Day 1- 13/06/2024- Antananarivo Today we arrived in Madagascar. After a long flight with questionable airplane food it feels good to be stationary. As we cruised through the urban fringe our eyes opened to witness the contrast in the way in which…

I’ve been investigating the fungi in Cusuco National Park for over three years and it’s still normal to see mushrooms I don’t recognize every day during the field season. We’ve made almost 1,000 collections of mushrooms from sampling plots and from the…

Alfred Russel Wallace is a man you may not have ever heard of before – but you should’ve done! He is Operation Wallacea’s namesake, and we feel we should spread the word of his achievements so you can go on to tell…

A week in the rainforest is something I had never envisioned for myself with 7 days of sweltering heat and mosquitos. The contrast of my life back home was extremely prominent, however it made me appreciate the simpler things in life such…

So far, learning to dive in Sodwana Bay has been an unforgettable experience. To begin, after poring through our training materials in the sun, we completed our online test. After this, we took part in a swim test which consisted of a…

To be completely transparent I had 3 clear objectives coming to this forest: gaining good experience, finding myself and most importantly enjoying myself. I arrived to this camp happy, full of joy and excitement and our guides reciprocated with the same energy….

Changing careers is always daunting; no matter how sure you feel, there is always that voice in your head saying, ‘you might end up hating it, this is a mistake’. I was hearing it earlier in the summer when I left my…

Opwall runs an incredibly diverse range of surveys across our numerous research sites. As such, our science program has become rather complex, and it can be quite hard to keep track of all the different terminology we use to describe the things…

With continued rising ocean temperatures and increasingly frequent bleaching events, a long-term study from Japan has offered a hopeful insight: corals on artificial reefs recover significantly faster than those on natural ones (Tanaya et al 2025). In Naha Port, corals placed on…

There are many career paths available for people with experience in conservation and an interest in STEM which offer opportunities to contribute to sustainable development and environmental protection. Some of the possible roles are listed below: Environmental Scientist Role: Study human impacts…

I feel like this expedition helped not only nurture my love for science and the natural environment, but also pushed me out of my comfort zone and helped me grow as a person. I learned much from my expedition in Honduras, not…

It’s been a while but we are back with another new science spotlight blog, highlighting some more of the fantastic work done by our academic partners and students. In this edition, we showcase another set of brand new species descriptions – this…