"Covering almost three-quarters of the Earth's surface, the world’s great oceans are home to an incredibly diverse web of life. The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) currently lists just under a quarter of a million species, with new ones being identified all the time. But even as we begin to...
Bushmeat is often defined as the meat derived from wild animals, including terrestrial mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, harvested for subsistence or trade, most often illegally. It is a freely accessible source of food that can be captured rather than bred and often represents both the...
The second World Ocean Assessment – WOA II – is a global exercise by hundreds of marine scientists to evaluate trends and identify knowledge gaps in the world ocean. Two chapters of WOA II have made use of several components of the LifeWatch Species Information Backbone.
Increasing human activities are putting the ocean under stress, threatening the ecological health of marine ecosystems and the services they provide to society. Since plankton are sensitive to changes in environmental conditions and are short-lived, they can be used as early warning systems for the...
Environmental responsibility is a hot topic these days! For the Brazilian oil and gas magnate Petrobras, this means caring for the safety of their operations and undertaking actions to balance their activities and the welfare of their workforce and of the communities. By improving products and...
Understanding the importance of estuarine and coastal areas for the migration of fish and recovery of populations requires tracking a fish’s movement. For this purpose, Pieterjan Verhelst analyses the tracks of tagged Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) and European eel (Anguilla anguilla), detected on the...
Data initiatives as Global Fishing Watch and Sea Around Us aim to contribute to sustainable fisheries by providing transparent information. To achieve this virtuous ambition, these projects use data of Marine Regions!
The Saiga antelope is an endangered species that lives in Central Asian steppes and semi-arid regions. Scientists around the world are working tirelessly to prevent it from becoming completely extinct. Every year, they migrate approximately 500 km from north to south, and back. In 2015, roughly 60%...
The spawning grounds of the European eel (Anguilla anguilla L.) have been a mystery for centuries and with the declining population, making it a critically endangered species on the IUCN Red List, it is important to unravel this mythical place and the migration routes leading to it. Understanding...