Canary Islands: Oceana proposal

The proposal made by Oceana and Fundación Biodiversidad (Spanish) includes 42 measures that address the EU’s requirements. The initiative aims to create a coherent network of marine protected areas (MPA)  that also protects a variety of species and habitats that are currently not included in management plans for conservation. As such, many threatened species are … Read more

Marine Protected Areas: LIFE+ INDEMARES Project

The objective of the LIFE+ INDEMARES project is to contribute to the protection and sustainable use of the biodiversity in the Spanish seas through the identification of valuable areas for the Natura 2000 network. The actions will be implemented from the 1st January 2009 to the 31st December 2013. The budget foreseen is € 15, … Read more

Marine Protected Areas: Spanish Inventory

  OCEANA´S CONTRIBUTION TO THE SPANISH INVENTORY OF HABITATS AND MARINE SPECIES In collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment and Biodiversity Foundation, Oceana has provided new exciting data about species and deep-sea marine habitats to the Spanish Inventory of Natural Heritage and Biodiversity. This project started in 2011 and its  progress can … Read more

European trawlers are destroying the oceans

Nearly 100,000 vessels make up the European Union fishing fleet. This includes boats that fish both in EU waters (the domestic fleet), in the waters of other countries and in international waters (the deep-sea fleet). In addition, there is an unknown number of vessels belonging to other European countries that are not members of the … Read more

Sea turtles on the hook

There are eight species of sea turtle, five of which can be found in the North Atlantic; and, of these, two are regularly caught as accidental catches by longliner fleets: the leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) and, above all, the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta). Less frequently, the hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) and the Kemp’s … Read more

The seamounts of the Gorringe Bank

A seamount is a regarded as a geological elevation that reaches a minimum of 1,000 metres in height and can consist of very different physical, geological and chemical properties. Therefore, seamounts can only exist where there are sea beds more than one kilometre deep, or, which is one and the same thing, over 60%-62% of … Read more

Oceana urges the Balearic Government to prohibit trawling on the continental shelf

Oceana urges the Balearic government to prohibit bottom trawling on the continental shelf or at less than 150 meters depth. The international marine conservation organisation sent island authorities a series of comments on the new Fishing Law of the Balearic Islands that is currently being reviewed. In its analysis, Oceana also disagrees with the reduction … Read more

Big plans but little action for European shark protection

Today in Brussels the European Commission released the long-awaited Community Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks, nearly a decade after the adoption of the FAO International Plan of Action on Sharks. The Community Plan has been eagerly anticipated by conservationists, as many of Europe’s shark and related ray populations have been … Read more