Update from Scorpion Reef: Protecting the Endangered Queen Conch This month, Sea Shepherd Ambassador and conservationist @felipe_gonzalez_correa visited Scorpion Reef to help share in the vital work our crew is doing to protect this extraordinary ecosystem. Scorpion Reef is a protected National Park and an important refuge for threatened and endangered wildlife, including the Queen Conch. Years of overfishing have caused Queen Conch populations to decline, and because they are slow to mature and reproduce, even a small number taken illegally from protected waters can make recovery more difficult. Thank you to our Direct Action Crew. Your monthly donations help keep our vessels, equipment, and crews on the water where protection happens. Join the Direct Action Crew and help keep us on the water: SeaShepherd.org

Sea Shepherd is taking the fight from the Southern Ocean to store shelves. Help us drive krill products out of the market. Use the Krill Toolkit to pressure retailers, audit shelves and report what you find. Industrial fleets are stripping krill from an ecosystem where whales, penguins and countless other species depend on it to survive. What our crews expose in the Southern Ocean becomes pressure on the companies and retailers that keep this destructive industry profitable. Contact retailers. Check their shelves. Report krill products. Support businesses that refuse to sell them. Take the mission to land. Click LINK IN BIO for the free tool kit. Help us save Antarctica. #seashepherd #antarctica #krillsupplements

Poachers and the Endangered Queen Conch: At Scorpion Reef, one of the Gulf of Mexico’s most important marine ecosystems, conch populations are banned from fishing but they face pressure from illegal harvesting, and habitat loss. Conch need to reach maturity before they can reproduce, which means removing too many large adults can make it difficult for a population to recover. That’s why protecting places like Scorpion Reef matters. By safeguarding seagrass beds, sandy bottoms and reef habitat and monitoring fishing activity inside the protected area, we give conch and countless other species the space they need to reproduce and rebuild. A healthy reef depends on more than the animals we see swimming above it. Protecting the ocean means protecting every part of the ecosystem. Visit SeaShepherd.org or Link in Bio

A humpback mother gives an extraordinary amount of herself to raise a single calf. After carrying her baby for nearly a year, she will spend up to another year at its side nursing it, protecting it and guiding it through its first great migration. And that devotion has a physical cost. Research found that lactating humpback mothers on breeding grounds can lose around 200 pounds of body mass a day while fasting, drawing on their own energy reserves as their calves rapidly grow. By around one year old, the calf will leave its mother and begin life independently. But it may take another several years before it reaches maturity. One calf. Nearly two years from pregnancy through independence. An enormous investment from one mother. The bond between a humpback mother and her calf is brief in years, but extraordinary in what she gives to get that calf safely into the world. Visit SeaShepherd.org

For decades, illegal fishing nets have threatened the vaquita and other wildlife in the Upper Gulf of California. Sea Shepherd joined the effort to confront that threat 12 years ago. Now, some of that recovered gear is being given a second life on shore. In La Paz, recycled plastic incorporating material from recovered fishing nets has been transformed into benches for the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur. This is what closing the loop looks like: remove the threat, recover the material, and give it a new life. Thank you to the crews, Mexican authorities and partners who made this possible, including Re:wild and Leonardo DiCaprio, whose support helped put the net grinder in place, and Bureo, REAM, the Global Ghost Gear Initiative, Urbaneria and UABCS for helping create a pathway from recovered fishing gear to something useful for the community. Visit SeaShepherd.org

Want to join the crew? Crew Highlight: Miguel! Life at sea isn’t easy. It’s long days, hard work, shared spaces, changing conditions and learning to rely on the people beside you. But it’s also a chance to put your skills to work where they matter, on the front lines of ocean conservation. From engineers and deckhands to cooks, scientists, medics, and drone pilots, every person on board has a role in keeping the mission moving. If you’re ready to work hard, learn fast and help defend the ocean, come crew with us. Visit SeaShepherd.org

Green sea turtles have survived our oceans for millions of years. But today, many populations remain threatened or endangered. Their biggest threats come from human activity: entanglement in fishing gear, loss of nesting beaches, plastic pollution, boat strikes, illegal hunting, and warming temperatures that are changing both their feeding grounds and nesting conditions. Protecting green turtles means protecting the entire journey, from the beaches where they hatch to the seagrass beds and reefs where they feed. Every protected nest, cleaner coastline, safer fishing practice, and healthy marine habitat gives the next generation a better chance to return. Visit SeaShepherd.org to learn more.

