Call for nominations for the WoRMS Top-Ten Marine Species of 2021
Once again taxonomists have continued to publish many wonderful new species throughout the last year, despite all the challenges post by a global pandemic situation. So as we approach the end of 2021 it is time to think about nominations for The WoRMS Top Ten Marine Species of 2021!
LifeWatch citizen scientists trained in ‘identification of fish from beach waters’
In November, the enthusiastic citizen scientists of the SeaWatch-B beach observation network were offered another opportunity for in-depth training. This time, the focus was on identifying small fish in the beach waters. Recently Seawatch-B is included as a citizen science project within LifeWatch VLIZ.
Catalogue of Life: 20 years of documenting life on Earth
This year, 2021, marks CoL's 20th anniversary and it is a time to celebrate! Milestones include reaching over 2 million accepted species and the completion of the new Catalogue of Life infrastructure.
European Tracking Network for fish has reached over 500 million detections
In recent years, fish tracking technology has revolutionized our knowledge on fish migration and behaviour. Today, the European Tracking Network (ETN) integrates the European efforts of hundreds of users, dealing with thousands of tagged fish from a multitude of species. Within this LifeWatch initiative, 500 million detections so far have taught us a lot on fish species such as Atlantic bluefin tuna, European seabass and sturgeon.
WoRMS endorsed as a Project Action under the Ocean Decade
Last week, WoRMS received endorsement by the Ocean Decade as a Project Action, entitled “Above and Beyond – Completing the World Register of Marine Species (ABC WoRMS)”.
Coordinating the observation of biodiversity in the sea: a new collaboration
The Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), and the SCAR Antarctic Biodiversity Portal share a common vision on the building and coordination of a global ocean biodiversity observation system. The common goal is to systematically assess the state and trends in the ocean’s biodiversity, including biological resources and ecosystems, and how these will change in the future.
Big Five conservation measures for diadromous fish
Five years of fish tracking research using the LifeWatch fish acoustic receiver network has generated key insights in how to save diadromous fish species from historically low numbers.
New version of ETN database online
Acoustic telemetry data were already available. But now the ETN database also allow the upload of (meta)data linked to archival tags and acoustic-data-storage tags (ADST).