Sevenfold increase in stinging weever fish observed by SeaWatch-B

Between April and late June this year, weever fish counts were seven times higher than during the same period in 2024, according to SeaWatch-B, the citizen science project of the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) under the LifeWatch Belgium Programme.

Awardees for the 2025 WoRMS Achievement & Early Career Researcher Award known

This year, Sammy De Grave has been honored with the WoRMS Achievement Award, and the WoRMS Early Career Researcher Award goes to Sávio Gabriel Gomes Pereira.

Noise pollution in the North Sea

The North Sea is one of the busiest seas in the world. All this human activity creates a lot of noise underwater. This can have harmful consequences for marine mammals and other organisms in our sea. Fortunately, measures exist to limit noise pollution. The Marine Environment Service (FOD Public Health) and DG Shipping (FOD Mobility), with the support of LifeWatch VLIZ, collaborated on a campaign to raise awareness about underwater noise pollution among the wider public.

Old cockles and record number of shells at the eighth edition of the Big Seashell Survey

The eighth edition of the Big Seashell Survey was a record-breaking event. No fewer than 3,500 participants scoured 400 km of coastline in northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, collecting and identifying nearly 150,000 shells from 72 different species. This year, the differences between the three countries were less pronounced, with the cut trough shell ranking as the most frequently found species across all regions. The Atlantic jackknife clam, the banded wedge shell, and the common cockle consistently appeared in the top five. A one-time focus on the cockle in Belgium revealed that most of these shells originated in a distant past, with only a handful of live populations remaining in the shallow continental North Sea.