Molly Fowkes

🎙️ The fabulous @mollylouisefowkes.bsky.social was recently invited to talk on the Impact Storytelling Podcast about her research exploring the hidden social lives of the endangered European eel! 📊 👩‍💻🛥️

Listen now on YouTube & Spotify:
tinyurl.com/Eelpodcast 🎧

The Secret Society of Eels- with marine scientist Molly Fowkes Spotify video

Really proud of PhD researcher @mollylouisefowkes.bsky.social for this podcast on her research. Molly is studying the social behaviour of European eels using telemetry and network analysis.

Have a listen:

open.spotify.com/episode/6RxA...

#PhD @lancasteruni.bsky.social #ecology #fish #research

Thanks Steve! Really appreciate the support 🥹

European wigeons at Abberton Reservoir in Essex are tracked Researchers want to know how the water bird uses the landscapes around them for survival.

Sparks of a new project on the East Atlantic Flyway - connection across #landscapes and #seascapes for #WorldWaterbirdDay www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

From November fieldwork to presenting my first PhD poster at ASAB Winter 2025 in just a few weeks!

A fast turnaround from cold, rainy days on the water to conference halls and discussions about sensory ecology and behaviour. Had the best time! 📊🐠

#ASAB25 #ASABWINTER25 @asab-meetings.bsky.social

Social: These Orcas Are on the Brink—And So Is the Science That Could Save Them Inside the desperate rush to save the southern resident killer whales

Social: These Orcas Are on the Brink—And So Is the Science That Could Save Them

Responses of lionfish (Pterois spp.) to ambient coral reef soundscapes. Roxanne Holmes. University of Cambridge

Invasive lionfish respond to ambient soundscapes, but only at night- perhaps because vision is less reliable? 🐟🪸 #ASABWinter2025

The impact of boat activities associated with an acoustic fish telemetry study on waterbird populations in a Special Protection Area It is widely recognized that the research techniques used to monitor and study wildlife have the potential to disturb and alter the behavior of the study species. However, other impacts on sensitive,...

New paper out! 📢 We tested whether boat activity from an eel telemetry study disturbed protected waterbirds in a UK reservoir.

🦆 No evidence of disturbance.
🌦️ Bird numbers varied with weather + season.

conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Why coral reefs damaged by blast fishing struggle to recover — even after decades Blast-fished reefs are unlikely to recover naturally without human intervention.

Why coral reefs damaged by blast fishing struggle to recover — even after decades

Really enjoyed diving into science filmmaking at the BES Macro 2025 workshop today — interviewing techniques, storytelling, and lots of creative ways to share ecology with the world. 🎥🌍

#BESMacro2025 #ScienceCommunication #Filmmaking #Ecology #VisualStorytelling

Nursery Resource Use Dynamics in Great Hammerheads (Sphyrna mokarran) Across Ontogeny The ecological trade-offs required by nursery dependence are poorly understood. Using multi-tissue stable isotope analysis, this research provides evidence of constrained resource use in juvenile gre....

🚨NEW🦈PAPER🚨
Excited to announce my first publication with @drcatmac.bsky.social on the ontogenetic and seasonal trophic ecology of great hammerheads around the Biscayne Bay nursery! Linked below
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Big milestone reached: just landed my first research grant to support Chapter 4 of my PhD thesis from @lancasteruni.bsky.social Data Science Institute! 🐠 Thank you to DSI for supporting early-career researchers like myself.

Data meets nature. Let’s go! 🌊🔉

#PhD #Acoustics #Eels #Ecology #Lancaster

Drone captures narwhals using their tusks to explore, forage and play Using drones, 17 distinct behaviors of narwhals were captured in the wild. Findings reveal complex behaviors of the Arctic’s iconic whale never seen before. This highly gregarious whale uses its...

Drone captures narwhals using their tusks to explore, forage and play

www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Watch a cuttlefish transform into a leaf and a coral to hunt its prey In new video footage, cuttlefish show off their dazzling camouflage techniques, such as creating stripes that move over their bodies or mimicking non-threatening objects

In new video footage, cuttlefish show off their dazzling camouflage techniques, such as creating stripes that move over their bodies or mimicking non-threatening objects

‘Sickening’: UK waters saw two chemical spills a day last year, analysis reveals Over 200,000 kilograms worth of oil and chemicals spilled into waters around the UK coast last year, at a rate of more than two spills a day, according to campaigners.

🚨 More than 2 oil & chemical spills per day. That’s what Big Oil is dumping into UK seas – unchecked, until now.

We dug through complex, opaque government data & built a public map so everyone can see the truth.

Read coverage by The ENDS Report: www.endsreport.com/article/1907...

(a) Recorded sightings of whale shark neonates globally (black points). (b) Image of neonatal and adult whale sharks from Large Marine Vertebrates Research Institute Philippines group (b) and Marty Snyderman (b). (c) Whale shark neonates and sea surface temperature (SST, °C averaged for 2005–2019). (d) SST recorded from neonate locations and 10 randomised runs. (e) Whale shark neonates and Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a, mg m3 averaged for 2005–2019). (f) Chl-a at 0 and 100 m depths recorded from neonate locations and 10 randomised runs. (g) Whale shark neonates and current velocity (UV) at 0 m depth (ms−1, averaged for 2005–2019). (h) UV recorded from neonate locations and 10 randomised runs. (i) Whale shark neonates and dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration at 100 m depth (μmol L−1, averaged for 2005–2019). (h) DO concentrations at 0 and 100 m depths recorded from neonate locations and 10 randomised runs. In (d, f, h) and (j) each point represents a single sighting or randomised location, the solid black line is the median value of randomised locations, the dashed black line the median of the observed sightings for each depth, and the violin displays the density distribution of all locations. IUCN whale shark distributions are shown in white in each map and with a black outline in (a).

