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…
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
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…
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…
