That is what a group of 29 master students from the University of Wageningen looked to answer by conducting a six-week study alongside Oceana on plastics and the hospitality sector in Mallorca, Spain. 

In June 2021, member countries of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT)’s Integrated Monitoring Measures (IMM) working group met online to discuss and consider the advancement of ICCAT’s conservation and management measures.  

Small-scale fishers in Galicia are actively protesting against the future fisheries control regulation. Specifically, they complain that the new regulation will force them, on the one hand, to carry tracking devices on board of their vessels, and on the other, to electronically report all their catches.

On 17 December 2020, Oceana hosted an online workshop with the purpose of discussing progress made by the marine insurance industry in adopting best practices to fight illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing — a devastating practice that is damaging the health of the ocean worldwide.

If space is the ‘final frontier’, the ocean depths are no doubt the ultimate frontier. To this day it is hard to imagine, despite all our advanced technology, that we know more about the surface of the moon — hundreds of thousands of kilometers away — than of the complex ecosystems that inhabit the ocean’s deep waters, just 400 m under the surface of your nearest sea.

We are all to say good-bye to 2020! It has been the most extraordinary year of uncertainties and difficulties the world over - but also a time to test our resilience and adaptability in navigating such troubled waters.  For many, it has also been a time for reflection and recognizing that we will only be able to protect ourselves if we are able to protect our home – our planet.

The future of fish looks bleak in Europe. Nearly nine months since the official Brexit and after multiple rounds of fisheries negotiations, the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) are racing against the clock to conclude a fisheries agreement. The problem? The UK is gambling with the long-term health and abundance of the highly productive Northeast Atlantic fisheries.

The survey continues a good pace. We have already observed more than twenty areas and plastics appear on all dives. Sometimes they are only a few here and there, and other times they are concentrated in larger quantities.

The lot of the seafloor is mostly sandy with green algae, although the presence of small rocks is not uncommon, where some gorgonians and sponges are located.

In the deeper areas, the seafloor has the greatest amount of mud. Many of them full of cavities and crevices made by some fish and crustaceans.

A few months ago, I was asked the usual set of questions about Oceana’s expeditions for an interview: What is the most beautiful thing you have seen? The most shocking? What is the worst thing? Unfortunately, the answer to these last two questions was the same... Real, underwater dumps, meters and meters of ROV "flights" where plastic had clearly won the battle for the terrain... I remember clearly looking up "the eyes" of the ROV (the tilt) and see, or rather, not see an end to an underwater landfill...

While the Ranger surveyed the intertidal zone using the ROV today, we completed four dives near the coast at different depths and covered hundreds of meters with aide of our underwater scooters.