PEW Environmental group has published a report entitled ““Navigating Global Shark Conservation: Current Measures and Gaps” ahead of the gathering of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for the FAO Committee on Fisheries meeting in Rome this month. The report notes that “although 55 percent of sharks that have enough data available to assess them (150 species) are threatened or near threatened with extinction, current shark management is woefully inadequate.” It goes on to list and quantify the demand and supply chain for shark fin, emphasises the lack of protection for sharks, and underlines the shark’s important role in the marine ecosystem.

The full report is available to download as a pdf.

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Sea & Sea USA has also announced the release of the MDX-5D Mark III housing for the Canon EOS 5D Mark III. Like the new housing announced for the D800, this one also featuring enhanced ergonomics, with control of both main and sub command dials with the hands on the housing grips, the housing also offers a user customizable shutter release lever spring tension. It has ports for fiber optic triggering of strobes, as well as two additional ports for optional Nikonos and HDMI bulkheads.

The housing will be available in August and prices are still to be announced.

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Many of you will have gathered already the great news that the Wetpixel Picture of the Week (POTW) competition is back up and accepting entries and votes. The current contest’s theme is “Crustaceans”, for which the voting will end on Sunday 8 July. The next contest is themed “Fresh-water” and is accepting entries, for which the cut-off will be Sunday 8 July and voting will end on 15 July.

POTW has had over 400 individual weekly contests, dating back to December 2005. For a full list of upcoming contest subjects, please see this post in the forum. Entries are free, and the winner will receive a PC lite courtesy of Ikelite. Before entering, please make sure that your profile contains your delivery address and other required information. Without this, you will not receive your prize.

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Gates Underwater Products has announced the release of its DEEP Scarlet housing for the RED SCARLET 4K camera. The housing offer support for a wide range of SLR and Cine lenses, any of which are controlled from the same position on the housing. Also supplied with the housing is a pivoting RED PRO external monitor case for the RED PRO 5.0” LCD screen and the housing is equipped as standard with the Gates Seal Check system.

The housing, with an SP80 port and extension, is priced at “under $15,000” and will be available from the end of July.

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Nikon Europe has announced the release of a firmware update for the Nikon D4. Firmware version 1.02 adds some display, formatting and network stability improvements. Specifically, these include: Format memory card can now be added to My Menu, gamut for Adobe RGB images displayed in the camera’s monitor has now been changed which enables a more vivid display of images and the stability of network connections when the FTP upload option is selected has been increased.

The update also addresses some bugs including an issue with aperture setting when used in conjunction with specific movie settings, a camera freeze-up when formatting cards in http server mode and one that affects still images that have been captured during video recording. It is available from the Nikon Europe support site

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