South African Elasmobranch Monitoring

If I asked you to name different sharks that occur along the South African coastline, I'm sure you could name some of the biggest and most popular ones (for e.g. great white shark, Zambezi shark or ragged-tooth shark). But did you know that Southern Africa is the fourth most biodiverse area for chondrichthyans (i.e. sharks, rays, skates, chimaeras) in the world and that we have 204 species in our waters? A recently published study sheds some light on this shark diversity in P

The Department of Environmental Affairs has recently published a new government gazette with a list of marine species that are threatened or in need of protection. Therefore certain activities such as hunting, catching, exporting, feeding or attracting of these species are prohibited. The document lists 16 Elasmobranch species plus all members of the Sawfish family. To our current knowledge these include at least two but possibly four species of Sawfish occurring in Southern

Many people are afraid of sharks, and this is quite a natural behavior. When we stare across the big blue ocean we don’t know what lurks beneath those waves. It’s a mystery; it’s the unknown – and this scares most of us. Add some sharp shark teeth into the equation and you have all the correct ingredients to breed a fear of sharks. To try and counteract this fear, many people commonly quote statistics that go along the lines of “xyz kills more people than sharks in a year”. I

In celebration of the World Oceans Day 2016, we have selected Southern Africa’s five most charismatic shark species that best represent their terrestrial counterparts, the ‘Big Five’. Read on to learn about the best locations and times to encounter these magnificent animals eye-to-eye. The most dangerous game animals – the Elephant, the Rhino, the Buffalo, the Lion and the Leopard – are famously known as the Big Five. While big game hunting, where this term originates from, h

All skates, all chimaera and some sharks are oviparous (egg-laying). Once the egg has been deposited the mother does not invest any further parental care. The embryo is now on its own and nothing but a thin, leathery capsule protects the developing skate or shark until it is ready to hatch. Because shark eggs are attached to immotile seafans, seaweed or rocks, they are easy prey even for the smallest and slowest organisms given they can chew or bore through the capsule. Some

In today’s day and age, the bridge between scientists and the public is becoming ever smaller. Historically, scientists would stick within the confines of their ivory towers and only publish their work in scientific journals or in books that would be incredibly difficult for the average Joe to understand. For example the following is a quote from arguably one of the most popular pieces of scientific literature, “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin: “As natural selection

How many species of sharks, skates, rays and chimaera can you name? Maybe 5 or 20 or even 50? There are 1188 known species of cartilaginous fish worldwide and due to advances in taxonomic research and deepsea exploration this number is continuously increasing. 204 of those species are currently known to occur in Southern Africa, which makes this region the 4th most diverse Chondrichthyan hotspot worldwide. Did you know that far off the South African coast researchers have rec

We are a week into the New Year and thought it is time to celebrate a new exciting feature: The interactive ELMO Map! It illustrates all the data that we are receiving on eggcase finds as well as Elasmobranch sightings in two separate layers. To explore our Elasmobranch populations, use the zoom function and click on the symbol for details of every data entry. As you will see, there are still large gaps outside of Plettenberg Bay - so please help us to paint an even better pi