WoRMS Top Ten Marine Species of 2025: nominations open!

WoRMS Top Ten Marine Species of 2025 (1)

WoRMS, the World Register of Marine Species, opens again the nominations for the Top Ten Marine Species of 2025, with the objective to highlight to the wider public the discovery of numerous new marine species made every year, and the crucial job of taxonomists.

In fact, the release of the list coincides with the World Taxonomist Appreciation Day, 19 March.

The 2024 edition winners spanned the tree of life, from worms to isopods to anglerfish (learn more here: https://www.marinespecies.org/worms-top-ten/2024).

This year, nominations will be collected via this online form: https://form.vliz.be/en/form/worms-top-ten-2025-nomination. In order to be eligible for nomination, the species must have been validly published in 2025, and must be marine, fossils included.

Nominations must include the PDF of the paper in which the species was described, and at least one good image of the species, including copyright and ownership information.

If you have a compelling story, a species with rare or unusual morphology, an interesting name, or that holds particular importance for various reasons (e.g., toxic, dangerous, medical, conservation target), don’t hesitate to submit your nomination by 25 January 2026!

You can find more details here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/call-nominations-worms-top-ten-marine-trkwe/?trackingId=5CllFojTmxmjIRNMiXujgw%3D%3D

Tracking sharks in the North Sea

Tracking sharks

Researchers from the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) and the Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO) are tagging sharks in the Belgian part of the North Sea to gain insights on their habits. With the support of LifeWatch Belgium and the European Tracking Network (ETN), data gathered through this work might help guide targeted protection and management actions.

By implanting small acoustic transmitters into sharks, researchers are in fact able to track their movements across borders (read this article to see how ETN makes cross-borders science possible). Moreover, they use other techniques such as ultrasound, underwater video systems, and genetics to gain other insights on reproduction, diet, species distribution and more.

So far, they have tagged over 140 typical shark species of the North Sea, like the small-spotted catshark, the starry smooth-hound, and the majestic basking shark.

Despite being top predators, and despite their crucial role in keeping the ecosystem healthy, these species are highly vulnerable due to their slow growth and low reproductive rate. Monitoring them doesn’t only provide information about their health and habits: their presence is also an important indicator of good marine biodiversity in the area.

Read the full article on LifeWatch Belgium and find out the recents results of these studies: https://www.lifewatch.be/news/tracking-sharks-north-sea-better-protection-and-management

“Fish Don’t Know Borders”: how LifeWatch Belgium’s ETN connects research across Europe

ETN

LifeWatch Belgium connects researchers in the field of acoustic telemetry through a collaborative network called ETN (The European Tracking Network). ETN allows them to share the outputs of acoustic receivers and follow animal movements from the rivers to the seas, drawing important insights on how marine life links ecosystems in European waters.

This network, initially including just a few receivers along the Belgian coast, is now one of Europe’s largest monitoring systems, involving more than 600 European researchers who track fish and other aquatic species in order to study their migration, and their movement across borders.

Although the Permanent Belgian Acoustic Received Network receives signals from tagged freshwater, marine, and diadromous fish species in Belgian waters, it shares data through the ETN’s open platform to ensure they are available for researchers all over Europe.

In fact, during their lifespan, fish move between estuaries, coasts, and open seas, regardless of political borders set by humans! Shouldn’t science be able to cross those borders too?

Read the full article on LifeWatch Belgium: https://www.lifewatch.be/news/fish-dont-know-borders-tracking-aquatic-life-across-europe

Underwater marine sounds from the Belgian part of the North Sea: meet SoundLib

SoundLib

The Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), has launched SoundLib, its Marine Sound Library collecting underwater sound data from the Belgian part of the North Sea. The open database counts thousands of recordings and advanced analysis tools, and provides new insights into the region’s highly dynamic and complex acoustic environment.

These data could support scientists, policymakers and the public in understanding how natural and human-made sounds affect marine ecosystems and even create new opportunities for AI-driven research. The database also contributed to the Waves of Resonance artistic project in June (https://www.lifewatch.eu/2025/09/25/waves-of-resonance), that explores the psychological impact of climate change and the therapeutic potential of ocean sounds.

Sound in water travels farther, and faster than outside, and for many marine animals it is the primary way to communicate, navigate, and interact with their environment. The European policy context, for this reason, considers it as a critical environmental parameter and includes it among the eleven descriptors for the assessment of Good Environmental Status of marine waters.

Marine sounds include natural sources, such as rainfall, waves, sediment transport and noises originated by the marine fauna, and human sources, such as ship traffic, seismic surveys and offshore energy production.

