"The Sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in it's net of wonder forever." Never before and since (with exception of BBC2's - Blue Planet's Sir David Attenborough ) has one man been so influential as the late Commandant Cousteau in taking us onto his exploration voyages around the Sea's and Oceans of the world. He has shown the intricate secrets of the Oceans to millions, if not billions and still does till today. But he has also showed us 'humanity' and it's behavior on the environment, sometimes even in first person. I got to know about Cousteau's world through the works of 'Didi' Frederic Dumas - Le Monde du Silence. At age 10 I moved to the North Sea and from then on the Sea and I became inseparable; due to this passion the man had instilled in me. Many continents and Oceans later (I am now 47) I...

The Fanfin Seadevil deep-sea anglerfish has been caught mating on camera for the first time. This beauty is an “apparently gravid” – pregnant, or egg-laden – female with a sexually parasitic dwarf male attached to her belly. She’s about 16 centimetres in length, linked to a three centimetre male. To reproduce, a male anglerfish has to locate a female in the deep sea and attach himself to her, leading to a permanent fusion of tissues and the interconnection of their two circulatory systems. In short: this guy’s hooked. Kirsten and Joachim Jakobsen took this shot on their LULA1000 submersible vehicle at a depth of 800 metres “in a zone characterized by steep, partially vertical walls" just off the south slope of São Jorge Island, Azores. The vehicle is able to take quality photos and videos at depths of up to 1,000 metres. “It's basically a propelled deep-sea camera with the camera...

Our strategy centers on empowering and collaborating with those on the frontlines of reef conservation. Our Reef Resilience Network , for example, connects marine resource managers around the world and provides information and training opportunities to maximize conservation and restoration efforts. Similarly, our work with fishermen in the Caribbean , the Solomon Islands and other regions is also demonstrating that a more sustainable approach to fishing sustains reef ecosystems and in turn leads to better fishing yields in the long term. Well-managed, healthy reefs are proving more resilient to the wider effects of climate change. But we're also finding more unlikely allies in the business community. The tourism industry offers a good example. Globally, the tourism industry derives $36 billion in annual revenue from coral reefs; the Conservancy's Mapping Ocean Wealth initiative is helping to identify where and how reefs generate tourism's value and offering more incentives for conservation. And one...

Despite having evolved some 250 million years ago, sixgill sharks are still some of the most mysterious creatures living in the oceans. So elusive are these deep-sea predators that researchers have only just figured out that there is a new species  living in the Atlantic. Sixgill sharks are unusual among sharks for being the only extant species to have an extra pair of gill slits (while a few others have yet another pair still). The sixgills have long been split into two species – the bluntnose sixgill shark (Hexanchus griseus) that can live 2,500 meters (8,200 feet) beneath the surface and the bigeye sixgill shark (Hexanchus nakamurai) that is smaller and tends to live closer to the surface, although still out of the reach of most biologists.   The bigeye sixgill has been found in most major oceans, and until now was considered a single species. But a new paper reveals that the sharks...