Indian Ocean

In La Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas department and region of France, small-scale fishers often use surface longlines targeting tuna and billfish, but this sometimes leads to the accidental capture of sharks.

The EU-funded ASUR project is researching innovative methods to reduce the incidental catch of sharks by these longlines, bringing together scientists and fishermen to tag and release sharks and to test equipment designed to reduce shark mortality.

Recent studies have employed sophisticated satellite tracking technology to follow hawksbill sea turtles to their most frequented feeding grounds in the Indian Ocean. These advances have allowed researchers to gain unprecedented insights into the turtles' precise movements and behaviours at depths previously unobserved.

Pygmy blue whales are the smallest members of the blue whale family, but that's the only small thing about them: they can reach up to 24 meters long.

Despite their enormous size, blue whales have been difficult to observe in the Southern Hemisphere as they live offshore and don't jump around like the humpback whales; thus, for some regions, their population structure, distribution and migration routes remain poorly understood. In particular, little is known about the blue whales in the northern Indian Ocean.