Unregulated feeding of marine wildlife by tour operators impacts the natural behavior & well-being of sea #turtles. So proud that @FeeSmulders paper (w/ @CORE_Science3, Justin Campbell and myself) is now featured in @nytimes (read this here) photo @ShaneGrossPhoto. Also see the video abstract and WUR press release below.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
ReViFES fieldwork North Sea
Cruise participants: The wonderful crew of RV Pelagia and scientists from NIOZ – Christina Coral PhD student and Rob Witbaard; Bureau Waardenburg – Joost Bergsma; and WUR Joop Coolen ands myself + others How to better start the academic year than with some hardcore fieldwork
Can we improve coastal restoration by temporarily imitating nature? Yes we can!
Coastal ecosystems are in rapid decline around the world. Restoring them is very expensive and is often unsuccessful. But together with an international team of researchers we discovered a way of increasing restoration success of salt marshes and seagrass meadows, using biodegradable mats. Our findings are just published in Nature Communications (22 July 2020)
The corona version of a Field-based course “Introduction Marine Ecology”
Six weeks before the start of our course our Dutch prime minister announced that the Netherlands was going into lock down in response of the global COVID19 pandemic. to prevent study delay for WUR students we decided the course to continue – in contrast to other field courses that were cancelled – and put all …
Continue reading “The corona version of a Field-based course “Introduction Marine Ecology””
Turtle tracking story map released at Dutch Caribbean Sea Turtle workshop
Story map
Turtle cams & seagrass experiments in the Bahamas & Bonaire
In november Fee Smulders and I visited the Islands Bonaire and Eleuthera (Bahamas) to study the impact of grazing on seagrass ecosystem services. We look back at a very productive, and fun field trip, where we sampled and initiated multiple experiments.
Students investigating tropical marine ecosystems on Bonaire
This autumn 6 WUR students will spend some months in Bonaire to investigate different aspects tropical coastal ecosystems together with Fee and Luuk. Subjects range from impacts of surfers on sea turtles, to shark-turtle interactions, impact of sargassum on mangroves and corals, and bioturbation and seagrasses. Students also got introduced into the sea turtle monitoring …
Continue reading “Students investigating tropical marine ecosystems on Bonaire”
Staff expedition to Bonaire
Last month our group – the Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group @ WUR – travelled to the Caribbean to analyse the socio-ecological-system of Bonaire. This happened in the same week that a report came out stating that the nature in the Dutch Caribbean is under heavy pressure, highlighting the need for a change in nature …
Return of the native oyster facilitated by the invasive Pacific Oyster?
Our new paper that just came out today in Marine Biology research suggests so….
The potential of using drones and other UAVs in sea turtle research and conservation
In a new paper with lead author Alan Rees and collegues we reviews how drones and other UAVs can be used in sea turtle research and conservation.