What determines where skates and rays live? In the North Aegean Sea, Chrysoula Gubili is exploring how different species use their habitats throughout their lives, providing evidence to support smarter fisheries management that better protects this threatened group. saveourseas.com/update/study...

Studying the biology and distribution of common and rare batoids in the North Aegean Sea, Greece

The Mediterranean Sea is home to some of the world’s most threatened shark and ray species, yet many aspects of their biology and behaviour remain poorly understood. In this context, the study “Biolog...

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Ever sought to scratch an itch against the uniquely rough skin of a shark? Trevallies have. 🎥: Nico Fassbender 🎥: Luke Saddler 🎥: Alfredo Barroso | Artlist 🎥: Sebastian Staines 🎥: Byron Dilkes 🎥: Gilles Charvet | Artlist Edited by Caiti Allison

Scratching an itch? Trevallies have found a bold solution to their fishy problems: brushing against the sleek bodies of large reef sharks.

Sharks at your service: trevally fish risk it all to scratch their itch

Scratching an itch, scraping off parasites and sloughing off dead skin cells are hard to do without hands. But when project leader Nico Fassbender watched 500 hours of BRUVS footage filmed in Seychell...

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Using high-resolution MRI scans, Maria Pierce and the team at the Yopak ZoMBiE Lab are creating detailed 3D maps of sawfish brains to reveal how these remarkable animals develop, perceive their environment, and adapt throughout their lives.

Dissecting without a scalpel: digital segmentation of the brain of the smalltooth sawfish

PhD student Maria Pierce (Yopak ZoMBiE Lab, University of North Carolina Wilmington, UNCW) spent several months training in magnetic resonance (MR) image acquisition and scanning numerous brains from ...

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The sicklefin devil ray, or Chilean devil ray, gets its former name from the strongly curved, swept-back tips of its pectoral fins. 🎥: Jorge Fontes 🎥: Jasmine Corbett | © @mantatrust.bsky.social

More than five million years ago, the body of a beaked whale fell to the ocean floor, and since then, many more whale species have descended here. Discovered in 2023, this archive of evolution and deep-sea life is teeming with marine life, including many suspected new species.

Scientists Discover the World's Largest, Deepest Whale Graveyard, Where Cetacean Remains Have Been Piling Up for Five Million Years

The massive necropolis, located deep in the southeastern Indian Ocean, is teeming with marine life supported by the whale carcasses, including many suspected new species

smithsonianmag.com

Donning what looks like striped sleepwear, the pyjama catshark is aptly named. Endemic to South Africa's coastal waters, their countershading helps with camouflage as they evade predators and hunt for their own prey too, along kelp beds and rocky reefs. 📷: Mac Stone | © Save Our Seas Foundation

Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRAs) have no legal status, but instead serve as a scientific tool to guide governments, conservation agencies and fisheries managers in prioritising protection measures. Of the 122 ISRAs across Asia, only 5.4% of their total area overlaps with recognised MPAs.

Asia's shark and ray hotspots remain poorly protected, study finds

COLOMBO — The majority of 122 marine areas identified across Asia as critical for the survival of sharks, rays and chimaeras remain largely unprotected despite supporting some of the world’s most threatened marine species, according to a new study. Published in Biodiversity and Conservation, the study assessed the network of important shark and ray areas […]

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What do all vertebrates have in common? Yes, a spine…but the ’brain plan’ too! Using MRI brain scans, Maria Pierce and the Yopak ZoMBiE Lab team are deciphering these differences across species and across age groups to determine ecological resilience and vulnerability, as well as brain evolution.

Wrap your head around smalltooth sawfish neuroanatomy

The Yopak ZoMBiE Lab at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) has been hard at work developing and optimising protocols using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to non-destructively charact...

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Endemic to the Eastern Tropical Pacific which stretches from the Gulf of California to Peru, the scalloped bonnethead is the smallest of the nine recognised hammerhead species. 📷: Emilio Posada

How do researchers find out what a tiger shark has been eating without looking inside its stomach? Answer: stable isotope analysis. Every meal leaves behind a unique chemical signature in a shark's tissues, allowing scientists & researchers like Olga M. Azevedo to build a picture of diet over time.

From the field to the lab: uncovering what tiger sharks are really eating

This project investigating the diet of tiger sharks in Shark Bay has now entered an exciting new stage. After fieldwork, sample collection, and laboratory processing, the stable isotope analyses have ...

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In Guatemala's seafood markets, the same shark and ray products can command vastly different prices depending on how they're labelled, obscuring their identity and traceability in the process. Maria de Belen Chacón Paz is investigating what gets lost (and gained) along the supply chain.

Tracing sharks and rays: a Journey from sea to market in Guatemala

Sharks and rays are regularly caught in Guatemala’s fisheries, yet their journey does not end at the landing site. Once landed, these species enter complex supply chains where their origin and identit...

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To conserve and protect is to communicate and collaborate, all things that remind us that conservation is ultimately a human endeavour. For a species riddled with public perception of fear: sharks, Hoyos Padilla has dedicated his career to advocacy and public outreach to change this narrative.

The Scientist Who Risked Everything To Understand Sharks

Two conservationists working worlds apart have been recognized with the 2026 National Geographic/Buffett Awards for Leadership in Conservation. One protects bats and small mammals in West Africa. The ...

forbes.com

In the living waters of South Africa, a liquid treasure box holds marine species found nowhere else on earth. One of these is the iridescent nudibranch. A reflection of the kaleidoscopic landscape they call home, they possess iridescent colouration. 📷: Jannes Landschoff | Sea Change Project

Provided that enforcement, funding and political will follow, the extinction crisis of sharks and rays has reached a new milestone, with two new national commitments to protect these species having been declared at the Our Ocean Conference, hosted last month in Kenya.

