The brown mussel Perna perna is the dominant indigenous mussel along the east coast of South Africa, where it is harvested by recreational and subsistence fishers. High fishing pressure near urban areas led to declining abundance and consequently to the closure of some reefs to fishing in 1998. We estimated trends in mussel population dynamics at exploited and unexploited sites, along fixed transects, ...

Aim: Distribution patterns of lineages alone do not explain the processes underlying phylogenetic differentiation in fishes observed around the Arabian Peninsula, whose hypotheses traditionally rely on (i) Pleistocene vicariance events, (ii) successive bottlenecks, (iii) recent founder effects (iv) and large spatial gradients in physical conditions. In this study, we test the hypothesis that ...

The earliest Eocene (Ypresian) Fur Formation (Denmark) is globally renowned for its exceptionally well-preserved fossils, including birds, sea turtles, insects, plants, andfishes. Fishes, albeit abundant and diverse, however, areonly superficially known and very few detailed, taxonomic studies have been realized to date. A new polymixiiformfish,Polyspinatusflueregen. et sp. nov., from the Fur Formation ...

Bycatch of rays and skates in towed fishing gears represents one of the major threats to these relatively slow-growing marine species. The objective of this study was to modify ground gear in a bottom trawl fishery to increase the escape of these species during towing without associated loss of target catch. Sea trials were carried out with a research vessel in Mersin Bay, North-eastern Mediterranean. ...

In recent years, Arctic char populations in Iceland have declined and the objective of this experiment was to throw further light on these changes by examining the effect of temperature (5, 9, 13, 17, and 21 °C) on the survival, growth rate, metabolism, and physiological indices of juvenile Arctic charr (initial mean body mass 4.02 ± 0.8 g). Mortality was 60% at 21 °C while at lower temperatures it ...

Pathogenic bacteria are attracted toward mucosa, as it is their way of entry into the body. However, we know surprisingly little about the phage-bacterium interactions in the mucosal environment. Here, we explored the effect of the mucosal environment on growth characteristics and phage-bacterium interactions in Streptococcus mutans, a causative agent of dental caries. We found that although mucin ...

In a paper in this journal entitled “Fear and loathing of the deep sea: why don’t people care about the deep sea?”, Jamieson et al. (2020) pose this question and answer it with many interesting perspectives from psychology, ocean literacy and philosophy. However, there is an inherent assumption in the question they ask that people do not care about the deep sea. In order to assess this assumption, ...

Isolation of bioactive products from the marine environment is considered a very promising approach to identify new compounds that can be used for further drug development. In this work we have isolated three new compounds from the purpuroine family by mass-guided preparative HPLC; purpuroine K-M. These compounds where screened for antibacterial- and antifungal activity, antibiofilm formation and ...

Aim: Greenland is one of the places on Earth where the effects of climate change are most evident. The retreat of sea ice has made East Greenland more accessible for longer periods during the year. East Greenland fjords have been notoriously difficult to study due to their remoteness, dense sea ice conditions and lack of infrastructure. As a result, biological monitoring across latitudinal gradients ...