At the recent Rio+20 conference, Maldives President Waheed announced that the whole of the Maldives will become a marine reserve by 2017. This would outlaw all “non-sustainable” fishing practices and will specifically “exclude deep-sea, purse-seining and other destructive [trawling] techniques.” Although it is uncertain as to what area the proclamation will contain, environmental activists are hoping that it will include the entire Maldives Exclusive Economic Zone, which is the area of sea that can be claimed by a country to exploit its marine resources, to a limit of 200 nautical miles around its coasts.

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Galapagos and environmental icon, Pinta giant tortoise Lonesome George has died, the BBC reports. He was a symbol of the Galapagos Islands and was believed to be the last of the subspecies Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni which is hence now considered extinct. Unsuccessful attempts had been made to get him to mate with other tortoises for several decades and he was believed to have been around 100 years old at the time of his death.

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Conservation International (CI) has announced the release of a three-volume book set entitled “Reef Fishes of the East Indies.” This definitive work, co- authored by Drs. Mark Erdmann and Gerry Allen, describes and catalogs over 2,500 fish species, including over 25 new ones, that are found in the Coral Triangle (including Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands) as well as the South China Sea (including Brunei Darussalam to Vietnam and Singapore), the Andaman Sea (including Thailand, Myanmar, and the Andaman Islands of India) and Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean The books are illustrated with over 3,600 photographs.

Wetpixel is fortunate to not only have a set of the books for a review to follow shortly, but also to have tracked down the authors, who have kindly given us an exclusive interview about the books and their research.

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Pew Environment Group reports that Venezuela has enacted a series of measures to conserve shark populations within its waters. Amongst these is an outright ban on the practice of shark finning, with all sharks to be landed whole. In addition, a shark sanctuary has been established in the Los Roques and Las Aves archipelagos, a total area of 3,730 square kilometers (1,440 square miles) of the Caribbean Sea which are an important breeding ground and nursery for populations of several species of sharks, including the lemon shark and the Caribbean reef shark. Commercial shark fishing has been banned within the shark sanctuary.

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Due to late cancellations, there are now three spaces available for the Wetpixel Ultimate Whale Sharks Expedition (31 July to 4 August). This trip has been sold-out practically from dates they were announced, so this represents an amazing opportunity. The trip will dive and photograph the world’s largest aggregation of whale sharks off Isla Mujeres, Cancun, Mexico and previous trips have produced amazing reports and images with “wall to wall” sharks. This year, the trips are being led by Wetpixel Associate Editor, Alex Mustard.

If you are interested, please contact Dan Baldocchi for more information or to book.

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