(Slowly, we’re catching up on our late Research Fund posts… 😉

Elisabeth’s project, “Pelagic Pioneers: Expanding shark research in Boa Vista, Cabo Verde”, builds directly on the recent discovery of a multispecies shark nursery in Sal Rei Bay on the island of Boa Vista. This area already hosts newborn and juvenile sharks from several species, but the surrounding pelagic ecosystem is still largely unexplored.

Her approach combines gill-net monitoring, stereo-BRUVS deployments, structured local interviews, and seasonal underwater video systems to map shark and ray presence across habitats and seasons. By adding AI-assisted video analysis via SharkTrack, she will be able to scale up processing and extract much richer ecological patterns from long-term recordings.

The project stands out for blending traditional field ecology with modern computational tools and, importantly, for embedding local ecological knowledge from fishers and divers into the scientific framework. Together, these elements will help build one of the most complete baseline datasets for elasmobranchs in Boa Vista to date.

In a region where shark populations face mounting fishing pressure and habitat stress, this kind of baseline work is exactly what conservation decisions depend on.

So congratulations to Elisabeth — working in Cabo Verde armed with cameras, nets, and algorithms, ready to meet sharks on their own terms.

Just don’t let the sharks peer-review your field methods too aggressively.

The post Research Fund 25/05 :: Elisabeth Reuter appeared first on Flying Sharks.

Let’s see, we recently shipped lots and lots of scientific samples headed from the Azores to genetics labs in Italy and Denmark, including cetacean faeces, which is science lingo for “whale poo”.

Then we sent Octopus to Florida, Pelagia noctiluca and other captive bred jellies to California, cuttlefish eggs to Tennessee and also Denmark.

We also moved a bunch of captive bred Hippocampus hippocampus and cuttlefish eggs to the United Kingdom and Germany, captive bred Dasyatis americana to Ireland, and wild caught Zeugopterus punctatus to Lithuania.

Meanwhile, we have massive shipments under preparation to Holland, and Germany, with a ‘small’ 2000 km detour to northern Denmark, so we can pick up some captive bred Cyclopterus lumpus to friends in Eastern Spain.

And if that weren’t enough, we’re desperately hunting for a very large amount of Macroramphosus scolopax and Trachurus trachurus headed to the Middle East and our largest order ever for Scomber scombrus will depart to Spain in a few weeks.

In other words, while some folks use the summer to catch up on their reading, we can’t seem to be able to squeeze in a day at the beach, but this is what’s commonly referred to as ‘first world problems’, right?

Onwards and forwards!

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Damn, that’s how late we are with our Research Fund posts, but we’re struggling to catch up!

At the time Elisa wrote to us explaining that ever since she first became interested in Marine Biology, sharks and rays were always at the very top of her list of dream animals to study. So, when the time came to choose both an internship and a dissertation for her Master’s degree, she decided to go all in and split the experience between two different projects to maximize the learning adventure!

For her dissertation, Elisa wanted to work with the mighty Nuno Queiroz and the prestigious CIBIO research group, studying the foraging behavior of blue sharks in the Azores. Sadly, she contacted the team halfway through Summer and missed the field season where the sharks were tagged, which left her craving for a more hands-on experience.

And that is exactly how she found herself heading to Sharklab-Malta between April and June 2024, where she finally got to put her “hands in the sharky dough”, as we scientifically call it around here.

But there’s more! Elisa also took the time to thank the professor who gave her those first contacts years ago, back in her undergraduate days, long before anyone could imagine she’d end up chasing blue sharks around the Atlantic Ocean. Apparently, even without realizing it, the professor became some sort of an inspirational marine biology mastermind figure in her life. Damn! those are big shoes to fill and, as you probably guessed, “the professor” is our esteemed founder.

With accommodation expenses reaching around 500 euros per month — plus flights — there’s absolutely no way we could let Elisa face this adventure alone, so we happily transferred her 590 euros to help her along the way.

Go Elisa! And remember: if you accidentally tag “the professor” instead of the sharks, please release him back into the wild unharmed, because none of us want to do his job, especially the 100+ emails per day!

:p

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The big news at this point is that we wrapped up our Saudi Arabia adventure with an absurdly successful fourth collecting trip, and we encourage you to read all about it here.

We then headed straight to this year’s Nordic Aquarium Conference at Sjöfartsmuseet Akvariet, in Göteborg, where we delivered two talks on our Saudi and Chile adventures.

We’re now enjoying a few days at home, preparing for a massive shark move in Genova, and yet another 9.000 km road-trip that will bring us to Norway, with a few stops in France, the Netherlands and Denmark, but we’ll share more about that after it’s done, in a few weeks.