Learn more about SouldLib on the LifeWatch Belgium website: https://www.lifewatch.be/news/soundlib-marine-sound-library-belgian-part-north-sea

The psychological impact of marine sounds: meet Waves of Resonance

Waves of Resonance

In June 2025, the European Marine Board launched the sound project “Waves of Resonance”, with the artist Elise Guillaume and her scientific collaborators: Clea Parcerisas (LifeWatch Belgium) and Marine Severin (VLIZ). The Belgian artist works on the interactions between psychology, ecology and notions of care. With Waves of Resonance she explores the psychological impact of climate change and the therapeutic potential of ocean sounds.

The project started during the EMBracing the Ocean artist-in-residence programme under the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development: a unique idea combining a wide range of different sounds, such as singing whales and cracking sea ice, fish and crustaceans, human activities like ship engines and pile-driving, dolphins, seabirds and many others. It also includes sounds normally inaudible to the human ear, with the results of having multi-layered sound installations that aim to strengthen emotional connection to the ocean.

LifeWatch Belgium has played a key role in the project, providing the underwater sound data from its observatory in the Belgian part of the North Sea.

Waves of Resonance also addresses the critical issue of sound pollution and aims to inspire pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours. Throughout the project, Elise also documented the coastal landscape and the scientific recording processes, developing her photographs with seaweed as a low-toxicity alternative.

Find out more on this project: https://www.lifewatch.be/news/waves-resonance-artistic-journey-lifewatch-belgiums-ocean-data

Picture: Acoustic equipment being retrieved with VLIZ acoustic team, North Sea, 2024 © John Janssens & Elise Guillaume

NELOS divers will now access WoRMS from their digital dive log

NELOS divers

NELOS, the Flemish diving federation, has recently integrated WoRMS (the World Register of Marine Species, supported by LifeWatch Belgium), into its internal platform DIVES: a Digital Verification System used to log tens of thousands of dives each year.

This integration marks a very important achievement, because divers will now be able to record the marine species that they come across during their observations, in direct connection with the WoRMS database!

The WoRMS database provides an authoritative and comprehensive list of names of marine organisms, controlled by taxonomic and thematic experts and continuously updated. Its editorial management system, in fact, includes one expert for each taxonomic group, who controls the quality of each entry. The editors can also invite specialists of smaller groups to revise specific species.

An interesting characteristic of the new integration with DIVES, is that the platform adapts to common marine species names used in Dutch, and through a built-in search function, it automatically provides the scientifically correct version of the name.

This integration has a great potential to support future research by becoming a valuable data source, supporting citizen science and marine biodiversity through simple digital tools.

Read more about this on LifeWatch Belgium:

https://www.lifewatch.be/news/nelos-divers-use-worms-digital-dive-log-step-toward-citizen-science

Weever fish sevenfold increase reported by SeaWatch-B might be linked to warmer waters

weever fish

SeaWatch-B (https://www.vliz.be/projects/seawatch-b), the VLIZ citizen science project supported by LifeWatch Belgium, has observed that the weever fish counts were seven times higher this year, compared to the same period of time (April to June) of 2024. This venomous species buries itself in the sand and stings through its dorsal or gill-cover spines, and its surge along the Belgian North Sea coast seems linked to warmer waters.

The aim of the SeaWatch-B beach observation network is to address the lack of reliable long-term data that allow to identify trends in the ever changing landscape of the North Sea. In fact, during the last 50 years, the North Sea has noticeably changed, warming twice as fast as the global average for ocean and seas.

This fast change has affected especially cold-water species, causing an increase in animals and plants originating from the Atlantic Ocean or further south. Through the description and evaluation of the long-term evolution of this shifts, SeaWatch-B can provide science with the necessary data to inform and advise policy.

Trained volunteers have been conducting standardised surveys along various costal transects, four times a year since 2024, to provide data on beach usage, marine life, sea temperatures, pollution and early dune formation, and they will issue a report in 2026.

Read more about the weever fish increase on the LifeWatch Belgium website: https://www.lifewatch.be/news/sevenfold-increase-stinging-weever-fish-observed-seawatch-b

Noise pollution in the North Sea: Marine Environment Service and DG Shipping launch awareness campaign supported by LifeWatch VLIZ

The North Sea is one of the busiest seas in the world. All this human activity creates a lot of noise underwater, that can have harmful consequences for marine mammals and other organisms. This noise pollution originates primarily through shipping, explosive ordnance disposal, sonar, the construction of wind farms, and sand extraction and dredging.

The Marine Environment Service (FPS Public Health) and the Shipping Directorate-General (FPS Mobility), with the support of LifeWatch Belgium (VLIZ), are collaborating on a campaign to raise awareness about underwater noise pollution among the wider public and promote measures, that fortunately exist, to limit noise pollution.

