Sea turtles win in court: on August 28, 2026, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a federal rule requiring turtle excluder devices on Louisiana skimmer trawl shrimp vessels 40 feet and longer, rejecting a challenge from the Louisiana Shrimp Association. The shrimpers' case rested on Louisiana's own 55-year, 128,781-sample dataset showing just two documented sea turtle interactions in the state's inshore waters, and a real economic argument, the rule could cost the industry $9.4 million to $44 million at a time when shrimp prices had already fallen from $3 to $1.10 a pound. But federal observer data told a different story: in 2012, the highest concentration of sea turtle captures anywhere in the fishery occurred in southeastern Louisiana's inshore waters, and in 2013, every single capture documented by federal observers happened there. NMFS's own analysis puts Gulf-wide captures at roughly 7,794 turtles a year, with close to 3,000 dying from the encounter. We break down both sides of this case, the industry's real financial strain and the data that ultimately decided it.
Then, our Ocean People Profile: meet Melissa Cristina Márquez, known publicly as "Mother of Sharks." A PhD candidate at Curtin University who studies the human dimensions of shark conservation, how Indigenous peoples, local communities, and modern media all shape our relationship with sharks, Márquez has spent more than a decade building bilingual, accessible science communication through three initiatives she founded: The Fins United Initiative, the ConCiencia Azul podcast, and the Ecocuentos book club. She's also survived one of the wildest stories in ocean science media: in 2018, while filming for Discovery's Shark Week, she was bitten and dragged, not by a shark, but by a crocodile.
Finally, what does a blue whale's heartbeat reveal? A new study led by biomedical engineer Ashley Blawas tagged five blue whales and four humpback whales with non-invasive suction-cup biologging tags, the first successful heart-rate recordings ever from wild humpback whales, and only the second from a free-swimming blue whale. The heart rate swings are extreme: as low as 2 beats per minute during a dive, spiking to roughly 22 in blue whales and 28 in humpbacks immediately after a feeding lunge, and staying elevated through the filtering phase instead of dropping back down right away. Researchers compare it to how a human sprinter's heart behaves recovering between intervals, evidence that these whales run their explosive feeding lunges on borrowed oxygen, then pay it back afterward.
Takeaways:
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld, on August 28, 2026, a federal rule requiring turtle excluder devices on Louisiana skimmer trawl shrimp vessels 40 feet and longer, rejecting a challenge from the Louisiana Shrimp Association.
The Louisiana Shrimp Association argued the rule was economically devastating ($9.4 million to $44 million in projected losses) and unsupported by evidence, citing a state dataset showing only two documented sea turtle interactions in 55 years.
Federal observer data showed otherwise: in 2012, the highest concentration of sea turtle captures in the fishery occurred in southeastern Louisiana's inshore waters, and in 2013, every documented capture happened there, evidence the court relied on to uphold the rule.
NMFS estimates roughly 7,794 sea turtles are captured annually across Gulf skimmer, pusher-head, and wing-net trawls, with close to 3,000 dying from the encounter; the new rule is projected to prevent 801 to 1,168 turtle deaths a year.
Melissa Cristina Márquez, "Mother of Sharks," is a PhD candidate at Curtin University studying the human dimensions of shark conservation, how communities and cultures shape our relationship with sharks, with a focus on underrepresented voices across Latin America and the Caribbean.
Márquez has founded three initiatives built around accessible, bilingual science communication: The Fins United Initiative, the ConCiencia Azul podcast, and the Ecocuentos book club, and survived being bitten by a crocodile while filming Discovery's Shark Week in 2018.
A new study tagging 5 blue whales and 4 humpback whales recorded heart rates as low as 2 beats per minute during dives, spiking to roughly 22 (blue whales) and 28 (humpbacks) beats per minute immediately after a feeding lunge.
Researchers compare the pattern to a human sprinter's heart recovering between intervals, evidence that whales run their feeding lunges on borrowed oxygen and pay it back afterward.
Ocean Decoded Live streams Monday through Thursday, 4:00–6:00 PM Eastern, hosted by Andrew Lewin. Subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss it.