For now, it’s time to catch up on our Research Fund posts, which are as plentiful as they are late! Check them all out on our homepage.

And it’s also time to finish up TechAquarium’s sixth acrylic polishing job at the Oceanário de Lisboa, and prepare for our next two jobs, our most challenging ever!

Meanwhile, here’s a quick summary of our current stock in Peniche and Horta, available on a first come – first served basis, as usual.

Bolma rugosa, Bothus podas, Coryphoblennius galerita, Diplodus vulgaris, Echinaster sepositus, Lepadogaster lepadogaster, Lipophrys pholis, Lysmata debelius (CB), Marthasterias glacialis, Ophidiaster ophidianus, Pagellus bogaraveo, Parablennius gattorugine, Scorpaena notata/porcus/scrofa, Scyliorhinus canicula juvenile (CB), and Symphodus mediterraneus/melops.

That’s it from us! It’s now time to prepare our spectacular “Mobile Station” for its upcoming Norwegian mission, number 4 since it first went on the road precisely one year ago, with our inaugural trip to Morocco.

In case you missed it, here’s our super cool video on it:

Your Flying Sharks gang of crazies

The post Half a year, already?? appeared first on Flying Sharks.

Coral reefs are among the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, but also some of the most threatened. Between warming oceans, destructive fishing practices, coral extraction, and climate change, many reefs are hanging on by a thread. Which is precisely why projects like this matter so much.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, local fishing communities in North Bali deployed artificial reef structures across more than 100 kilometers of coastline as part of a 7 million dollar Coral Restoration Programme supported by the Indonesian government. That sentence alone already sounded epic enough for us!

Now, researchers from the University of Sussex and the Creative Action Tank (CAT), together with local dive and fisher communities, are heading back to these restoration sites for the first large-scale post-deployment assessment. Their mission? To determine whether these artificial reefs are actually working and helping coral and fish communities recover.

The project will combine high-resolution imagery, 3D reef modeling, underwater cameras, ecoacoustics, fish diversity surveys, and community-based monitoring techniques to compare restored reefs with nearby natural systems. In simpler terms: lots of science, lots of diving, and hopefully lots of happy fish.

What we especially loved about this proposal was the strong focus on local community involvement. Training local dive and fisher groups to monitor reef recovery creates long-term conservation capacity that remains in place long after the researchers leave. That’s exactly the kind of impact we enjoy supporting.

Needless to say, we couldn’t possibly say no to this beautiful combination of coral reefs, community conservation, underwater technology, and good old-fashioned marine biology enthusiasm, so we happily transferred 250 euros to help support the project.

Best of luck to everyone involved and please send photos… preferably with colorful corals and giant fish schools!

🙂

The post Research Fund 25/02 :: Francesco Marzano  appeared first on Flying Sharks.

The people truly involved in the action rarely have free hands — literally and mentally — to think about framing, lighting, or even pulling a phone out of their pocket without immediately regretting it five seconds later.

And then there’s the invisible factor for those watching from the outside: the environment itself. Saltwater, wind, humidity, sand, gloves, cold, rush, stressed animals, expensive equipment scattered everywhere, endless logistics and attention split across a thousand critical details where, if a single one fails, the entire operation can go spectacularly sideways.

On a boat, especially, every extra movement feels like an unnecessary risk and that’s probably why so many of the greatest scientific and exploration stories end up surviving only in the memories of the people who were actually there.

The frustrating part is that, from the outside looking in, these situations would have enormous documentary value precisely because they are real and irrepeatable. This isn’t “content”. It’s genuine field history. Meanwhile, there are thousands of influencers out there inventing adventures and staging spectacular posts while we somehow keep accumulating very real adventures without anyone stopping to document them — because, in the moment, we’re all too busy solving problems.

Ironically, when photos do exist, they’re often technically awful: blurry, crooked, covered in salt spray, with terrible lighting and water droplets all over the lens. Yet those are often the most valuable images of all, because they’re the only proof that those moments actually happened.

The idea of bringing a dedicated photographer makes perfect sense. Not just for the aesthetic side of things, but because it completely changes the dynamic: someone whose only mission is to observe while everyone else executes. And very often those images end up having impact far beyond simple project communication — they help with funding, outreach, institutional credibility and even the team’s own personal memory of these insane adventures.

Of course, then comes the tricky part: finding the right person, paying them properly and, with a thousand other worries on our minds, we inevitably end up saying “next time”.

Meanwhile… twenty years of adventures have already gone by.

Without a photographer.

