Whales and dolphins are incredible animals - most people would probably agree with that. Though, little do most people know about these astonishing mammals and the threats they are constantly facing. I´ve put together some facts and some general info ...

Since Dahab is one of the world´s main spots for freediving, almost every day I see freedivers around here practicing their skills (if I actually just look to my right now, I can see three different floating devices around 30-40m ...

After Gülsah had left, I joined the Masbat Bay Conservation Projekct of RSEC (www.redsea-ec.org), which concentrates on the study of this beautiful Bay in the Center of Dahab, stretching from Mashraba in the South to Lighthouse in the North. The surveys ...

In 1986 a moratorium on commercial whaling was adopted by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to pause the excessive whaling that had been done in the previous decades and to prevent a collapse of several whale species. However, it did ...

The Marine Stewardship Council MSC logo certifies sustainable fisheries - at least that´s what we are being told. It is always tricky, if the one that certifies the fishery or a company also receives money for each sold item carrying ...

Our oceans are facing threats from many sides. Pollution, overfishing and the acidiation of the water are among the most serious ones. During my six months in Dahab, I was able to dive a lot and to admire the beauty ...

This is a incredible story and very touching! During a day out on the boat some guys find a humpback whale that appears to be dead. They monitor the situation for a couple of minutes, when the whale suddenly breathes. As one ...

Among threats like pollution &  rising acidification, overfishing is surely one of the most serious dangers concering the health of our oceans, the biodiversity and therefore our planet. Since the industrial revolution, everything has changed. Once we lived in accordance ...

Freitag Morgen um 00:20 Uhr tauchte der Ägypter Ahmed Gabr aus den warmen Gewässern des Golfs von Aqaba auf und hatte historisches geschafft: niemand zuvor war mit einen offenen Tauchsystem tiefer in die völlige Dunkelheit getaucht als er. Der ehemalige ...

Wondering how whales contribute to climate stabilization? Well, let me give a short explanation just before you watch the video from Sustainable human! If you are not into biology you might not have heard the term trophic cascade. It describes ...

Mid of November I spent eight days on Helgoland, Germany's only real high seas island, around 46km offshore the German mainland. I was there as part of the ISATEC cohort of 2014, studying the local aquatic flora and fauna and learning ...

Sharks have been around for a very long time. They´ve been roaming our oceans for over 400 Million years – an incredible time span and way ahead the first appearance of dinosaurs 230 million years ago. Over time they have ...

When I heard the MV Bob Barker as well as the MV Sam Simon, two of the four larger Sea Shepherd vessels are coming to Bremen I knew I had to go there. I´ve been following their actions for a ...

One of our last courses in our ISATEC Master Program was the “Law of the Sea” lectured by Dr. Ximena Hinrichs, the Head of the Legal Office at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. As a part of this ...

Overfishing describes the process of taking out more fish out the sea than can naturally be reproduced. If fishing pressure is too high, i.e. to many vessels are out at sea and simply fish too much, a big portion of a ...

Mangrove forests harbor a diverse group of trees capable of growing in marine intertidal environments. They do not rely on saltwater but are able to tolerate it. According to the IUCN, there are 70 species of mangroves, of which 11 ...

Among being called the soft coral capital of the world and offering some amazing magazine-like coconut palm tree beaches, Fiji is well known for its sharkfeeding dives in the Beqa Channel just off the main island Viti Levu. While sharkfeeding ...

After another incredible dive yesterday with Mike and his team from Beqa Adventure Divers watching Fiji`s enormous Bull Sharks, I had the pleasure to sit down with a couple of other shark researchers and conservationists. One of them was Rick MacPherson who is ...

Tropical coral reefs, the ‘rainforests of the sea’, represent one of the most biologically rich ecosystems on our planet. Though they cover less than 1% of the ocean floor, they support around 25% of all marine life. These diverse collections ...

UPDATE: Good News!! All recommendations were adopted by CITES!! Silkies, threshers and devil rays are now listed on Appendix II ! At the moment representatives of 183 member parties are gathering in Johannesburg, South Africa, to attend to the Convention on ...

A recent paper by Andrea Haas, Tony Fedler and Edward Brooks assessed the financial value that the shark diving industry in the Bahamas creates and concluded that in 2014 about 113 million Dollars were added to the Bahamian economy, representing ...

Edit 2019: Fishact was formerly known by the name The Black Fish. Recently I spent two days with the NGO Fishact documenting their citizen inspector workshop in Hamburg. Besides the theoretical part of the workshop, where fish species and other ...

