Ten species – including hammerheads, tope, and shortfin mako – will now be strictly protected under the Barcelona Convention
The EU has finally voted in favour of strictly protecting ten threatened species of sharks and rays in the Mediterranean Sea, under the Barcelona Convention.

Plastic pollution off the northwest coast of North America is reaching the level of the notoriously polluted North Sea, according to a new study led by a researcher at the University of British Columbia.
The study, published online in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, examined stomach contents of beached northern fulmars on the coasts of British Columbia, Canada, and the states of Washington and Oregon, U.S.A.
"Like the canary in the coal mine, northern fulmars are sentinels of plastic pollution in our oceans," says Stephanie Avery-Gomm, the study's lead author and a gr

The Indian Ocean archipelago of the Maldives announced at the Rio+20 summit it would create the world's biggest marine reserve to protect its fisheries and biodiversity.
"I would like to announce today Maldives will become the first country to become a marine reserve," President Mohamed Waheed said in a speech.
"It will become the single largest marine reserve in the world. This policy will allow only sustainable and eco-friendly fishing.

A carpet and a petrol can were among the items Newquay Dive recovered from the waters during its second Dive Against Debris.
The event targeted the reef underneath the Headland and Little Fistral Beach.
During two dives in four hours the team found eight bags of rubbish weighing in at a total of 16kg.
Members of the Dive Newquay club in the UK also collected miscellaneous pieces of debris including rubber, plastics and fishing lead.
Organisers and dive instructors James Taylor and Veronika Kruse said they were pleased with the outcome.
"The

Venezuela set forth a series of measures this week to protect sharks within its waters.

The agreement, the first of its kind to address the global conservation of sharks, was signed by Richard Benyon on behalf of the UK and a number of its Overseas Territories including the Falklands and South Georgia. Adopted under the Convention of Migratory Species it will help develop management measures to protect threatened species such as basking, longfin mako and whale sharks.
Many of these sharks are not only found in UK waters, but in the waters of British Overseas Territories making UK involvement crucial in ensuring these animals get the protection they need.

European politicians have agreed a commitment to ban the "discarding" of usable fish at sea, but were criticised for failing to take strong action to tackle overfishing.
Fisheries ministers meeting to discuss moves to reform the policy which governs all European fishing fleets have agreed there should be an end to discards but no firm date was set for bringing in the ban.
Provisional dates published by the EU council would see discards banned for Pelagic fisheries such as mackerel and herring by January 1 2014.
And a ban on discards in whitefish fisheries such as cod

World leaders have made pitiful progress on their guarantee to protect global oceans from overfishing and other threats.
In a paper published today (Friday 15th June) in Science, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and world renowned researchers have reviewed commitments made by governments to protect the world's oceans and shown that there has been little success over the past 20 years.

The Australian government announced Thursday that it is creating the world’s largest network of marine reserves, a patchwork of protected areas covering more than 1.1 million square miles of ocean.

A major milestone was reached today in the effort to establish Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) along California's coast. In a 3-0 vote, the California Fish and Game Commission (Commission) today approved and adopted regulations for the north coast MPAs, completing the network of MPAs in California's open coastal waters, from Mexico to the Oregon state line. The network of MPAs is the first in the United States to be designed from the ground up as a science-based network, rather than a patchwork of independent protected areas without specific goals and objectives.