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1st January 2012
Happy New Year! And what a start to the year, with the Behavioural Ecology group leading a new research programme, QBEX (Quantifying Benefits and Impacts of Fishing Exclusion Zones around Marine Renewable Energy Installations), which starts today and is funded by NERC and Defra. Big new year greetings to our collaborators on this grant in Exeter, Lowestoft, Plymouth and Orkney – let’s make it a great one!
15th December 2011
The Behavioural Ecology group had a great Christmas meal at Chambers Restaurant in Plymouth. Christmas greetings to all our collaborators and colleagues!
13th December 2011
“Science of the Blue Planet” Oceans 2025 meeting at the Institute of Physics in London. MBA researchers gave posters and presentations including a talk by David on “Fish responses to environmental changes in European Seas”. This was the final meeting in the 5-year long strategic research programme called Oceans 2025. The programme involving all the major UK marine laboratories and marine-focused university researchers has been an unqualified success, with important discoveries made and key papers published including many in Nature. This science delivery model is clearly one that works.
9th November 2011
Today was the “Advances in the Analysis of Animal Movement” meeting organized by the British Ecological Society and the International Biometrical Society at Charles Darwin House in London. David Sims gave an invited talk on “Testing for Biological Lévy Flights: Theory, empirical patterns and potential process”.
31st October 2011
David Sims gave an invited talk (“From 1 minute to 100 years: Changes in the behaviour, distribution and abundance of fish across local to European shelf scales”) in a meeting organized by the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers on the “New Challenges and Opportunities in Marine Fisheries Science” at Fishmongers’ Hall, London. A thought provoking day of talks were heard including plenery lectures by the European Commissioner for Fisheries Dr Maria Damanaki, and the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor Professor Sir John Beddington.
19th – 21st September 2011
The only way is Essex! Nick Humphries and David Sims gave presentations at the Mathematical and Theoretical Ecology conference at the University of Essex. It proved to be an excellent meeting where biologists and ecologists discussed ideas with physicists and maths folks, all good.
15th September 2011
Our paper on “Continental Shelf-Wide Response of a Fish Assemblage to Rapid Warming of the Sea” was published today in the journal CURRENT BIOLOGY, receiving good coverage in The Guardian newspaper and New Scientist magazine.
12 – 19th June 2011
David Sims travelled to Sapporo in Japan to give the Plenery Lecture at the 1st International Fish Telemetry Conference. David’s Lecture was “Where, what and why?
Understanding behaviour patterns of marine fish from electronic tagging and track analysis”. The meeting was very good, with fascinating talks from speakers from over 25 countries, and great socials, wonderful food, some fine trips out, including a sunken volcano and the now infamous Sapporo Brewery…
2nd – 4th June 2011
Happy Birthday to you…. 30th Birthday for the Lough Hyne Marine Reserve..Viki Wearmouth travelled to Skibbereen, Co. Cork, Ireland to give an invited talk (Twenty years of research into the behavioural ecology of the small-spotted catshark at Lough Hyne) at the 30th Anniversary Conference.
1st June 2011
A Royal Engagement! David Sims attended the 90th Birthday celebration of the MBA’s Patron, HRH The Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh at the Royal Society in London. During conversation before lunch Prince Philip showed great interest in our work on basking sharks mentioning he’d seen many off Scotland from the Royal Yacht Britannia.
13–27th May 2011
Tagging cuttlefish in Torbay. The group have been busy these past two weeks tagging and tracking adult cuttlefish using our radio-linked acoustic hydrophone array. Cuttlefish movements on a seagrass spawning area were tracked for the first time to help understand when and how often they use these protected habitats. Thanks to the Living Coasts team for hosting our logistics.
7–10th April 2011
Ah, Italy in Spring, espressos all round! MBA researchers gave presentations on their cephalopod behaviour research at the EuroCeph 2011 meeting in Vica Equense near Naples. Great meeting organized by Graziano Fiorito and Paul Andrews in a great location – the hotel was perched on the clifftop road to Sorrento with amazing views of the Bay of Naples, Capri and the quiet (thankfully) Vesuvius.
22nd March 2011
David Sims gave an invited seminar (“Hunting high and low: Lévy flights and the search behaviour of predators”) at Queen’s University Belfast, School of Biological Sciences. Had interesting discussions, thanks to Chris Harrod for the invite.
16th February 2011
David Sims gave an evening seminar on marine predator behaviour and Levy flights to the Oxford University Scientific Society. A great time was had, really interesting questions and stimulating discussions. Thanks to Irwin Said for the invite.
3rd February 2011
The group’s ongoing research on the interactions between longline fishing vessels (using Vessel Monitoring System tracking data) and the modelled movements of a by-catch population (e.g. shark) received its first public airing this month when Nick Humphries and Nuno Queiroz presented some initial results at the Marine Protected Areas symposium at ZSL London. The modelled population is used as a probe to gain a deeper understanding of fishing fleet/shark interactions. The results highlight the importance of understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics of interactions if high seas Marine Protected Areas are to be effective in reducing the by-catch of sharks by longline vessels targeting swordfish.
1st January 2011
Happy New Year! ‘Discover’ Magazine selects our NATURE paper “Environmental context explains Levy and Brownian movement patterns of marine predators” as one of their top 100 stories of 2010. And feature us on the front cover of the issue. The top story was the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the 100th story was NASA’s ultraviolet images of the sun; our story was somewhere in between.
http://discovermagazine.com/columns/top-100-stories-of-2010
17th December 2010
The Sims Lab ploughed through snowdrifts and skated on thick ice (makes a change from our usual escapades on thin ice) to partake of fine French food at Chloe’s Restaurant in Plymouth. Merry Christmas!
15th December 2010
The legendary MBA Christmas Lunch was today. What a feast was had in the Common Room, thanks to Marilyn, Michelle and co. Turns out the fish group did well in the quiz too (for once), coming second. And afterwards a drink or two in Pete’s parlour, the notorious “Room 62”.
24th November 2010
A marine biologist infiltrates the Institute of Physics! David Sims gave a research talk on Levy flights and marine predator search behaviour as part of the “Physics in the Animal World” event at the IOP in London. There were great talks on how eagles control flight, animal iridescence, and high-altitude insect migration. Well done to the IOP’s Environmental Physics group for bringing biologists and physicists together.
10th November 2010
It’s always good to have a bath at least once a year. So, David Sims visited Bath University to give a seminar on Levy flights and the search behaviour of marine predators.
15th September 2010
Our short paper on the longnose skate (Dipturus oxyrinchus) has recently been published online early in Conservation Genetics. It’s the first description of significant genetic differences between populations of a large, ICUN-listed skate species. It also strengthens calls to upgrade the conservation status of this species, which has already disappeared from significant parts of its former range.
19th August 2010
Today our NATURE paper on Levy flights in marine predators (24 June 2010) was selected for Faculty of 1000 Biology. http://www.f1000biology.com/article/id/4324985
12th July 2010
Say hello to new group member Olivia Durkin (see ‘People’ page), coming to us after swanning around studying coral reefs in Thailand.
26-30 July 2010
“Fish and Climate Change”, the Fisheries Society of the British Isles (FSBI) international symposium was convened by Chris Harrod and David Sims this week in Belfast. It was a great meeting, and attended by 150 scientists from 22 countries across 5 continents. There were excellent keynote lectures from John Magnuson, Hans Poertner, Nils Chr Stenseth, Malcolm Elliott and Keith Brander and the regular presentations were of such high quality. And what a friendly meeting, perhaps one the friendliest we’d been to. Thanks to all involved for making it possible.
23rd July 2010
Congratulations to DR Nuno Queiroz on successfully defending his Ph.D today!!
25-30 June 2010
Group members programmed and deployed 17 pop-off satellite archival tags on mature and pregnant blue and mako sharks in the central Atlantic Ocean.... now we wait for them to report back. Special thanks to Gonzalo.
24th June 2010
Our paper - Environmental context explains Levy and Brownian movement patterns of marine predators - was published today in NATURE. It was accompanied by a News & Views article by Gandhi Viswanathan. Well done to all six group members involved in the paper especially Nick Humphries, and also to our great collaborators on this work from Honolulu, La Jolla, Zurich, Cork, Belfast, Aberdeen and Porto.
7-11 June 2010
Italian Society of Marine Biology (SIBM) meeting in Rapallo nr Genoa, on the beautiful Portofino coast. MBA scientists Matt Frost, Olivia Langmead, Colin Brownlee and David Sims gave keynote lectures, with further presentations from Viki W, Becky S, Niall and Nick H. Interesting meeting, a great boat trip to Portofino with lots of swimming and snorkelling!
3rd June 2010
Group members gave presentations at the PMSP Annual Science Meeting on Global environmental change at the University of Plymouth. A really interesting meeting with great keynotes from John Spicer (UoP), Andrew Watson (UEA) and Andrew Clarke (BAS). Well done to the MBA organisers...Viki, Andrea and Nova.
28th May 2010
Welcome to Stefania Vittori from the University of Cagliari on Sardinia! She is training with us for the next 3 months through the Erasmus placement programme.
16-22 May 2010
Group members Nick H and David flew to Faro to satellite tag some ocean sunfish, the world’s heaviest bony fish. After some flight delays they eventually met up with Nuno and Lara, who drove down from Porto. At 5.30 the next morning they all embarked on the good ship Tuna and over the course of a few days tagged 7 large Mola as planned... here comes the sun, do do do doo, here comes the sun I say... with thanks to Se and Joao!
11-13 May 2010
The MBA ecology group attended the NERC Oceans 2025 Annual Science Meeting in Plymouth, contributing to the animal tracking technology session.
7th April 2010
David Sims gave an invited seminar at the famous Stazione Zoologica-Anton Dohrn in the beautiful city of Naples in Italy on the topic of Levy flights in marine predators. The weather was wonderfully warm during the three-day visit, the food as fantastic as ever, and the SZ scientists so welcoming. Thanks to Sandra Hochscheid for hosting.
6th January 2010
Today the group deployed 6 seabed landers, each housing an acoustic receiver for long-term monitoring of fish movements, from the MBA ship in Whitsand Bay, Cornwall. The lander array will collect space use data from tagged fish (plaice, turbot, rays, dogfish) for up to 1 year with remote data retrieval at monthly intervals using a shipborne acoustic modem.
9 October 2009
First GPS tracking of pelagic fish. Our group\'s paper on using Fastloc GPS tags to track ocean sunfish was published today in PLoS ONE (\"Long-term GPS Tracking of Ocean Sunfish Mola mola Offers a New Direction in Fish Monitoring\" doi:101371/journal.pone.0007351).
For news features see New Scientist magazine \"Track Fish Across the Ocean\" 17 October 2009, p. 21, or online at:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427305.200-smart-gps-tags-track-sunfish.html
1st October 2009
Vanshing Fish Stocks. As part of the MBA\'s 125th Anniversary celebrations, Professors David Sims (MBA) and Callum Roberts (University of York) were interviewed at the Fishmongers Hall in London.
Hear about the future of fish at:
http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/multimedia/story.aspx?id=550
or just go to:
www.planetearth.ac.uk
24 September 2009
MBA 125th Anniversary Science Meeting at the Fishmonger\'s Hall, London. We celebrated the MBA\'s birthday with a day of talks in the four main areas of MBA science from eminent speakers including Sir Crispin Tickell (Oxford University) and Sir Tim Hunt (Cancer Research UK). Over 100 invitees attended which contributed to it being a great day.