During our last expedition to the Pacific in February/March I got the chance to pay the team of Beqa Adventure Divers a few visits and join their shark diving. I had great memories from the shark dives I did there ...

Finally, after more than a years work excluding the actual fieldwork itself, my first scientific publication was published yesterday in Ecology & Evolution. Titled "Discovery of a multispecies shark aggregation and parturition area in the Ba Estuary, Fiji Islands", it ...

In the middle of September, I boarded a plane to Palermo in Sicily to meet up with a team of activists of Fishact. Along with the director of the German branch of the organization Valeska Diemel (read an interview here), ...

Readers of this blog will know that I have written and photographed extensively about Fiji's sharks in the Shark Reef Marine Reserve. Coinciding with my return to Fiji just a few days ago, Beqa Adventure Divers has yet again created ...

Having grown up in Germany, New Zealand has always been a very far-away place that I wanted to visit. A few of my friends back home had gone and spent time/work & travel there and spoke highly of this country ...

While being in Vanuatu in early 2019 I got an interesting email from the US office of the World Wildlife Fund asking about my availability to document an upcoming project. Together with the Pacific office, they were planning a second ...

A few weeks ago, a friend called and ask whether I would be keen to participate in an art project which was curated by him. Without knowing too much detail, I was keen to join as currently times are pretty ...

When I recently came across the latest scientific paper coming out of Fiji's Shark Reef Marine Reserve I thought this might be a great chance to write a short article summarising the findings making it more accessible to a larger ...

When going through my Youtube Channel a few days ago, I noticed that my Physioshark documentary had hit about 97k views! Wow! Not long ago, and I was tweeting the documentary to reach 50k and now this! Seems like the ...

The last few months have been pretty intense, with lots of different assignments, travel and the usual daily ups and downs. After three years in Fiji, I flew home to Germany in May for a much-needed visit to see friends ...

This series of posts is about an 11-day liveaboard trip throughout the Galápagos Islands aboard the Deep Blue with the Master Liveaboard Fleet. Having shot several thousand images, I thought to share a few more here than on my other social ...

This series of posts is about an 11-day liveaboard trip throughout the Galápagos Islands aboard the Deep Blue with the Master Liveaboard Fleet. Having shot several thousand images, I thought to share a few more here than on my other ...

This series of posts is about an 11-day liveaboard trip throughout the Galápagos Islands aboard the Deep Blue with the Master Liveaboard Fleet. Having shot several thousand images, I thought to share a few more here than on my other social ...

This series of posts is about an 11-day liveaboard trip throughout the Galápagos Islands aboard the Deep Blue with the Master Liveaboard Fleet. Having shot several thousand images, I thought to share a few more here than on my other social ...

This series of posts is about an 11-day liveaboard trip throughout the Galápagos Islands aboard the Deep Blue with the Master Liveaboard Fleet. Having shot several thousand images, I thought to share a few more here than on my other social ...

This series of posts is about an 11-day liveaboard trip throughout the Galápagos Islands aboard the Deep Blue with the Master Liveaboard Fleet. Having shot several thousand images, I thought to share a few more here than on my other social ...

This series of posts is about an 11-day liveaboard trip throughout the Galápagos Islands aboard the Deep Blue with the Master Liveaboard Fleet. Having shot several thousand images, I thought to share a few more here than on my other social ...

This series of posts is about an 11-day liveaboard trip throughout the Galápagos Islands aboard the Deep Blue with the Master Liveaboard Fleet. Having shot several thousand images, I thought to share a few more here than on my other social ...

This series of posts is about an 11-day liveaboard trip throughout the Galápagos Islands aboard the Deep Blue with the Master Liveaboard Fleet. Having shot several thousand images, I thought to share a few more here than on my other social ...

Marine turtles are of significant cultural importance in Fiji. They play a part in many traditional ceremonies and are the subject of many stories and local legends. Turtles have been and still are hunted and consumed in many parts of ...

My recent photo and film assignment with WWF Pacific was all about turtles: Fiji's turtle nesting season was in full swing, and the idea was to join several turtle monitoring teams in the field and document their activities in three ...

After we had returned from Kavewa Island and spent a night at the WWF headquarters in Labasa, our next destination was Yadua Island to the west of Vanua Levu, Fiji's second largest island. More specifically, we planned to camp one ...

After two very short days in Suva, Ravai and I met again Sunday morning to fly to Vunisea in Kadavu, where we would continue our journey to our last destination: Dravuni Island. There are no direct flights to Kadavu from ...