Brendan John Godley

University of Exeter | UoE · Centre for Ecology and Conservation

Anthropogenic noise (anthrophony) is pervasive in natural soundscapes and has become an important aspect of conservation. While moored sound recorders have aided marine soundscape research, they do not capture the dynamic experiences of animals as they move through underwater soundscapes. This study used animal-borne acoustic recording tags to capt...

Understanding species distribution across habitats and environmental variables is important to inform area-based management. However, observational data are often lacking, particularly from developing countries, hindering effective conservation design. One such data-poor area is the Gulf of Guinea, an understudied and biodiverse region where coasta...

Plastic pollution is now considered globally ubiquitous, irreversible, and a planetary boundary threat. Solutions are urgently needed but their development and application are hampered by the complexity and scale of the issue. System dynamics is a technique used to understand complex behaviours of systems through model building and is useful for co...

Monitoring the movement of plastic into marine food webs is central to understanding and mitigating the plastic pollution crisis. Bioindicators have been a component of the environmental monitoring toolkit for decades, but how, where, and which bioindicators are used in long-term monitoring programs has not yet been assessed. Moreover, these progra...

Marine vertebrates, particularly green sea turtles, are especially vulnerable to plastic pollution through ingestion or entanglement. This study investigated wild juvenile green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) from two Ecuadorian national parks (Galápagos and Machallilla) to assess the prevalence of plastic pollution in their feces and its potential i...

Understanding population connectivity is paramount for effective conservation. While genetic tools have elucidated sea turtle migration patterns, notable data gaps limit our understanding of ocean-wide connectivity, especially regarding east Atlantic green turtles. We characterized the genetic composition of a globally important green turtle foragi...

The loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) has been suggested as a bio-indicator species for plastic pollution. However, detailed investigations in the eastern Mediterranean are limited. Here, we present data from logger-head turtles (2012-2022; n = 131) of which 42.7 % (n = 57) had ingested macroplastic (pieces ≥ 5 mm). Frequency of occurrence (%) wa...

The Eastern Tropical and South-Eastern Pacific region is of global biodiversity importance. At COP26, the governments of Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador committed to the expansion of existing MPAs to create a new Mega MPA, safeguarding the Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor. It offers a profound step forward in conservation efforts...

Dynamic ocean management (DOM), a new frontier in the field of operational ecology for marine resource management, is a means of protecting the dynamic features and species in the ocean by allowing management measures to move and adapt in space and time. Most DOM applications have been implemented within the jurisdictional waters of single nations,...

For the Western Indian Ocean region, there is a significant knowledge gap regarding marine turtle nesting on the continental coast of East Africa. Here we present results from a long-term (2000–2020) community-based monitoring programme in and around Watamu Marine National Park, Kenya, covering 30 km of coastline (c. 6% of the national total). Cons...

Sea turtles are an iconic group of marine megafauna that have been exposed to multiple anthropogenic threats across their different life stages, especially in the past decades. This has resulted in population declines, and consequently many sea turtle populations are now classified as threatened or endangered globally. Although some populations of...

Introduction Loss of biodiversity in marine ecosystems is a globally acknowledged problem. To address this and avoid extinctions, improved conservation is required to protect and restore our oceans. Elasmobranch species are considered the second most threatened vertebrate lineage, with overfishing considered the most important driver of declines. T...

Changes in abundance and distribution of marine top predators can indicate environmental change or anthropogenic pressure requiring management response. Here, we used an extensive dataset (21 years) to conduct a spatial and temporal analysis of grey seal strandings in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, close to the southern edge of the breeding rang...

Global catch rates of sharks and rays from artisanal fisheries are underre-ported, leading to a lack of data on population status. This forms a major barrier to developing effective management plans, such is the case in Central and West Africa. Over 3 years, we undertook the first systematic quantitative assessment of sharks and rays landed by an a...

Assessing abundance and monitoring ecology and population trends are of critical importance for animal species of conservation concern. For sea turtles, annual nest counts represent the most common method of estimating population size. However, to develop a better understanding of population trends, these data need to be complemented by other repro...

Globally, the abundance of microplastics in our oceans is increasing, including within the remote locations of the polar regions. The Barents Sea, which adjoins the Arctic Ocean, is an area of high primary productivity that, owing to the convergence of regional currents, has been mooted as a potential sixth ocean gyre that may coalesce high concent...

Citizen science is now commonly employed to collect data on plastic pollution and is recognised as a valuable tool for furthering our understanding of the issue. Few studies, however, use citizen science to gather information on water-borne plastic debris. Here, citizen scientists adopted a globally standardised methodology to sample the sea-surfac...

"Protect and restore ecosystems and biodiversity" is the second official aim of the current UN Ocean Decade (2021 to 2030) calling for the identification and protection of critical marine habitats. However, data to inform policy are often lacking altogether or confined to recent times, preventing the establishment of long-term baselines. The unique...

