Whilst nowadays most underwater shooters do their white balance correction during postproduction of images, there are still many shooting situations (such as several different light sources present in one shot) in which doing it “old school” comes with clear advantages and optimized workflow.
The Chinese government has imposed a 10-year commercial fishing ban in the Yangtze River to combat "across-the-board" declines in the populations of rare species like the Chinese sturgeon.
As it came into effect on 1 January 2020, it is hoped that the ban will tackle the problems of dwindling fish stocks and declining biodiversity in the 6,300m river. It will be applied at 332 conservation sites along the river and be extended to cover the main river course and key tributaries by 1 January 2021.
The Australian authors—Dr Neil Banham (lead) and Dr John Lippmann—reported that a 26-year-old healthy male freediver dived to 10m (32.8ft) where he met a friend who was diving on scuba. The freediver breathed from a scuba regulator before ascending.
It may have been that he held much of his breath during ascent, which would have been his usual and generally safe practice with normal breath hold diving. — Banham, Lippmann
What we see is that sharks are being targeted by international factory fleets around the world who trail millions upon millions of baited hooks through their realm, trawl the sea floors for rays, skates and other bottom dwellers to 4,000 metres, and slaughter them by the millions. Sharks are the only profitable prey remaining, now that ninety percent of the original (fish) fisheries are fished out.
The Wildlife Trusts, which comprises 46 individual wildlife trusts around the country, reports record numbers of more than 800 sightings of whales, dolphins and seals in the waters of the United Kingdom in 2019.
Its Yorkshire project reported hundreds of individual sightings by trained citizen scientists. Among these were a pod of bottlenose dolphins making their way from Scotland to Flamborough Head in East Yorkshire-the farthest south they had been officially identified.
Lunge-feeding humpback whales plunge into dense schools of small fish to feed on them. However, these small fish tend to be pretty fast. So, just how do huge whales sneak up on such speedy prey if they are as huge and overbearing as a ... well, whale?
This question became the focus of a study at Stanford University. Its findings was subsequently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
For the study, an international team led by researchers at KAUST's Red Sea Research Center collected a total of 88 mucus samples from the back and gill skins with lesions as well as from healthy skins of 44 wild-caught blacktip reef sharks caught in the wild around the Seychelles Islands.
Researchers sequenced the samples to identify the bacteria present in them, then compared the samples from the different sharks and tested them to detect changes in response to injuries.
Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Centro de Investigaciones Marinas—Universidad de La Habana (CIM-UH) have discovered that offshore coral reefs that are also protected tend to be healthier than nearshore ones.
In the study, seawater from 25 reefs in Cuba and the Florida Keys in the US were tested for nutrients and other parameters that would give researchers a glimpse into the microbial community present.
Greek archaeologists have discovered the remains of a massive Roman vessel believed to be the largest classical shipwreck found in the eastern Mediterranean. Believed to have sunk some 2,000 years ago, the 35-metre vessel was discovered at a depth of around 60m during a survey off Kefalonia, one of the Ionian islands off Greece’s west coast. The site is situated 1.5 miles from the entrance to the harbour of Fiscardo, the island's only village to not be destroyed during World War II.
What a resurgence! I first saw this amazing resurgence in 2017.
Whether or not you have watched (or agree with) the movies Free Willy or Blackfish, the predicament of captive cetaceans is one that can spark off a heated debate from both sides of the fence.
Nonetheless, such movies and increased awareness have led to public calls for attractions and venues that keep wild animals captive to release them.
Marine-animal attractions like SeaWorld are particularly under fire due to their animal shows featuring captive cetaceans trained to perform for public entertainment.
In a study involving 378 orcas (or killer whales), researchers observed the first non-human example of the "grandmother effect" in a menopausal species.
This is when post-reproductive grandmothers (in this case, orcas) assist other members of the species with their offspring, thereby improving the young ones’ chances of survival. It was found that these post-reproductive orcas had the largest beneficial impact on their grandoffspring’s survival chances.
