IMIS - Marine Onderzoeksgroepen

The common guitarfish (Rhinobatos rhinobatos), protected in Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, was thought to be extinct for over 30 years in the western Mediterranean. Since 2024, individuals from a newly identified population in southeast Spain have been tagged and monitored to study their seasonal movements, residency patterns, and connectivity between marine protected areas, aiming to understand the factors behind their persistence in this region. This project generates the first ecological insights on guitarfish within this and other potential areas currently monitored under the ETN array, supporting the effective conservation and management of this internationally protected species while providing detection coverage of this new area to ETN through an OP-updated network of receivers. This project was granted technical and financial support from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge of Spain, the Department of Environment, Universities, Research and Mar Menor of Murcia and the Department of Water, Agriculture, Livestock and Fishing of Murcia.