The Amazon River dolphin Inia geoffrensis occurs throughout the basins of the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers and is categorized as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Using satellite tracking data from eight dolphins (one female and seven males) in the Peruvian Amazon, we demonstrate that these dolphins inhabit a variety of habitat types and have core area...

Bioko Island (Equatorial Guinea) hosts important nesting habitat for leatherback sea turtles, with the main nesting beaches found on the island’s southern end. Nest monitoring and protection have been ongoing for more than two decades, although distribution and habitat range at sea remains to be determined. This study uses satellite telemetry to de...

Please cite this article as: L.C.M. Omeyer, E.M. Duncan, N.A.S. Abreo, et al., Interactions between marine megafauna and plastic pollution in Southeast Asia, Science of the Total Environment (2023), https://doi.

Southeast (SE) Asia is a highly biodiverse region, yet it is also estimated to cumulatively contribute a third of the total global marine plastic pollution. This threat is known to have adverse impacts on marine megafauna, however, understanding of its impacts has recently been highlighted as a priority for research in the region. To address this k...

There is a remarkable paucity of estimates of the numeric importance of sea turtles at foraging grounds. The Banc d'Arguin (BA) is a vast shallow marine area off the coast of Mauritania, known as a site of world importance for coastal migratory birds and other biodiversity, including extensive seagrass beds. We sampled foraging green turtles on the...

Sea turtles are considered as bio-indicators for monitoring the efficiency of restoration measures to reduce marine litter impacts on health. However, the lack of extended and standardised empirical data has prevented the accurate analysis of the factors influencing litter ingestion and the relationships with individual health. Historic data collec...

Elasmobranchs (sharks, rays, and skates) are caught throughout fisheries globally, leading to over one-third of species being threatened with extinction¹. Oceanic shark populations have undergone an average 71% decline over the last half century, owing to an 18-fold increase in relative fishing pressure². Incidental capture or ‘bycatch’ is a primar...

To assign conservation status to a population, its size, trends, and distribution must be estimated. The Mediterranean green turtle population has shown signs of recovering over the past decade, likely in response to nest protection, but satellite tracking suggests adult foraging remains largely restricted to only a few key sites in the eastern Med...

River cetaceans are particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts due to their constrained ranges in freshwater systems of China, South Asia, and South America. We undertook an exhaustive review of 280 peer-reviewed papers and grey literature reports (1998−2020) to examine the current status of knowledge regarding these cetaceans and their conse...

Loggerhead turtles are a globally vulnerable species of marine turtle. Broad-scale patterns of distribution and abundance can provide regional managers a tool to effectively conserve and manage this species at basin and sub-basin scales. In this study, combined aerial and shipboard line transect survey data collected between 2003 and 2018 were used...

Human exploitation of wildlife for food, medicine, curios, aphrodisiacs, and spiritual artifacts represents a mounting 21st-century conservation challenge. Here, we provide the first global assessment of illegal marine turtle exploitation across multiple spatial scales (i.e., Regional Management Units [RMUs] and countries) by collating data from pe...

This paper describes, for the first time, that scallops can be attracted into static fishing gear using LED lights. This novel finding presents an opportunity for the development of a new, low impact fishing method for scallops. Traditionally, wild caught scallops are primarily fished using dredges and trawls. Due to their penetrative nature, the i...

Small-scale fisheries (SSFs) are often undervalued and unmanaged as a result of a lack of data. A study of SSFs in Menabe, western Madagascar in 1991 found diverse catches and a productive fishery with some evidence of declining catches. Here we compare data collected at the same landing site in 1991 and 2011. 2011 had seven times greater total mon...

Marine protected areas (MPAs), particularly large MPAs, are increasing in number and size around the globe in part to facilitate the conservation of marine megafauna under the assumption that large-scale MPAs better align with vagile life histories; however, this alignment is not well established. Using a global tracking dataset from 36 species acr...

The biodiversity of marine and coastal habitats is experiencing unprecedented change. While there are well-known drivers of these changes, such as overexploitation, climate change and pollution, there are also relatively unknown emerging issues that are poorly understood or recognized that have potentially positive or negative impacts on marine and...

The northwestern Indian Ocean hosts globally crucial marine biodiversity, which is relatively understudied. There has, however, been significant research and conservation effort focused on marine turtles across the region in recent decades. We undertook an exhaustive review of 251 relevant publications to extract and collate the current information...

Monitoring how populations respond to sustained conservation measures is essential to detect changes in their population status and determine the effectiveness of any interventions. In the case of sea turtles, their populations are difficult to assess because of their complicated life histories. Ground-derived clutch counts are most often used as a...

Southeast Asia is considered to have some of the highest levels of marine plastic pollution in the world. It is therefore vitally important to increase our understanding of the impacts and risks of plastic pollution to marine ecosystems and the essential services they provide to support the development of mitigation measures in the region. An inter...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242459.].

