OKEANOS

When OKEANOS researchers Jorge Fontes and Bruno Macena returned for the third time to the Galápagos Islands to the Galápagos Islands to joinDr. Pelayo Salinas-de-León theCharles Darwin Foundation, they anticipated challenging field conditions. However, what they encountered underwater was a sharp contrast to their previous expeditions in 2019 and 2020.

The Archipelago is currently at the epicenter of an extreme El Niño event. Warm water anomalies have disrupted the vital cold, nutrient-rich upwellings that normally sustain the region's extraordinary concentration of pelagic life.

The ocean is now quiet where they remember large schools of scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna lewini) during past expeditions. Shark sightings have dropped dramatically as warm waters compress their habitat and force them deeper into thermal refuges.

This absence of sharks directly threatens the primary goal of the mission: deploying the new ECOLOG low-light camera tag prototype (@oceanbluetree) to film the nighttime foraging behavior and deep-diving dynamics of critically endangered hammerheads.

The extreme conditions observed in the field align with recent findings published in Science ("Climate change is strengthening El Niño, coral records suggest"). Analyzing century-long chemical records in Galápagos corals, researchers found that modern El Niño events are significantly more intense than historical norms, amplified by underlying global warming and thermal stratification.

Understanding how endangered predators adapt—or struggle to adapt—during severe climate anomalies provides essential insight into the future of ocean ecosystems and the urgent need for adaptive marine conservation.

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