The world's most endangered marine mammalisn't gone yet, and conservationists are training the next generation of observers in a race to help the species survive. foxweather.com/earth-space/w…

Protecting Scorpion Reef doesn’t stop when the sun goes down. Day and night, our crew patrols this incredible marine protected area monitoring the islands and seabirds, keeping watch over endangered sea turtle nests, and checking fishing permits to help ensure activity inside the park follows Mexico's regulations. Night patrols bring their own surprises. This week, while keeping watch over the reef, the crew had a front-row seat to a lunar eclipse over the Gulf of Mexico. Protecting a place means being there for it around the clock and sometimes, the ocean rewards you with a pretty incredible view. Visit SeaShepherd.org

Visit SeaShepherd.org

Cordial invitación a la @uabcs el 10 de septiembre a las 11.00 am en La Paz. @SeaShepherdSSCS dona 3 bancas fabricadas con plástico reciclado incluyendo de redes de pesca ilegales y fantasma

Ghost gear, including abandoned fishing nets, accounts for about 10 percent of all plastic waste in our oceans, and every net pulled is one less threat to marine life. The Sea Shepherd crew takes a firm stand against this deadly hazard, working to free whales, dolphins, rays, and other wildlife caught beneath the surface. Visit SeaShepherd.org Sea of Shadows is now streaming on @DisneyPlus and @hulu.

Babies! This is what Sea Shepherd can bring to a protected area: a ship that stays on station, crews capable of working above and below the surface, and the ability to keep watching when pressure on an ecosystem increases. Protection is not simply a designation on a map. It has to mean something on the water. Working with Mexican biologists @conanp_mx , these endangered turtles stand a chance. That work is also giving us a clearer picture of the reef itself. Seeing turtles moving through these waters, examining the condition of the coral, and determining whether mature queen conch exist in sufficient numbers and proximity to reproduce all help us understand whether this ecosystem can continue to sustain the wildlife that depends on it. Visit SeaShepherd.org for more on Scorpion Reef.

Comment with your favorite shark! Scorpion Reef isn’t just coral, it’s shark habitat. 24 species of sharks have been recorded in this protected area, from reef-associated sharks to larger predators moving through the Gulf of Mexico. Sharks found in the wider Gulf and Caribbean region include blacktip sharks, Caribbean reef sharks, nurse sharks, lemon sharks, tiger sharks, hammerheads and silky sharks. CONANP specifically lists the blacktip reef shark as one of Scorpion Reef’s representative species. Why does that matter? Sharks help shape marine food webs. Their presence and changes in their numbers can tell us important things about what’s happening throughout an ecosystem. That’s one reason we monitor Scorpion Reef. Protecting shark habitat means protecting the reef, its fish, its corals and the countless species connected to them. Healthy reefs need sharks. Sharks need healthy reefs. Visit SeaShepherd.org

🚨 BREAKING NEWS - Australia takes huge step in protection of Antarctica. Australia’s two largest supermarket chains, Coles and Woolworths, have confirmed they will not sell krill oil supplements anymore! Together, they represent around 67% of Australia’s grocery stores. That means krill oil is now absent from approximately 2,200 supermarkets across the country! For four consecutive years, Sea Shepherd has sailed to Antarctica to expose what is happening behind the krill industry. Our crews documented industrial supertrawlers fishing among feeding whales and brought that evidence from the Southern Ocean to the companies selling products made from Antarctic krill. Now we are seeing the market change: from the UK to Germany and now Australia, major retailers are moving away from products extracted from the Antarctic food web. We are incredibly proud that our four trips down to Antarctica with our ship the Allankay and the crew is helping drive change far beyond the Southern Ocean. And we are grateful to every supporter who has written to retailers, shared our investigations and demanded better. Your pressure matters. The market is changing; krill belongs in Antarctica. Visit Seashepherd.org to email retailers.

This August, the M/V Sharkwater is at Scorpion Reef.Sea Shepherd has always been most effective when we put ourselves where change needs to happen, and on the water that means ships, crews and a persistent presence in places where wildlife and protected areas are under pressure. Visit seashepherd.org/2026/09/01/f… for full blog post!

Protecting marine protected areas takes teamwork. Sea Shepherd works alongside Mexican authorities by providing vessels, drones, cameras, and other monitoring equipment that help extend their eyes across the ocean. Our technology and crews can help locate activity, document what is happening, and provide information to the appropriate authorities, but enforcement remains in Mexican hands. These are Mexican protected waters, governed by Mexican law and enforced by Mexican authorities. Our role is to support their work with the tools, resources, and time at sea needed to help protect these extraordinary ecosystems. Visit SeaShepherd.org for more on Scorpion Reef

That's a big baby! A humpback mother will guide her newborn through its first breaths, teach it the rhythms of migration, and stay close as it learns how to navigate an enormous ocean. Calves have even been observed mimicking their mothers’ movements, learning behaviors they’ll carry with them long after they separate. That bond is also a reminder of why protecting whales means protecting more than individual animals. Quiet waters, safe migration routes, healthy feeding grounds, and freedom from entanglement give the next generation a chance to grow. Protect the mothers, protect the calves, protect their future. Visit SeaShepherd.org