🎮 Steady hands, clear focus. During our drone training course, students practice fine motor skills and precision piloting — essential for capturing high-quality imagery and accurate data in the field.

🧽 Scrubbing the boat isn’t just about keeping it shiny — it’s about learning respect for the gear that makes fieldwork possible. Teamwork, responsibility, and care for equipment are just as important as the science itself. A clean boat = a smooth research day. 🌊✨ #MarineScience #Fieldwork #Oceans

🦈✨ A Lucky Release for This Smoothhound Shark ✨🦈 This little smoothhound (about 50 cm) was safely released after being caught during one of our surveys. But sadly, many like it don’t get the same chance.

🪸 Red Algae – More Than Just Seaweed These deep red tufts may seem simple at first glance, but red algae (Rhodophyta) are some of the most fascinating and important organisms in our coastal ecosystems 🌊✨

🔬 Fieldwork find: Paper nautilus shell During an intertidal invertebrate assessment, we came across this delicate paper nautilus shell, which is actually not a true shell at all — but the eggcase of a female Argonauta octopus.

📸 Tongue-eating hitchhiker alert! 🫱 For the common folk: This little critter drinks a fish’s blood, then becomes its tongue — and lives there rent-free. 😳 Not dangerous to people, but definitely one of the ocean’s strangest parasites.

🌊 Meet Amber McAbee! 🌊 Amber joined us all the way from the University of South Alabama, bringing her passion for marine conservation and fisheries ecology to Oceans Research. www.linkedin.com/posts/enrico...

Our students get hands-on with the quadrat and transect method — one of the classic ways to measure biodiversity across the intertidal zone. But, as the saying goes, there’s more than one road that leads to Rome! 🌍

During our egg case analysis shift at the Hartenbos river mouth, the recent opening created some incredible low-water conditions — and our students came across this fascinating find! 🪱🌊 What looks like a coral head is actually a dense colony of tube worms.

🦈 White shark tracking update (Jan–July 2025) 🌊 In collaboration with the Shark Research Foundation, SAIAB, and Stellenbosch University, our program has followed two very different shark stories this year.

🌙 Tonight, we swapped sun caps for headlamps and joined Justin from Saltlife Mossel Bay for a night fishing adventure. The swell was heavy, and the chill set in, but the excitement kept us warm!

After a full week of salt spray, sandy boots, and long research days, our students roll up their sleeves to give Triton a well-deserved deep clean.

An unexpected find on our elasmobranch egg-case survey 🥚➡️🐟 While searching the beach for shark and skate egg cases, our students spotted something unusual—a dried cowfish carapace.

🌊 ROV Skills in Action 🌊 Today’s shift took our students beneath the surface—without even getting wet! 🎮🤿

Mermaid’s purses are a favourite find along the windswept beaches of Mossel Bay 🌊🦈 After strong South Coast tides, egg cases from sharks, skates and rays wash ashore and settle in the sand and seaweed.

🌬️🎣 Windy, wild & worth it! Our students bundled up for a chilly day on the shoreline to try shore angling—a catch-and-release method used in marine science.

🌊 Leading Shark Science at SASRS 2025 🌊 This week our Director Dr Enrico Gennari represented Oceans Research Institute at the 8th Southern African Shark & Ray Symposium with four scientific contributions showcasing the power of collaboration and long-term data:

Tag, record, release. 🌊 During our research trips, every fish is carefully caught, measured, and tagged so we can track species movement and population health. By handling them gently and returning them to the water within minutes, we gather vital data without harming the animals or their habitat.

Last week our students partnered with Garden Route Scuba to investigate the presence of microplastics in Mossel Bay. Using scientific sampling methods, they carefully collected and examined beach sand, revealing that even beaches that appear pristine can contain hidden plastic particles.

🐬 Our students had one of those field days where nature steals the show. A pod of dolphins came right past the boat—close enough for everyone to hear them breathe. The deck went quiet, then full of wide-eyed smiles. Moments like that stick with you long after the trip ends. 💙

Sometimes this is what science really looks like—every hand in, shoulders pressed together, heads knocking like a game of marine-biology Twister 🌀🦈 All for one reason: to keep these wild ocean animals safe and get them back into the water as quickly and gently as possible 🌊💙 #HandsOnResearch

This morning our September students headed out for intertidal surveys 🌊. For some it was their very first time, while others had a bit of experience already 👣.

We go to the beach for research… but somehow our students always end up with bags in hand 🌊🛍️ Cleanup duty is never on the schedule, but once you start spotting trash, you just can’t ignore it.

Out in Mossel Bay, our students often encounter South Africa’s endemic catsharks during fieldwork. 🦈 While many fishermen see these little sharks as “pests” for taking bait, in reality, they are essential to ecosystem health.

