Tag Archives: brendan godley

Public Sightings Suggest Increase in Basking Sharks in British Waters

The number of basking sharks recorded in Britain’s seas could be increasing, decades after being protected from commercial hunting in the late 20th century.

The most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of basking shark sightings in UK waters, by the University of Exeter, the Marine Conservation Society (MCS), Cornwall Wildlife Trust (CWT) and Wave Action, is published in  the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.

The northeast Atlantic hosted an extensive commercial fishery for basking sharks, mainly in Norway, Ireland and Scotland, where more than 81,000 were killed between 1952 and 2004, hunted largely for their liver oil. Large-scale hunting ended in the UK in the middle of the twentieth century, though it continued at low levels in Norway until 2000. (more…)

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Africa’s Sea Turtles Need Passports for Protection

Research by experts at the University of Exeter has led to calls to create an international marine park to protect endangered sea turtles.

Scientists from the university’s Centre for Ecology and Conservation, based at its Cornwall Campus, worked with an international team to carry out satellite tracking of olive ridley sea turtles off the coast of Central Africa for the study. (more…)

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Epic Journeys of Turtles Revealed

The epic ocean-spanning journeys of the gigantic leatherback turtle in the South Atlantic have been revealed for the first time thanks to groundbreaking research using satellite tracking. 

Experts at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation (Cornwall) at the University of Exeter led a five-year study to find out more about these increasingly rare creatures and inform conservation efforts.  (more…)

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