Solid waste, and in particular plastics, are choking the very life out of the oceans. The world currently produces in excess of 400 million tonnes of plastics, and at least 14 million tons of this plastic ends up in the oceans every year. Plastic actually makes up 80% of all marine debris found from surface…
This map is updated regularly with known incidences of sharks and rays bycatch. Once we download the images from our cameras and process them, we upload incidences of bycatch onto the map. Click the map to know more about all those bycatch events! Keep in mind that we do not get to every camera every…
MRF has now expanded its portfolio to also investigate and mitigate the bycatch of endangered sharks and rays. This builds on our extensive work with sea turtles and dugongs in Malaysia and throughout the Indo Pacific region. Under the Sabah Sharks and Rays Initiative 2019-2020, The Marine Research Foundation is undertaking two studies to inform…
The Marine Research Foundation is leading a sea turtle extinction risk study for sea turtles in the Pacific Ocean on behalf of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), an intergovernmental organisation charged with promoting cooperation among Pacific islands countries and territories to protect and improve their environment and ensure sustainable development. …
Seagrass meadows of the Indo-Pacific, where up to one billion people are supported by inshore fisheries, are declining as a result of coastal development, deforestation, unsustainable resource use, and environmental degradation. Globally seagrasses occupy around 600,000km2 and account for 12% of total carbon stored in ocean sediments. However, seagrass losses result in a reduced capacity…
MRF Staff and Directors are happy to support the Kota Kinabalu Dive Rangers with underwater cleanup events of discarded and illegal fishing gear within the Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park. This project collects illegal and abandoned fishing gears left by fishers who fish within the Park boundaries, and whose nets get caught on the Park’s…
Dugongs are vulnerable to fisheries, traditional hunting, large-scale losses of seagrass, smaller-scale habitat loss and boat traffic. Entanglement in fishing gear is the predominant threat as dugongs are by-caught in many kinds of fishing gear, in both commercial and artisanal fisheries. The threat is considered major, but the magnitude of the impact is largely unquantified in many countries. To address this, the Marine Research Foundation and a team of experts from around the globe developed a survey questionnaire which can be implemented at low cost and across large geographical areas. The survey is also designed to collect data on marine turtles and other cetaceans, and can be adapted to just about any marine or freshwater species
Marine turtles are integral components of marine ecosystems at the Tubbataha Marine Park World Heritage Site, and priority conservation species Nationally and within the Sulu-Sulawesi Seascape programme, the IOSEA MoU, the CTI Regional Action Plan, and the ASEAN Sea Turtle MoU. The reefs at Tubbataha, Cagayancillo, Palawan, Philippines, are a developmental and nesting habitat for Endangered green turtles (Chelonia mydas), and a foraging habitat for Critically Endangered hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata)
The greatest threat to sea turtles in Malaysia is accidental capture in commercial and artisanal fisheries. Sea turtles have the unfortunate legacy of sharing habitats with some of our favourite foods, and of all the threats to their existence, the shrimp industry is perhaps the biggest. As shrimp trawl nets roll along the seabed they indiscriminately catch and drown numerous sea turtles. The conservation outlook for turtles has slowly improved thanks to small management changes at national parks, but the threat posed by thousands of shrimp trawlers has remained paramount. And yet a very practical and inexpensive solution exists in the form of Turtle Excluder Devices (or TEDs)
The general life-cycle of marine turtles is similar among species, but even given the amount of knowledge we presently have about sea turtles, there are some crucial gaps that have the potential to undermine management efforts. Among these is the knowledge of how many turtles join the breeding population in any given year, the period between onshore migration of juveniles to adulthood, and natural sex ratios in the wild. Lack of a clear understanding of any of these can have an effect on how turtle population data is interpreted and how this results in conservation action