Our September crew had their hands full on their very first field day today 🐟🦈 From working up fish to learning how to tag sharks, they’ve already dived headfirst into hands-on science. We’re so excited to see everything this group will achieve over the next month — welcome to the team, September! 🌊

✨ Another month, another goodbye. ✨ This week we wrapped up with yet another incredible group of students who brought intelligence, curiosity, and endless enthusiasm to every field day.

🎣🐟 This is exactly what it feels like inside our heads when we watch BRUV footage… One of our students decided the fish needed voices—and honestly, we can’t un-hear it now. 😂🎙️ #OceansResearch #BRUVs #MarineScience #StudentLife www.facebook.com/share/r/16un...

What an amazing month it has been!🌊 Have a look through our students' POV below... www.facebook.com/share/r/179z...

🦈 Today our team came across a distinctive dark shyshark (Haploblepharus pictus) missing half of a pectoral fin. Despite this, it was still strong and active — even biting the bait twice on the same line! We only recognised it the second time thanks to its unique little fin.

🌊 Science in the field is never a solo mission — and our students learn that fast. From deploying BRUVs to recording environmental data, every task depends on teamwork. 💪

🦈✨ One of the incredible opportunities our students have is working with the pajama catshark (Poroderma africanum), a shark species found only in South African waters. As an endemic, its conservation depends on research done right here.

This weekend our students headed to Cape Town for their excursion and visited the iconic Boulders Beach 🐧, home to the endangered African penguin.

Yesterday our students got to experience Robberg in all its glory! 🦭✨ Guided by our Head Field Specialist, Lacey Williams, they got a taste of the research she once carried out for her MSc—studying seal and shark behaviour.

A rare and beautiful find for our students — a nudibranch! 🐌✨ These “naked-gilled” sea slugs are some of the ocean’s most colourful and fascinating creatures. 🔹 There are over 800 species recorded in Southern African waters

🌊⚓ This week our students completed their Pre-Sea Certification – the very first step to working safely at sea! 🚤 Over the course, they learned: How to respond to onboard emergencies (fire, flooding, man overboard)

Our students have the special opportunity to learn how to insert conventional tags (aka spaghetti tags) onto some of South Africa's endemic shark species!

Marine science isn’t always sunshine and calm seas. Some days, it means standing under bright skies with the smell of chum in the air — mixing bait to attract Great White sharks for observation and data collection. It’s not the most pleasant task, but it’s an essential one.

Threatened species alert! Yesterday one of our students caught a gorgeous female smooth-hound shark (Mustelus mustelus) using a hand line on our research vessel! Seeing this species in Mossel Bay is such a special, and hope-providing experience.

🐋 Spot the species from a blow — through the theodolite! At Oceans Research Institute, our students learn to identify whale species using more than just a quick glance.

Sharks don’t need to die for us to be safe. At ORI, we’re committed to finding alternative solutions that protect water users without culling these vital ocean predators. Coexistence isn’t just possible—it’s essential.

Representing Oceans Research Institute at the Seal Rabies Workshop in Cape Town, Director Dr. Enrico Gennari stressed that South Africa has reached a critical point: testing only the obvious cases is no longer enough.

One thing that comes with working in the field is accepting the unpredictability of the environment! 🦀Sometimes tides aren't as low as expected leading to difficult but hilarious intertidal assessment shifts. www.facebook.com/share/v/1Za7...

July, you’ll be hard to forget. 💙 To this month’s incredible group of students — thank you. Thank you for showing up with energy and curiosity, even when the days were long, the wind was howling, and the tide wasn’t exactly in our favour.

www.facebook.com/share/r/15BD... 🐬 Bioacoustics in Action: Dolphin Encounters & Sound Science 🎧 During one of our recent shifts at sea, we were lucky enough to have a pod of dolphins swimming right alongside our boat. But it wasn’t just a magical encounter — it was also a moment for science.

Standardisation in science: Why is having a birds-eye view of your quadrat during intertidal assessments so important? A question often asked by our students.

Read all about what our Captain Fanplastic Recycling winners, Ridgeview Primary, got up to during their prize VR experience!! 🌍♻️🌊🏴‍☠️ www.facebook.com/share/v/1LLU...

Yesterday our students came across the egg casing of a Cape elephantfish, Callorhinchus capensis! These animals are from the subclass Holocephalii, a cohort of Chondrichthyans characterized by having fused jaw bones.

🟡 Still finding nurdles in Mossel Bay—seven years later. Back in 2017, a shipping container spilled 49 tons of nurdles (tiny plastic pellets) into the ocean off Durban. Since then, these microplastics have made their way down the South African coastline… and are still washing up on our shores.

🌅Where the sky meets the sea🌅 Recently, we have begun incorporating the use of drones into our program here at Oceans Research Institute. Students have started learning to develop their own flight paths, including adjusting settings like velocity, photo frequency, overlap, and image quality.

Great white sharks have vanished from False Bay. Orcas may be the trigger, but humans are the real long-term threat. Nets, bycatch, climate change, and shrinking habitats are pushing them out — and ecosystems are feeling it. Read more: www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...