It’s early afternoon. The sun is beating down and mosquitoes are humming. Another decent day’s catch is unloaded, men sweating with the effort. If it weren’t for the breeze, the stench would be unbearable. Today’s tally: more than 100 sharks, some weighing close to 1,000 pounds and reaching nearly 20 feet in length.
Avid diver and professor of computing Dr. Phil Pfeiffer gives an account of how the love of diving, persistence, US$100,000, and a homebrew aerator turned an abandoned quarry in the US state of Tennessee into a thriving dive site for a region that lacked one—and had lost prospective divers for want of a site.
Leaving aside the question of why shark scientists would work to undermine shark conservationists, its simplistic assertion focuses on just two unrelated subjects: the efforts to ban the shark fin trade, and the existence or not, of sustainable shark fisheries.
Starting back in 1987, Explorer Ventures put environmental consciousness at the heart of their business model before “sustainability” was an operational buzzword. This strong foundation has helped them navigate the changing tides of the pandemicand follow their customized sustainability management policy called Dive Green.
Equipped with an autonomous hydrophone, the buoy's function is to conduct for the first time real-time acoustic monitoring of the water's cetaceans to assess how oceanic noise pollution affects them.
Deployed as part of the Smart Whale Sounds project, it will also track the distribution and behaviour of whale species in real-time and be used to train machine learning models to identify different species' calls.
Research suggests protecting at least 30% of the ocean is required to maintain biodiversity and marine ecosystems.
The Lost Shark, Carcharhinus obsoletus, is already extinct, and others that are expected to follow soon include four species each of hammerhead and angel sharks, from the world’s most threatened shark families. In spite of all the press that shark conservation has received in the past two decades, no effective protection of sharks has been established, no sharks have been saved, and their decline into extinction is ever more apparent.
Reef-building staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) was abundant and widespread throughout the Caribbean and Florida until the late 1970s. The fast-growing coral formed dense thickets in forereef, backreef, and patch-reef environments to depths over 20 m.
You will be working with the Conservation and Fisheries Team to deliver the objectives of the Ascension Island Marine Protected Area.
It is essential that you have a BSc (Hons) in marine biology or a related subject, or significant relevant experience in this field. In addition, you should be a qualified scuba diver with a minimum of 200+ logged dives and hold an advanced SCUBA qualification (PADI Advanced Open Water or equivalent).
Reef-building staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) was abundant and widespread throughout the Caribbean and Florida until the late 1970s. The fast-growing coral formed dense thickets in forereef, backreef, and patch-reef environments to depths over 20 m.
Corals are essential to the balance of the planet, but today they are threatened with extinction. Thanks to restoration efforts as well as the construction of unique artificial reefs, dedicated to the rehabilitation of coral reefs in damaged areas, we make possible the return of lost biodiversity in this environment.
