Two great days this week tagging skate in the Bristol Channel - we managed to catch + tag individuals across four species of skate 🥳 These skate will be tracked for the next few years across our channel-wide array so we can learn about their movement patterns and spatial usage #trackingnotslacking

This week we've deployed another line of acoustic receivers across the Bristol Channel 🥳 hopefully, these receivers will give us a better idea of when our tagged fish, sharks + skate migrate out from the channel, and maybe detect some animals from further afield 👀

Really nice to see this article on the sustainable lobster fishery and marine conservation at Tristan da Cunha - a great example of a community closely entwined with conservation and the challenges with enforcing a huge no-take zone (687000 km^2!) in such a remote area www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

Victoria Paterson and I are abseiling off a building here at the University of Glasgow to raise money for student expeds. This is to help disadvanaged students take up these amazing, life changing opportunities @uofglasgow.bsky.social www.justgiving.com/page/paterso... We'd appreciate you support

Fishermen & divers of the UK we need YOU! Our #octopus bloom surveys have been extended to Sept 21st. If you haven't already done so, please fill out the fishermen's survey survey.alchemer.eu/s3/90884550/... or divers survey survey.alchemer.eu/s3/90886025/... Thank you! Please share widely! 🐙

The hmmTMB paper is finally out in the Journal of Statistical Software! An R package for hidden Markov models with random effects, flexible spline-based covariate effects, and fast inference using TMB or Stan. Check out the GIthub repository for more examples. doi.org/10.18637/jss...

Using a pre-existing photo-ID database, Mawer et al. identified potential signs of reproductive behaviours in flapper skate, which suggest a winter-spring mating period doi.org/10.1111/jfb.70044 #FishSci #JFB

Yesterday out downloading receivers along the Gower, perfect day for it and a highlight being the sunfish we saw on the way out 🤩

#JFB: Using citizen science photographs to identify reproductive events in an oviparous elasmobranch doi.org/10.1111/jfb.70044#JFB#FishSci

New paper out today! 🦈 We tested whether blacktip reef shark dorsal fins are reliable for photo ID – they are! ✅ Stable over time ✅ Unique among individuals 📍Long-term dataset from French Polynesia Led by Physioshark 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/jfb.... #SharkScience #MarineBiology @jcuofficial.bsky.social

It's #worldalbatrossday ! I was lucky enough to see lots of adult Atlantic yellow-nose albatrosses nesting back in September, such gorgeous birds 😍

Oh wow- my article about what's happened to sharks since Jaws came out 50 years ago is featured in today's JSTOR Daily newsletter! daily.jstor.org/jaws-feather...

@fao.org released their 2025 report on the status of marine fisheries resources (openknowledge.fao.org/items/ac6d51...). In talking to the media about the report at #UNOC FAO stated that ~57% of sharks stocks are sustainably fished (t.co/fVFnZkY4vQ). This fact is WRONG 1/

Put this on your reading list: Continuous-time HMMs for animal movement data. I saw Dom present a great intro to this work at ISEC 2024. The gist is it's a very fast model for fitting HMMs to temporally irregular data (based on maximum likelihood).

NEW in @science.org Global tracking #MarineMegafauna shows <8% of areas used overlap w/ existing MPAs, while >75% of important areas overlapped by threats like #fishing #shipping & ocean warming - 30x30 goal will be insufficient for their conservation www.megamove.org @thembauk.bsky.social

Delighted to see the first chapter of my PhD published in the @icesmarine.bsky.social journal of marine science! This paper discusses developing a holistic understanding of the sensitivity of fish species in our seas and offers practical recommendations for enchanced species mgmt & protection. 🦈🐟

If you would like to know more about our Pollack Fisheries Industry Science Partnership project then click here: www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/mar... @plymbiomarsci.bsky.social @plymuni.bsky.social @anglingtrust.bsky.social 🐟

New paper! We estimated the reproductive timing of the critically endangered #flapperskate by making use of a pre-existing #citizenscience photo ID database 📸 with @davemarinebio.glasgow.ac.uk @jathorburn.bsky.social Paper ⏩ doi.org/10.1111/jfb.... & summary below ⏬

🌐 "We propose a paradigm shift in ecological science, moving from simplifying frameworks that use species, population or community averages to an integrative approach that recognizes individual organisms as fundamental agents of ecological change." doi.org/10.3897/ibe....