Anyway.

Maybe next time we’ll finally get our act together and make this happen.

The post The undocumented tragedy appeared first on Flying Sharks.

Sofia is deeply interested in sustainability and conservation, particularly in the breeding and protection of endangered marine species like seahorses, which Sea Life Weymouth is especially renowned for. During her internship, she hoped to learn more about aquarium husbandry, conservation programs, and the fascinating world of marine species breeding.

Like many young marine biology students chasing their dreams abroad, Sofia needed a little help covering her travel expenses from Portugal to England, so we simply couldn’t say no and transferred her 500 euros.

We wished Sofia the very best during her internship and hope she brought back lots of cool stories, photos… and maybe a British seahorse accent as well!

Go, Sofia! 🙂

The post Research Fund 25/05 :: Sofia Maia appeared first on Flying Sharks.

But signing the contract was merely the first step. What followed was the small matter of collecting over 10.000 marine creatures in an environment wildly different from anything we’re used to. The main difference? Whenever we attempt to corner the critters, they simply evaporate into the highest concentration of coral any of us has ever witnessed.

A trip to Kenya helped us refine a few new techniques, but it was the traditional “learning curve” that sharpened our skills and allowed us to improve our numbers with each expedition.

October 2025, January, February and May 2026 were the 4 moments when we flew into Tabuk with stomachs in knots and absolutely no clear idea of what we were truly getting ourselves into.

Still, in true Flying Sharks fashion, fear slowly gave way to talent.

This video (below) captures the absolute peak of that “gift”, perfected over decades by Nuno (right), Pedro (centre) and Rui (left), who pulled out 1, 2, 3 beautiful Monodactylus in such flawless succession that it took me about 20 takes to finally capture this unique moment on film.

Our final expedition was an explosion of competence that genuinely left me emotional when I departed this troop one week before the end of the operation, because the Nordic Aquarium Conference was already waiting for me in Sweden.

Here’s a massive shout-out to Nuno Rodrigues and Rui Guedes, my inseparable partners since the very first moment of this madness. Another to Miguel Antunes, who compensates for his inexplicable alcohol abstinence — something deeply difficult to understand in this profession — with an almost supernatural ability to get fish into the net.

Another huge thank you to Zé Pedro and Inês Gaspar, who made sure the logistics never skipped a beat. And one big fat hug to Diogo Costa and Pedro Reis, who joined us from cold Iceland and remote Corvo Island, respectively.

To all of you: thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

And of course, to our clients — and friends — Aaron, Andrew, Alberto, Faisal and Aldrin, the true “A-Team” we had the privilege of dazzling throughout these absolutely insane months.

Now… maybe it’s finally time to sleep for a week.

…or maybe not.

He! He! He!

The post That’s a Wrap on Saudi Arabia appeared first on Flying Sharks.

Graham is about to begin his professional practice in Sagres, Portugal, where he’ll be working on the photo-identification of cetaceans, but he also came to us with an even cooler idea… using drones to collect whale and dolphin blow samples for DNA analysis!

Yep. Science fiction stuff.

This methodology has already shown promising results in projects such as the eWhale program, allowing researchers to track biomarkers and gather valuable genetic information from individual animals without invasive techniques. Combined with more than a decade of photo-identification data, this could become a very powerful conservation tool for understanding cetacean populations.

Needless to say that, once we read the words “drones”, “DNA”, and “cetaceans”, there wasn’t much left to discuss, so we happily transferred Graham 300 euros to help support this project and get those flying whale snot collectors into action!

Go, Graham!

And remember: if the whales start demanding privacy rights after the DNA tests… we were never involved.

:p

The post Research Fund 24/04 :: Graham Patterson appeared first on Flying Sharks.

Many thanks to our good friends David and Jens for the warm welcome and flawless organization. It was also fantastic to reconnect with so many colleagues, partners, suppliers and fellow fishy aficionados from the Nordic regions.

During the conference we had the opportunity to share some of Flying Sharks’ latest adventures, namely our recent operations in Chile and Saudi Arabia, both of which concluded in truly spectacular fashion — exactly the kind of madness we seem unable to avoid these days!

Naturally, a few exciting future projects also found their way into the conversations, including the fascinating Hemari project involving porbeagle sharks in the Faroe Islands. Yes, ‘porbeagle’, Lamna nasus, you read that right.

Something tells us this one is going to generate a few cool stories for future newsletters…

We’re already looking forward to returning to this exciting young conference in the years ahead and catching up once again with all the wonderful people who make this industry such a unique and passionate community.

Stay tuned, because this very cool adventure is only just beginning!

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