The Nautilus Project

Gibraltar Marine Science Studies 🌊

We delivered a new Seagrass and Seahorses workshop at St Bernards where students learned about seagrass meadows and the two local seahorse species.

Together we discovered how seagrass provides food, shelter, and a safe place for many marine animals and why these habitats are important.

Bitter sweet post on a Friday morning 🙏

Jose Antonio Acosta-Marinero from Tarik Shipping came across a struggling juvenile loggerhead turtle entangled in netting.

His swift action ensured the turtle was freed from the netting and released back into the sea.

Thank you for caring!

Excited to launch the Gibraltar Ocean Observatory, a website that shows what is happening in the sea around Gibraltar with daily updates.
It is free and just needs a NEMO Nautilus Environmental Monitoring Online (NEMO) account to login to the website.

The Observatory pulls together measurements that public science agencies already collect but rarely make easy to read. .

It currently holds around ten million measurements. The longest records reach back to 1982, so a reading taken this morning can be compared against more than forty years of the same measurement in the same place.
That is the part most people underestimate.
A sea temperature of 23 degrees means very little on its own. Knowing it is three degrees above the average for that week since 1982 means a great deal.

The site follows sea temperature and marine heatwaves, salinity, currents, waves and tides, oxygen and acidity, nutrients, plankton blooms, Saharan dust and air quality, sea level, and fishing activity picked up from vessel tracking.
It also carries TNP's own records, including sightings reported by the public through the NEMO citizen science platform and the charity's marine strandings log.

One section deals specifically with bioluminescent blooms, the "sea sparkle" that turns the water blue at night, and sets each bloom against the conditions that preceded it: how warm the water was, whether there had been an upwelling, which way the wind had been blowing.

The practical uses are ordinary ones.
A diver can see whether the water clarity is likely to be poor. A teacher can pull up a graph of last month's sea temperature for a lesson.
A fisherman can check whether an upwelling has brought colder water to the surface.
A student can download forty years of figures for a project.

The Observatory runs automatically and costs nothing to operate.
It is available through the TNP website at https://thenautilusproject.co/ocean-observatory.html.

The Gibraltar Ocean Observatory draws on 52 public data feeds covering 80 separate measurements, for the Bay of Gibraltar, the eastside, the Strait and the western Alborán Sea.

German Geoecology student Kai Henning-Kotschmar has presented the results of his summer internship sharing his research and field experience in Potsdam.

Kai spent part of the summer working with Nautilus as part of his academic and professional development.
During his internship, he gained practical experience in environmental research and contributed to the project’s work exploring and understanding marine and coastal ecosystems, including the Gibraltar Seagrass Restoration Project.

His work with Nautilus also gave him an insight into the challenges of conducting environmental research outside the classroom and the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to understanding complex ecosystems.

The internship also underlines the value of providing students and early-career researchers with opportunities to engage directly with environmental projects.

His presentation in Potsdam marks the latest stage of an internship that connected university study, field experience and scientific communication.

Information regarding internships can be acquired via [email protected]

The marine animal mural, beautifully painted by Nautilus local students, was created to brighten and beautify the GSLA area while celebrating the incredible marine life around us.

Sadly, this wonderful piece of community art has now been damaged by building supplies being carelessly stored and handled nearby.
Unnecessary, as there is ample space around with walls in shambles.

The mural represents the creativity, effort and pride of our young people, and it deserves to be respected and protected.
Such a shame no greater care around this shared space has been taken into account and now the students’ hard work can no longer continue to be enjoyed by the whole community.

A small Nautilus team was deployed out to sea early this morning as part of the ESG contigency 🌊

Young MedOceanHero Jules, netted out floating plastic debris ensuring these do not harm our marine wildlife and before they reach our shorelines ♻️

See 📷 below ⬇️

Proud to be a part of !

Our thanks to A.M. Capurro Land Rover for the kind POS card machine donation.
It will be extremely useful to the charity!
Eva Guillem, our youth monitor, organised the philanthropic contribution and collection.

This morning, samples were taken from Rosia Bay and analysed at the Nautilus Marine Lab where we were able to positively confirm the bloom is indeed sea sparkle.

The state of the cells suggests that the bloom is weakening and should disappear within the next few days.

Sightings can be logged on the Nautilus Environmental Monitoring Online (NEMO) app. This data is important for establishing distribution patterns.