Monday was my last day working at Plymouth uni, as the #PollackFISP project came to an end - been a great few months hopping in and working on some cool research including #acoustictelemetry !! Onto the next job 🤩

Recommend #acoustictelemetry users check out James's new paper! Getting accurate positions can be a big challenge - and having accurate positions affects later analyses and conclusions. James's work is making a big difference here! #trackingnotslacking

✳️ConPhys in Action alert!✳️ This article comments on Cole et al who showed the physiological impacts of #CatchAndRelease angling on endangered flapper skates, and identified protective measures. The findings may help conserve skates and other vulnerable species. Links in 🧵 ⬇️

In our new essay led by @sjcfishy.bsky.social we argue that each individual fish matter in catch and release angling. academic.oup.com/fisheries/ad...

Out again today servicing more acoustic receivers - that's all our Plymouth ones done! Looking forward to cracking into all of our new pollack data as part of the pollack FISP #trackingnotslacking

Want to have your say on recreational #fishing for #pollack in the UK and what the future might look like? Please fill out this survey and share widely www.surveymonkey.com/r/pollackang... @anglingtrust.bsky.social @thembauk.bsky.social @plymbiomarsci.bsky.social 🐟

Happy World Wildlife Day! Over the years, ETN members have tracked an astounding 147 species, with our current top 20 showcased here. Doing so has taught us so much about the wildlife that surrounds us. Let's take a look at some of the things we've learned about aquatic wildlife using telemetry...

Perfect February day out servicing receivers, some of which we hadn't downloaded data from since April! Time to see what the fish have been doing 🐟 #trackingnotslacking

Animal movement is complex, depends on many interacting factors, and can be hard to accurately predict. Here we present a novel approach using a deep learning step selection framework: tinyurl.com/2em9yyjb, with lots of supporting info and code! swforrest.github.io/deepSSF/

Predicting animal movement with deepSSF: a deep learning step selection framework https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.13.638055v1

Recently published #fishpassage paper from Po river, Italy. We PIT-tagged fish from nine species. Only barbel and Italian chub passed in relatively high numbers. In spring-summer, a few non-native carp and Wels catfish succesfully passed. Paper here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Moving onto #pollack @rmawer.bsky.social takes on a journey to examine movement & how to maximise post release survival 🐟

All set to kick off our Angling for Sustainability & Pollack FISP final conference today. Excited for the day & delighted to have such a great turnout 🐟 @plymbiomarsci.bsky.social @thembauk.bsky.social @anglingtrust.bsky.social 🐟

NEW PAPER - we think we've discovered an open-ocean nursery for endangered shortfin #mako #sharks in the SE Pacific Ocean..... only trouble is, it's in a Global Fishing Hotspot - likely exacerbating popn declines already occurring @thembauk.bsky.social OA here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Join us at this (free!) event, in person + online - the recent analysis on #pollack I've been doing since joining the Pollack FISP will be presented, including movement and barotrauma analyses, and some groovy hidden Markov models I've been fitting to acoustic telemetry depth data 🐟

Happy to share another paper from my PhD was published recently - covering 2 chapters! Using hidden Markov models and step selection functions to analyse fine-scale acoustic telemetry data and then predict spatial usage from model output 🐟 #trackingnotslacking Link: doi.org/10.1016/j.ec...

Happy to share another paper from my PhD was published recently - covering 2 chapters! Using hidden Markov models and step selection functions to analyse fine-scale acoustic telemetry data and then predict spatial usage from model output 🐟 #trackingnotslacking Link: doi.org/10.1016/j.ec...

Join us for the Angling for Sustainability and Pollack FISP conference on 12th Feb 25! We have been working with fishers to track and collect vital data on black bream, sharks, rays and pollack, to inform evidence-based fisheries management 🦈 🐟 🎣 Register here: lnkd.in/d8_5s2fP

New #GlobalSharkTrends study published in @science.org reveals #overfishing has more than halved shark & ray populations over the past 50-years causing widespread erosion of ecological function and exceptionally high extinction risk 👉Full article bit.ly/GlobalSharkTrends 🧵1/20

@rmawer.bsky.social kicking ass & taking names at #ISEC2024.

At the #ISEC with @rmawer.bsky.social, the only other biologist I managed to convince to come. Shame on the rest of you!