marine mammals Archives - Mission Blue

Blog Archives

Mission Blue and One Ocean Foundation Call for Enhanced Protection for Marine Mammals off Italy’s Coast with Hope Spot Declared at Canyon of Caprera

Featured image: Striped dolphin (Stenella coeruleoalba) © Luca Bittau
(SARDINIAN COAST, ITALY, MEDITERRANEAN SEA) –
Just about 15-30 nautical miles off the coast and under the waves of northeast Sardinia is the Canyon of Caprera, where the waters reach more than 1,000 meters deep and are teeming with marine life. The area is known as a brilliant habitat for marine mammals, including Cuvier’s beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris), Risso’s dolphin (Grampus griseus) and the critically endangered Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus). The Canyon of Caprera is currently recognized as an Area of Interest (AoI), however, One Ocean Foundation is committed to seeing an elevation in its protection status backed by a wealth of data from their research, including visual surveys, acoustic monitoring and environmental eDNA sampling that demonstrates the biologically important life within these waters.…

Posted in .Homepage, Dr. Sylvia Earle, Featured, mission blue, Partner Stories, Photo of the Day, sylvia earle, Uncategorized |

Leave a comment

Photo of the Week ~ Harbor Seal

A common seal (Phoca vitulina) at the surface in the evening. Harbor seals are also the most widely distributed pinniped. They are found in temperate, subarctic, and arctic coastal areas on both sides of the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans. Five separate subspecies have been identified, each common to a specific coastal region.
Harbor seals are hunted primarily for their skins, oil, and meat. Their tendency to remain in the same area year-round puts them at greater risk for hunting. The Lake Ontario population was exterminated by the early 1800s, and the Greenland, Hokkaido, and Baltic Sea populations are currently under severe threat. In the Gulf of Alaska, populations have declined dramatically during the last 20-30 years.
Harbor seals are thought by a few to “compete” with commercial fisheries for food sources and unfortunately this myth results in many harbor seals being killed by humans needlessly.…

Posted in Multimedia, Photo of the Day |

Leave a comment

International stakeholders sound out about ocean noise

It was once a popular belief that the ocean was “the silent realm.” This was largely due to the fact that humans are poorly adapted to hearing underwater, and marine animals don’t appear to have “ears” that look anything like the ears of terrestrial animals. We are now finding that the ocean is anything else but silent. In the dark depths of the sea animals have evolved a panoply of adaptations to underwater sound. Some animals use high frequency “bio-sonar” to “see” their surroundings, others use acoustically-generated ‘particle motion’ to sense the proximity of prey and predators; some use long wavelength sounds to navigate over long distances, others chorus with conspecifics like crickets do to keep tabs on their “acoustic communities.”…

Posted in Partner Stories |

1 Comment

We've Updated Our Privacy Policy

Read our new privacy policy here.