This is a very important objective: for many marine species, such as marine mammals, fish, and even invertebrates, hearing is a crucial sense to survive in the dark underwater environment. Sound waves help these species perform vital functions such as orientation, communication, finding food and reproduction.

In addition, they propagate much more efficiently underwater than in the air, as they are less attenuated and move up to five times faster, posing a real threat to the marine wildlife in the Northern Sea.

The campaign is part of the OSPAR Convention collective actions to reduce noise pollution, that include the application of measures such as improved ship design, reduced vessel speed, a bubble curtain during pile driving, or the gradual startup of sonar devices or machinery used for pile driving.

VLIZ, the Flanders Marine Institute, is contributing to this plan with the help of LifeWatch Belgium and currently developing a library of long-term underwater sounds from the North Sea, set to launch in the summer of 2025. Well-described sound events will be ingested by the library and available according to the FAIR data principles.

Want to learn more? Read the full article on LifeWatch Belgium: https://www.lifewatch.be/news/noise-pollution-north-sea or visit the SoundLib website.

LifeWatch Belgium: 72 shell species identified in the Big Seashell Survey event

Shells species

The eighth edition of the Big Seashell Survey, held in March, gathered more than 3,500 participants across 400 km of coastline in northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, breaking the previous years’ records!

Participants collected and identified nearly 150,000 shells from 72 different species, with few differences between the three countries, although the cut trough shell, the Atlantic jackknife clam, the banded wedge shell, and the common cockle made it to the top five in all three of them.

The Big Seashell Survey is one of the largest European marine citizen science projects: in Belgium it is coordinated by The Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), in partnership with EOS wetenschap, Natuurpunt, Provincie West-Vlaanderen, Strandwerkgroep, Kusterfgoed, and 10 coastal municipalities.

The examination of thousands of common cockle shells on the Belgian coast led to interesting findings. The cockles’ colour showed that the vast majority of these shells are in fact subfossils: hard remains from decades, or even thousands of years ago. It seems that the currently living cockle populations are, in fact, extremely rare, at least in the regions taken under exam. The blue-gray colour, moreover, seems to be associated with low-oxygen environments where the remains might have been buried, such as clay or organic matter. This was the case for 56% of the examined samples, while the ones in brighter colours might have laid in well-oxygenated environments, like gullies or open beach areas.

If you are curious about the other findings, read the full article on LifeWatch Belgium: https://www.lifewatch.be/news/old-cockles-and-record-number-shells-eighth-edition-big-seashell-survey

Picture from Nancy Fockedey: Cockles in 50 shades of grey and brown: subfossils and fossils from the Holocene and Pleistocene. Source: LifeWatch Belgium (VLIZ)

Join LifeWatch ERIC’s Thematic Services Working Groups

Thematic Services Working Groups

LifeWatch ERIC launches the minisites of the six Thematic Services Working Groups: hubs for knowledge and resources sharing, networking, and collaboration.

Co-developed by the LifeWatch ERIC Common Facilities in collaboration with the National Distributed Centres, they reflect the main priority areas of e-Service construction, and therefore are central to the 2022-2026 Infrastructure Strategic Working Plan.

The Thematic Services Working Groups are coordinated by the LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre and pursue three main objectives:

  • Strengthen collaboration between and within the Common Facilities and the Distributed Centres;
  • Review and update the mapping of the National scientific communities’ research needs in relation to the Thematic Services, and identify priority areas for development;
  • Promote and coordinate the participation of Distributed Centre research institutions in Horizon Europe and other European and international projects, on behalf of and in collaboration with LifeWatch ERIC, to co-design and co-construct the priority services with other key actors in the biodiversity and ecosystem research landscape.

The initiative officially took off in 2024, marked by a series of Thematic Service Workshops hosted by the National Distributed Centres, engaging local communities from the start.

Today, we are glad to present the Working Groups on the website: six dedicated entry points, each focused on a specific topic and open for participation!
Each page offers a brief overview of the scope and objectives, as well as a timeline of activities, including some future actions already planned.

The activities in each group are led by a coordinator from one of our National Distributed Centres, who will oversee the follow-up of its activities.

Moreover, the abstract submission topics for this year’s ‘BEeS’, LifeWatch ERIC’s Biodiversity & Ecosystem eScience Conference, have been selected in alignment with those of the Working Groups, given that they had been previously identified as key priority areas by the National Distributed Centres.

What are you waiting for? Find out more about the Working Groups, join forces with fellow experts and contribute to biodiversity and ecosystem research!