New research from @thesimslab.bsky.social in @ecol-evol.bsky.social - 🦈🌊
Unlocking the mystery of baby #whaleshark birthing grounds - Extreme environments like #OMZs provide safety from predators & a rich food supply, crucial for neonate survival.

doi.org/10.1002/ece3...

@thembauk.bsky.social

Underwater Mountains Are Teeming With 41 Times More Sharks Than The Open Ocean “Predators appear to use seamounts as ‘hubs’ to gather, socialise, mate or rest.”

Underwater Mountains Are Teeming With 41 Times More Sharks Than The Open Ocean | IFLScience

World's sea-ice falls to record low The world's frozen oceans keep the planet cool, but they currently have less ice than ever recorded before.

Sea ice in the Arctic and around Antarctica cool our climate, drive ocean circulation across the planet, and provide a unique habitat for polar ecosystems.

Sea ice amounts have now fallen to their lowest since we started measuring them. This is not good.

🌊🥼❄️🧪

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A picture of a humpback whale just below the sea surface taken by Marc Quintin

A thread explaining our new discovery about humpback whale song published today in Science... We found key statistical properties that characterise all human languages in another species for the first time. We have more in common with whales than we previously thought! doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Great Barrier Reef fish evidence suggests shifts in major global biodiversity patterns - Lancaster University Life on the Great Barrier Reef is undergoing big changes in the face of climate change and other human-caused pressures, a new study, led by researchers at Lancaster University, reveals.

Find the press release from Lancaster University of our paper.

Great Barrier Reef fish evidence suggests shifts in major global biodiversity patterns:

www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/great-b...

Emergent patterns of reef fish diversity correlate with coral assemblage shifts along the Great Barrier Reef - Nature Communications Coral reefs have been severely affected by anthropogenic stress. Using long term data from the Great Barrier Reef, this study found temporal changes in the latitudinal diversity gradient, and stronger...

Great Barrier Reef fish reveal that large-scale macroecological patterns have changed significantly 🐟🐠

We found that changes in latitudinal diversity gradient & rising species turnover were strongly correlated with shifts in coral composition

Out now in Nature Comms www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Seals exhibit localised avoidance of operational tidal turbines The result showing that seals exhibit avoidance of the turbine during operation is important for industry developers and regulators, as lower numbers of seals close to the turbine reduces the potenti...

🦭🔍 New paper alert in @jappliedecology.bsky.social! I'm excited to share my 1st first author paper, showing how seals avoid tidal turbines when they're operating! doi.org/10.1111/1365... 🧵

@seamammalresearch.bsky.social

#DYK nearly 75% of major marine fish stocks have been depleted/overexploited & 50% of live coral cover on reefs destroyed?

- @ipbes.bsky.social #GlobalAssessment

Let’s restore our ocean's vitality & ensure a more sustainable future. 🪸🌍🧪🦈

Plastic Pollution Sounds Just Like Food to Deep-Diving Whales | Duke Today Main navigation

Plastic Pollution Sounds Just Like Food to Deep-Diving Whales | Duke Today https://buff.ly/3Yjhquv 🌎🦑🧪

Frontiers | Novel approach to studying marine fauna: using long-life remote underwater video cameras to assess occurrence and behaviour of threatened and data-deficient elasmobranch species in southern Mozambique Understanding the behaviour and ecological role of elasmobranchs is essential for their conservation, particularly in regions harbouring threatened and data-deficient species like the Inhambane…

Frontiers | Novel approach to studying marine fauna: using long-life remote underwater video cameras to assess occurrence and behaviour of threatened and data-deficient elasmobranch species in southern Mozambique https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2024.151871…

Two decades of three-dimensional movement data from adult female northern elephant seals - Scientific Data Scientific Data - Two decades of three-dimensional movement data from adult female northern elephant seals

🚨 New Paper Alert 🚨

We put decades of effort in collecting this massive dataset on movement and diving behaviour of northern elephant seals and now we make it available! 🦭🦑🌎
Check it out here 👉

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Huang W-C, Hibino Y, Balisco RA, Liao T-Y (2024) Description of a new uniformly brown estuarine moray eel (Anguilliformes, Muraenidae) from the Central Indo-Pacific Ocean. In: Ho H-C, Russell B, Hibino Y, Lee M-Y (Eds) Biodiversity and taxonomy of fishes in Taiwan and adjacent waters. ZooKeys 1220: 15-34. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1220.129685

#NewSpeciesAlert - #𝑈𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑔𝑖𝑢𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑠, a #NewSpecies of estuarine #MorayEel is described from #Japan, #Taiwan, the #Philippines, southern #Indonesia, and #Fiji. #Anguilliformes #Muraenidae #Eels
🔓 zookeys.pensoft.net/article/1296...

Ship collision risk threatens whales across the world’s oceans After the near-complete cessation of commercial whaling, ship collisions have emerged as a primary threat to large whales, but knowledge of collision risk is lacking across most of the world’s oceans....

Beautiful paper about the global danger of ship strikes for large #whales and the value of slowing down shipping. @seattletimes-rss.bsky.social focussed on more local #SalishSea dangers for whales and shipping. kudos anna nisi, @trevorabranch.bsky.social, team.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#SciAdvent Dec6 🐋🎄🐋🎄🐋
Some #whales can communicate at long distances using the SOFAR! The SOund Fixing And Ranging channel is a deep region of the sea where temperature and pressure change rapidly, creating a "tunnel" for sounds 🔊 to travel through. (1/2)

Hey #FishTrackers!
This is the account of the 7th International Conference on Fish Telemetry that will be hosted by the @glatos-fish.bsky.social in Traverse City, Michigan in USA in June 8-13, 2025.
Follow for updates!