The northwestern Indian Ocean hosts globally crucial marine biodiversity, which is relatively understudied. There has, however, been significant research and conservation effort focused on marine turtles across the region in recent decades. We undertook an exhaustive review of 251 relevant publications to extract and collate the current information...

The loggerhead sea turtle ( Caretta caretta ), has the broadest distribution among sea turtle species in the Mediterranean and requires regional and international collaborations in addition to local efforts to better inform conservation actions. Molecular techniques are powerful tools to assess population dynamics at large scales, especially by det...

The loggerhead sea turtle ( Caretta caretta ), has the broadest distribution among sea turtle species in the Mediterranean and requires regional and international collaborations in addition to local efforts to better inform conservation actions. Molecular techniques are powerful tools to assess population dynamics at large scales, especially by det...

Although published literature regarding the 5 species of marine turtle found along the continental African east coast has grown substantially over the last decades, a comprehensive synthesis of their status and ecology is lacking. Using a mixed methods approach, which com- bined an exhaustive literature review and expert elicitation, we assessed th...

Networks of marine protected areas (MPAs) are invaluable for the protection of species with high dispersal capacity, yet connectivity within networks is poorly understood. We demonstrate the connectivity within the regional MPA network in West Africa (RAMPAO), mediated by the largest green turtle population in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. We equippe...

Due to changing environmental conditions, many species will have to migrate or occupy new suitable areas to avoid potential extinction in the current biodiversity crisis. Long-lived animals are especially vulnerable and ex-situ conservation actions can provide solutions through assisted colonisations. However, there is little empirical evidence on...

Over the past 4 decades there has been a growing concern for the conservation status of elasmobranchs (sharks and rays). In 2002, the first elasmobranch species were added to Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Less than 20 yr later, there were 39 species on Appendix II and 5 o...

Aim Understanding the spatial ecology of animal movements is a critical element in conserving long‐lived, highly mobile marine species. Analyzing networks developed from movements of six sea turtle species reveals marine connectivity and can help prioritize conservation efforts. Location Global. Methods We collated telemetry data from 1235 indivi...

Globally, the number of citizen science clean-up projects, such as beach cleans, is increasing in an effort to reduce the amount of plastic pollution in the environment. Such activities offer the opportunity to gather insightful data on plastic abundance, distribution and composition. This information is key for informing effective management strat...

As part of the Post‐2020 Biodiversity Framework, nations are assessing progress over the past decade in addressing the underlying drivers that influence direct pressures on biodiversity and formulating new policies and strategies for the decade to come. For marine conservation, global marine protected area (MPA) coverage is still falling short of t...

Although published literature regarding the 5 species of marine turtle found along the continental African east coast has grown substantially over the last decades, a comprehensive synthesis of their status and ecology is lacking. Using a mixed methods approach, which combined an exhaustive literature review and expert elicitation, we assessed the...

Agroforest mosaics represent one of the most extensive human-impacted terrestrial systems worldwide and play an increasingly critical role in wildlife conservation. In such dynamic shared landscapes, coexistence can be compromised if people view wildlife as a source of infectious disease. A cross-disciplinary One Health knowledge base can help to i...

Plastic pollution and climate change have commonly been treated as two separate issues and sometimes are even seen as competing. Here we present an alternative view that these two issues are fundamentally linked. Primarily, we explore how plastic contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the beginning to the end of its life cycle. Secondly...

The ingestion of plastic by marine turtles is now reported for all species. Small juvenile turtles (including post-hatchling and oceanic juveniles) are thought to be most at risk, due to feeding preferences and overlap with areas of high plastic abundance. Their remote and dispersed life stage, however, results in limited access and assessments. He...

Monitoring animals with electronic tags is an increasingly important tool for fundamental and applied ecological research. Based on the size of the system under study, the ability to recapture the animal, and research medium (e.g., aerial, freshwater, saltwater, terrestrial), tags selected may either log data in memory (bio-logging), transmit it to...

Significance Elucidating the mechanisms that regulate animal populations is a fundamental goal in ecology and is increasingly important at a time of unprecedented anthropogenic disturbance to ecosystems. Here, we present direct evidence of a phenomenon known as “Ashmole’s halo”: a zone of prey depletion that is hypothesized to form around aggregati...

The Endangered Mediterranean monk seal Monachus monachus is one of the most threatened marine mammals. Across Cyprus, suitable habitat and presence of monk seals is well documented and, recently, camera-trap surveys in Southern Cyprus found there to be pupping. We present results of the first camera-trap surveys in Northern Cyprus spanning the pupp...

Dietary studies provide key insights into threats and changes within ecosystems and subsequent impacts on focal species. Diet is particularly challenging to study within marine environments and therefore is often poorly understood. Here, we examined the diet of stranded and bycaught loggerhead ( Caretta caretta ) and green turtles ( Chelonia mydas...