlantic is impacted by the species' high sensitivity to barotrauma. When captured at depth and brought to the surface, g...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Bryce Stewart@bd-stew.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Great to see this paper out there making a difference to fishing behaviour & conservation. Congrats to @thomasstamp.bsky.social & @rmawer.bsky.social for leading the charge on this work. Honoured to be on the team @plymuni.bsky.social & @thembauk.bsky.social www.plymouth.ac.uk/news/releasi...

New paper out today in @natrevbiodiv.nature.com by the #GlobalSharkTrends team: Bending back the curve of shark & ray biodiversity loss; Read the paper here: rdcu.be/eZ9n9 @sfu.ca @sfubiosciences.bsky.social @earth2ocean.bsky.social

Happy #PenguinAwarenessDay Ever wondered how scientists go about counting penguin colonies? It’s pretty challenging when no-one stays still and everyone looks alike... Read on to find out the answer from our penguinologist Antje Steinfurth Full story: www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happen... #seabirds 🧪🌎

This Thursday! Come chat with @rtbecard.bsky.social about kaltoa - a package for Kalman filtered time-of-arrival positioning of acoustic tag detection data. Check the User Guide linked here, and come by Study hall this Thursday for questions with James! rtbecard.gitlab.io/kaltoa/

Ocean Tracking Network@oceantracking.bsky.social · 8mo ago

DECEMBER STUDY HALL SCHEDULE! 🗓️ Every Thursday, the OTN data team works with peers from across the globe to answer telemetry questions & help problem solve! On Dec. 11, we'll have a takeover with James Campbell, who will be talking about the kaltoa package! oceantrackingnetwork.org/study-hall/

That's me 👇! I'll be giving a quick overview of my #acoustictelemetry positioning and clock synchronization toolset this thursday at the OTN study hall.

Jon Pye@jdpye.bsky.social · 8mo ago

This Thursday! Come chat with @rtbecard.bsky.social about kaltoa - a package for Kalman filtered time-of-arrival positioning of acoustic tag detection data. Check the User Guide linked here, and come by Study hall this Thursday for questions with James! rtbecard.gitlab.io/kaltoa/

Very exciting preprint for those of us working with aquatic telemetry! As someone currently working with (a few) 3D fish tracks, this has been on my mind. Looking forward to having a proper read later 🐟

Théo Michelot@theomichelot.bsky.social · 8mo ago

We have a preprint about modelling three-dimensional movement tracks, led by @njklappstein.bsky.social. The model takes the form of a step selection function and, just like in 2D, it can include directional persistence, attraction to targets, and habitat selection. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

ICYMI, we have a new paper out offering advice to shark scientists who want to perform policy-relevant research but don't understand the basics of science-based policymaking. Here's the press release/ lay summary. The open access paper is linked within. 🧪🦑🌍🦈

Shark scientists want their research to help save threatened species, but don’t know how. Our new paper can help.

Sharks are some of the most threatened animals on Earth, and accordingly many scientists who study sharks want their research to be useful for conservation. However, most scientific training does n…

southernfriedscience.com

Interesting read this morning - new paper on #elasmobranchs and #acoustictelemetry led by Ed Lavender - integrating acoustic telemetry, archival data and particle algorithms to investigate space use within + beyond an MPA, well worth a read! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Animal tracking with particle algorithms informs protected area design

Particle algorithms strengthen the value of acoustic telemetry for conservation.

science.org

Beautiful winters day to tag some skate - today is also our first tagging trip with our ultrasound scanner to start collecting reproductive data alongside our movement data 😁

End of another great conference #EEA2025 - so much elasmo science across the whole spectrum in the last few days 🦈

Day 3 at #EEA2025 , great to hear from Steven Benjamins about the current status of Skatespotter, a flapper skate photo ID database I was briefly involved with in 2018/19 for my masters! One individual has been recaptured 28 times in 6 years!! 🤯 Very cool

Great start to #EEA2025 today! Lots of interesting talks on elasmos & the chance to present some of our skate tracking work in the Bristol Channel 😁

EEA2025@eea2025.bsky.social · 9mo ago

🦈 Telemetry research in the Bristol Channel (UK) is providing data on the movement and seasonal spatial patterns of thornback, blonde, spotted and small-eyed rays, including a glimpse of potentially important areas #EEA2025 @rmawer.bsky.social

The next International Statistical Ecology Conference (ISEC) will take place in Mérida, México, on January 8-15, 2027. Very exciting! The organisers are inviting submissions for workshops and round table discussions: statisticalecology.org (Deadline: November 15th)

Two great days this week tagging skate in the Bristol Channel - we managed to catch + tag individuals across four species of skate 🥳 These skate will be tracked for the next few years across our channel-wide array so we can learn about their movement patterns and spatial usage #trackingnotslacking

This week we've deployed another line of acoustic receivers across the Bristol Channel 🥳 hopefully, these receivers will give us a better idea of when our tagged fish, sharks + skate migrate out from the channel, and maybe detect some animals from further afield 👀

Really nice to see this article on the sustainable lobster fishery and marine conservation at Tristan da Cunha - a great example of a community closely entwined with conservation and the challenges with enforcing a huge no-take zone (687000 km^2!) in such a remote area www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

Tristan da Cunha: The lobsters keeping Earth's remotest town afloat

The most remote inhabited island is racing to protect its seas – and only source of income.

bbc.co.uk

Victoria Paterson and I are abseiling off a building here at the University of Glasgow to raise money for student expeds. This is to help disadvanaged students take up these amazing, life changing opportunities @uofglasgow.bsky.social www.justgiving.com/page/paterso... We'd appreciate you support

Fishermen & divers of the UK we need YOU! Our #octopus bloom surveys have been extended to Sept 21st. If you haven't already done so, please fill out the fishermen's survey survey.alchemer.eu/s3/90884550/... or divers survey survey.alchemer.eu/s3/90886025/... Thank you! Please share widely! 🐙

The hmmTMB paper is finally out in the Journal of Statistical Software! An R package for hidden Markov models with random effects, flexible spline-based covariate effects, and fast inference using TMB or Stan. Check out the GIthub repository for more examples. doi.org/10.18637/jss...

hmmTMB: Hidden Markov Models with Flexible Covariate Effects in R by Théo Michelot

<p>Hidden Markov models (HMMs) are widely applied in studies where a discrete-valued process of interest is observed indirectly. They have for example been used to model behavior from human and animal...

doi.org

Using a pre-existing photo-ID database, Mawer et al. identified potential signs of reproductive behaviours in flapper skate, which suggest a winter-spring mating period doi.org/10.1111/jfb.70044 #FishSci #JFB