The Galapagos and other oceanic islands and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) may be "critical" refuges for sharks in the Tropical Eastern Pacific, as predatory fish appear depleted in more coastal MPAs through fishing pressure

White oval squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana sp. 2), known locally as shiro-ika, are medium-sized squids naturally distributed in the Indian and western Pacific oceans, flittering in and out of a wide range of different habitats – from shallow seagrass beds, over coral reefs, to depths of 100m along coastal environments. In such biodiverse zones, the squids encounter predators of all sizes and shapes, from seabirds flying overhead to sharks, tuna, and other cephalopods prowling under the sea.

Such a variety of threats calls for a large repertoire of survival strategies. Researchers from the Okinawan Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have previously discovered how shiro-ika change color when moving between different shades of substrate – and now, the same team has painted a full picture of how the cephalopod employs a sophisticated range of camouflaging strategies to adapt to different environments and threats. “The wide variety of visual strategies used by the squid is surprisingly complex, especially considering that squid have traditionally been regarded as spending most of their lives in the open water column,” explains former OIST Visiting Researcher Dr. Ryuta Nakajima, “This discovery suggests that squid have a deeper behavioral relationship with the ocean floor than previously thought.”

Around 115 million years ago, the seas off northern Australia were home to a gigantic ancestor of Jaws. Fossils of this ancient mega-predator reveal that modern sharks experimented with enormous body sizes much earlier in their evolutionary history than previously suspected, and took the top place in oceanic food chains alongside massive marine reptiles during the Age of Dinosaurs. This study presents a new interdisciplinary analysis to reconstruct size evolution in ancient sharks.   

A team of international researchers led by the University of Vienna investigated the development of shark and ray biodiversity over the past 100 million years. Their surprising results show a continuous decline in diversity since the Eocene, 45 million years ago, which contradicts previous assumptions that biodiversity was either stable or increasing. This study, recently published in the renowned journal Scientific Reports, provides crucial insights for modern marine conservation.

More than 30,000 teeth, bones and other fossils from a 249 million-year-old community of extinct marine reptiles, amphibians, bony fish and sharks have been discovered on the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen. These record the earliest radiation of land-living animals into oceanic ecosystems following cataclysmic extinction and extreme global warming at the dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs.