Features

Last weekend the annual meeting of the European Elasmobranch Association (EEA) took place in the Bristol Aquarium (UK). Organized this year by the UK-based Shark Trust, a total of around 170 delegates from over 22 different countries attended and there were a total of 69 presentations given over the course of 2.5 days. Organized in 1996 for the first time by its…
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I am very glad and proud to announce that the documentary ‘Hunting the Hammerhead‘ is airing this Sunday on National Geographic in The Netherlands and Belgium. The documentary, presented by Craig O’Connell of the O’Seas Conservation Foundation, will bring you the true magnificence of the Great Hammerhead Shark (Sphyrna mokarran). Every Winter this largest species…
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Expedition to the beautiful Mauritania In West-Africa lies a large country that probably not many Europeans ever heard about, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. I had the privilege to travel to the biggest national park of Mauritania, as you might expect from me by now, for a shark related study (yes, sand sharks..). The Country…
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On Wednesday 9th of March I was asked to tell my story on Dutch tv. In the TV-show L1 Avondgasten I was asked about my passion for sharks, my research studies and my moments underwater with these magnificent animals. The interview allowed me to reach a diverse audience here in The Netherlands to show them…
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As we approach the end of 2015 and we prepare to make the best of 2016, I think it’s always a good time to look back on these 12 months. Like it has been for the last couple of years, there was one theme dominating my work this year: shark research. 2015 started off with…
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It has been two weeks since I came back from a field trip to the Dutch Caribbean and now its time to look back and reflect on how everything worked out. The goal of the trip was to expand the existing network of acoustic receivers in the Dutch Caribbean EEZ and to catch and tag…
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Proud and honored that one of my photographs of a great hammerhead shark (Spyrna mokarran) was published in a book of the World Wildlife Fund (Dutch: Wereld Natuur Fonds). The book called ‘Aarde op 1’ takes its readers around the world in 177 photographs. The book pays a short visit to South-Bimini to get a…
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After our field trip to Statia, we continued our trip to the island of St. Maarten (SXM). However, our time here was limited, we had only four days to deploy an array of eight acoustic receivers and try to tag the first shark for Sint Maarten. Upon arrival at SXM we were met by people…
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Three weeks into my field trip to the Dutch Caribbean, the second island is ready to track sharks: St. Eustatius (or Statia). After Saba, which has had an operating network of receivers to detect tagged sharks for more than a year now, Statia has its own acoustic receiver array in place to track Caribbean reef sharks…
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As my passion for sharks expanded when I was younger, so did my knowledge that The Netherlands is not particularly known for its high elasmobranch abundance and diversity in its European continental waters. We do, however, have some smaller elasmobranchs like the small-spotted catshark (Scyliorhinus canicula), spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias), starry smooth-hound (Mustelus asterias) and the…
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