Marine Wildlife Archives

Oceana welcomes new EU Biodiversity Strategy as critical to rebuilding marine resilience and enabling a ‘blue’ future for Europe

Oceana welcomes the European Commission’s much expected new 10-year plan, presented today, to save biodiversity and its ambition to deliver urgent action to protect the environment – something that 90% of EU citizens support (Eurobarometer Survey). Restoring healthy, well-functioning and resilient natural ecosystems is also central to the European Green Deal and has become an … Read more

Protecting the North Sea: Norway

A high resolution version of this report can be downloaded here.

Oceana urges strong ambition to restore nature and oceans, EU to lead by example

Today the European Commission and the UN Environment Programme launched a Global Coalition for Biodiversity, building momentum ahead of the international negotiations of the UN Convention of Biological Diversity COP15 in China in October 2020. Oceana welcomes this call for action and urges all governments to agree on ambitious post-2020 targets that protect oceans effectively, … Read more

Protecting the North Sea: Holderness

A high resolution version of this report can be found here.

Protecting the North Sea: Cleaver Bank

A high resolution version of this report can be found here.

Marine Wildlife

Many marine species are at risk from overfishing, climate change and harmful fishing methods. Endangered sea turtles are caught unintentionally, as bycatch, by fishing boats around the world. Shark populations are plummeting as they are killed for their meat, fins and liver oil. Coveted seafood species including tuna and salmon are threatened by overfishing, and … Read more

A giant foraminifer that converges to the feeding strategy of carnivorous sponges: Spiculosiphon oceana sp. nov. (Foraminifera, Astrorhizida)

Agglutinated foraminifera make a relatively diverse group of organisms, which is taxonomically defined as a subclass (Textulariia) and comprises four orders. The orders are based upon gross morphology, wall structure, and cement composition (Kaminski 2004). The cement that binds the test together may be organic (as in the Astrorhizida), calcareous and canaliculate (as in the … Read more

Biodiversity of the Invertebrates (minus Arthropods) in Spain

In this paper, the state of the art about the knowledge of the biodiversity of Invertebrates (minus Arthropods) in general and, particularly in Spain, is exposed, giving numerical data of the reported or estimated species of each group of this heterogeneous aggregation of animal Phyla. Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural – Spanish (PDF) Download “Biodiversity … Read more

Unexpected records of ‘deep-sea’ carnivorous sponges Asbestopluma hypogea in the shallow NE Atlantic shed light on new conservation issues

Marine cave communities have been a continued source of ecological surprises, among other things because of their close ecological and evolutionary ties with the deep sea. The discovery of cladorhizid sponges, the deepest occurring poriferan family, in shallow Mediterranean caves in the 1990s was one such surprise, leading to the generally accepted hypothesis that the … Read more

Meet the Chilean Devil Ray

A few days ago, the Internet was abuzz with news about the Chilean Devil Ray’s ability to reach previously unknown depths. What a perfect excuse to introduce this species to our readers! Despite its intimidating name, this mostly solitary creature (though it can be found in groups) is harmless to humans and feeds on small … Read more