2 - 6 AUGUST 2009
The first international meeting on basking shark biology, ecology and conservation was held in Port Erin on the Isle of Man – “Basking sharks: A global perspective”. David S was a keynote speaker and gave three other presentations (definite over-exposure!) in what was an altogether excellent meeting. Workshop-style discussions were held on conservation, tagging and genetics among others, and clear progress was made to further international collaborative research. There was lots of socialising and also a Manx ceilidh, where questionable dance routines were executed with some enthusiasm!
Thanks to the organisers and the SaveOurSeas Foundation, Isle of Man Government and numerous other sponsors, including the MBA, for what was an excellent meeting that will have such a long-lasting positive influence on the progress of science in this field.
28 - 30 JULY 2009
The group participated in the CLIOTOP (Climate Impacts on Top Predators) workshop at Swansea University to help identify how predator responses to climate change can be better predicted. Ironically, it rained very heavily!
23 – 25 JULY 2009
Searching for answers. David S was an invited speaker at the workshop on “Animal Movement and Search Strategies: From Empirical Data to Modelling” hosted by the University of Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences and the Bristol Centre for Applied Nonlinear Mathematics. A really excellent meeting bringing together biologists, experimental psychologists, mathematicians, neuroscientists and physicists, and with so much constructive discussion. We\'re moving forward...
28 JUNE – 1 JULY 2009
Presentations on shark sexual segregation and on search strategies were given by Viki and Nick H at the Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) Annual Meeting in Glasgow within the symposium “Biology of Elasmobranchs: from genes to ecophysiology and behaviour”.
25 MAY - 7 JUNE 2009
The group were all at sea for two weeks attaching satellite transmitters and satellite-linked archival tags to blue sharks off southern Portugal. The cruises were successful with male and female sharks now being tracked in near real time. So nobody feeling blue after all...
18 MAY 2009
Fast fish! Shortfin mako sharks have been fitted with satellite-linked archival transmitters in the Central North Atlantic to track the movements of this threatened species. The project is a collaboration between UK, Portuguese and Spanish researchers and is funded by the Save Our Seas Foundation.
11-23 MAY 2009
Viki Wearmouth in North-west Scotland to deploy electronic tags on common skate, which can get huge (over 80 kg and 2 m long). In search of the real big mac...
23-24 APR. 2009
MBA Residential Council Meeting. Appraisals!
22 APR. 2009
MBA Annual Science Meeting at Citadel Hill, part of the MBA's celebration of its 125th Anniversary. A full programme of presentations with both historical perspectives of MBA science and current research. Did you know 11 Nobel Prize winners have carried out research at MBA, including such luminaries as A.V. Hill, Henry Dale, Alan Hodgkin, Andrew Huxley and Bernard Katz.
15-16 APR. 2009
Members of the group put on a marine and estuarine fish identification course for Environment Agency employees. Good fun, and thanks to Matt and Pete for all their hard work. Oh, and the MBA lunches in the Common Room were superb - thanks to Marilyn and Michelle.
30-31 MAR. 2009
Viki Wearmouth and David Sims attend the first South West Animal Behaviour meeting organised by Sean Rands at the University of Bristol. A really good event, looking forward to the next one.
26 MAR. 2009
Visit made to the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge to give a research seminar "Levy flights and the search behaviour of marine predators". No snow.
9-14 MAR. 2009
National Science & Engineering Week. MBA hold an open lab with interactive exhibits for over 1000 school children and open to the public on the Saturday.
24 FEB. 2009
avid Sims delivered his inaugural lecture as professor - "Hunting tactics: how sharks and other predators find prey" - at the Upper Sherwell Lecture Theatre, University of Plymouth. He survived.
19 FEB. 2009
Research paper "Sexual segregation of pelagic sharks and the potential threat from fisheries" published in Biology Letters. The paper describes the discovery of a 'sexual line in the sea' between male and female mako sharks in the South Pacific Ocean and that this segregation spans a fishing intensity gradient that may lead to more rapid declines in shark populations.
5 FEB. 2009
David Sims travelled to York (through limmense amounts of snow!) to give a research seminar "Levy flights and the search behaviour of top predators" to the University's Department of Biology. Great time with the Complex Systems group.
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