Historic sharks and rays commitments declared at Our Ocean - Oceanographic

Madagascar and Zanzibar have announced sweeping new national protections for sharks and rays at the Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa.

oceanographicmagazine.com

Now you can wear your heart on your sleeve ... strike that, on your chest! The Save Our Seas Foundation Store offers a range of merchandise with purpose. Your purchase helps spread awareness and supports our mission to protect ocean life for future generations. Shop here: shopsaveourseas.com

In Lunyuk, 96% of fishers are willing to release threatened bycatch if compensated for lost income. Yet, the true insight of the trial shows that when fishers don't absorb the financial blow of conservation alone, it opens a door that shifts local values towards a more sustainable future.

Changing fisher behaviour is challenging - it takes time for values to be embedded

Changing fisher behaviour sounds simple from the outside. We can design a rule, offer an incentive, or ask people to release threatened species. But in a small fishing community like Lunyuk, change is...

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Jellyfish have been adrift in our oceans for over 500 million years! Soft-bodied, fragile, and often transparent, they're 95% water and don't have a brain or a spine.  📷: Matthew During 📷: Jannes Landschoff | © Sea Change Project 📷: Christopher Leon 📷: Jasmine Corbett | © Manta Trust

How do threatened marine species, like guitarfish, adapt to intense human impact? Off the coast of Brazil, researcher Rodrigo Domingues and his team partnered with local fishers to find out. They combined local ecological knowledge with non-invasive genetic, dietary, and microbial sampling.

Before sunrise: A field journey to study guitarfishes

The alarm went off at 4 a.m. Still in the dark, between quick sips of coffee and boxes of equipment being loaded, another field day began in search of one of Brazil’s most threatened marine species: B...

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Sleek with their aerodynamic fins and powerful tails, sharks seem honed for top speeds. But which sharks are the fastest? Find out here: saveourseas.com/worldofshark... Edited by Caiti Allison

Do you remember the moment you first discovered the career you wanted to pursue? You can probably still recall that sudden spark of curiosity. Seeking to spark that same inspiration, Rihab Louhichi and Ichrak Bouzidi led an outreach initiative at Sfax Uni, which aimed to plant the first seeds.

From misconceptions to curiosity: introducing students to sharks and rays

Sharks and rays are often surrounded by misconceptions. For many people, they are still associated with fear, danger, or exaggerated images from movies and the media. Yet these species are part of Tun...

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A species listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, the basking shark, has been seeing population declines in other parts of the world, other than Ireland, where almost 50 years of sighting data have shown an 'uptick' in sightings in more recent times, with peaks in 2009, 2010 and 2020.

‘Gentle giants’: Irish basking shark hot spots identified after more than 2,700 sightings

Scientist says increase in sightings in Ireland’s waters is ‘really important’ given decline in population elsewhere

irishtimes.com

Reef manta aggregations are seasonal elsewhere, so why do they gather almost daily, around D'Arros Island? It's for zooplankton. Their continued presence can be attributed to a consistent food supply of tiny animals available year-round. 📷: Shane Gross Photography | © SOSF

Working with students, young people and fishers across Tunisia, Ichrak Bouzidi, together with Rihab Louhichi, is helping to improve public awareness surrounding sharks and their important roles in our ocean ecosystems, while strengthening local partnerships. saveourseas.com/update/conse...

Conservation through conversations: engaging communities in Tunisia

Conservation work does not happen only during field surveys or data analysis. It also grows through discussions; awareness activities and the relationships built with local communities. Engaging diffe...

saveourseas.com

Using DNA barcoding and community outreach, Segun Oladipo is working to protect threatened African wedgefish along the Gulf of Guinea. Segun trains fishers and students to distinguish the species from its lookalikes, interpret DNA barcode results, and help trace illegal wildlife trade.

Barcode for survival and protecting Africa’s wedgefish through genetics

Along the Gulf of Guinea, an ancient marine species is disappearing. The African wedgefish (Rhynchobatus luebberti), often mistaken for guitarfishes, is one of the world’s most threatened marine fishe...

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The SuperSharks have assembled for Shark Awareness Day! Help champion the SuperSharks: pick your protector, from the mighty great white to the extraordinary thresher shark wielding its tail or the intelligent manta ray, and don your very own SuperSharks merch! Shop merch here: shopsaveourseas.com

A female's reproductive output can determine a species' future, particularly that of larger individuals. Alfonsina Romo Curiel is exploring how fecundity is measured in Freckled Guitarfish by comparing egg and embryo counts to explore how management can protect essential members of this population.

Why are large female Guitarfish key to the population?

In our project on the Freckled Guitarfish (Pseudobatos lentiginosus), we are trying to understand a simple but powerful question: how many offspring can a female produce, and what does that mean for t...

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White sharks are the most iconic of all sharks. They are large and imposing, but surprisingly elusive, in part owing to their ambush predation techniques. They take advantage of low light situations to ambush unsuspecting prey, famously breaching in some locations. 🎥: Tom Campbell

With world-renowned biodiversity and a starring role in influencing Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, a visit to the Galapagos Islands will almost definitely include a sighting of the Galapagos sea lion - the archipelago's most abundant marine mammal. 📷: Christopher Vaughan-Jones

Indonesia's Raja Ampat walking shark has recorded the highest population density worldwide, just three years after its government granted the species full legal protection; but this is not the same for a new species discovered in PNG: the Dudgeon's epaulette shark, already at risk of extinction.

New walking shark discovered as protected population booms

Researchers discovered the new, and already endangered shark in Papua New Guinea, while a study shows strong habitat allows them to thrive

oceanographicmagazine.com