The Adriatic Sea is an enclosed basin threatened by marine pollution due to its hydrographic features and anthropogenic pressure. Although zooplankton has been worldwide regarded as an immediate warning signal of contamination, limited information is available on the contamination of these organisms at the Adriatic level. Hence, this study provides comprehensive data on the presence and levels of multiple pollutants in zooplankton collected from 46 locations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe expansion of the world's merchant fleet poses a great threat to the ocean's biodiversity. Collisions between ships and marine megafauna can have population-level consequences for vulnerable species. The Endangered whale shark (Rhincodon typus) shares a circumglobal distribution with this expanding fleet and tracking of movement pathways has shown that large vessel collisions pose a major threat to the species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLakes are essentially interlinked to humans as they provide water for drinking, agriculture, industrial and domestic purposes. The upsurge of plastic usage, its persistence, and potential detrimental effects on organisms cause impacts on the trophic food web of freshwater ecosystems; this issue, however, still needs to be explored. Zooplankton worldwide is commonly studied as an indicator of environmental risk in aquatic ecosystems for several pollutants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFZooplankton has been intensively used as bioindicators of water pollution at global level, however, only few comprehensive studies have been conducted from the Mediterranean Sea and manly dated back to the 1970s. To redress the urgent need for updated data, this study provides information on the presence and levels of contaminants in zooplankton from the Tyrrhenian Sea. Although banned, both PCBs (46.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe bowmouth guitarfish () is among the most endangered of marine vertebrates, and evidence of severe declines and localized extinctions has been reported. Yet its life history and ecology suffer from a lack of scientific attention due to the scarcity and unpredictable movements of the species. By collecting opportunistic records from 2015 to 2023 during diving activities, this study describes for the first time the occurrence of a predictable aggregation of in the Gulf of Tadjoura (Djibouti).
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