EPCA Foundation

08/25/2025

🐠New Discovery from the Galápagos!🐠

Meet Prionotus pictus — the Painted Searobin, a newly described fish found only in the Galápagos Islands. 🐟✨

For nearly two hundred years, divers and scientists thought all searobins were Darwin’s Prionotus miles which he described from his voyage to Galapagos in 1835. But new research from Eastern Pacific Corridor Alliance Founder BBenjamin Victors sharp eyes and long term knowledge shows most photos and sightings actually belong to this vibrant new species, with its spotted fins and striking colors.

It’s astounding that such a large, conspicuous, and common species could remain hidden in plain sight for so long! 🌍💙

Stay tuned to learn more about this fascinating fish that knows how to take camouflage to a whole new level. We'll show you more stunning pictures of this "shape shifter" that blends into the colorful sea environment of Galapagos.

📖 Read the full study here: https://zenodo.org/records/15596906

03/03/2025

Dave Ebert hunting lost sharks in the eastern Pacific- several rare deepwater elasmobranchs haunt the waters in the east Pacific Corridor, between Galapagos, Cocos and the central and south American coast. People are looking!

Searching for Lost Sharks: Extinct or Alive is the first in a series of episodes that follow Dr. David Ebert and his colleagues to different parts of the wor...

11/14/2024

The EPCA sponsored an expedition last May to perform a photographic survey of the Galapagos fishes- with a super cadre of underwater photographers (the usual suspects). We also sampled tissues for DNA sequencing and focused on rare, tiny, cryptic, potentially new species, and fishes with unresolved taxonomy.

In preparation for the new edition of the 1997 Fishes of the Galapagos book by Grove and Lavenberg.

Victor, B.C., Grove, J.S., Long, D.J., Robertson, D.R., Keith, I., Bensted-Smith, W. & Salinas-de-León, P. (2024) List of Fishes of the Galapagos Archipelago, Ecuador (Version 2.0). Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation, 41, 54–111.

Total of 683 species, with 614 bony fishes, 60 chondrichthys, 8 hagfishes (and an honorary cephalochordate)- about 180 families.

We were strict on criteria for inclusion, and many species were removed from the fauna. We separate out vagrants, also endemics, and tables for basic habitat types- like shallow shorefish, or mesopelagic, or offshore pelagic etc.

https://oceansciencefoundation.org/josf41g.html
https://zenodo.org/records/14057695

05/05/2024

Its raining gobies..

Allen, G.R., Erdmann, M.V. & Teitelbaum, A. (2024) Eviota bacata, a new dwarfgoby (Teleostei: Gobiidae) from New Caledonia. Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation, 41, 14-21

http://www.oceansciencefoundation.org/josf41b.html
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11114206

03/17/2024

Hot Lava & Deep Slope Fishes
The February 1995 eruption of Fernandina Volcano, Galapagos.
Jack Stein Grove, Ph.D.

The surface of the sea exploded into billowing white v***r as the copious red basalt poured into the sea. The mystical illumination of the volcanic activity cast light upon the coastline for miles in either direction. Accompanied by two other naturalists, we jumped off the launch onto the rugged basaltic escarpment in the pre-dawn hours of February 25, 1995. At sunrise, molten lava continued to flow into the abyss along the westernmost coastline of the Galapagos Archipelago. Flocks of frenzied seabirds feasted on the abundance of dead and dying fishes and marine invertebrates.

In the days that followed, my good friend and fellow naturalist Godfrey Merlen, collected 22 species of fishes at Cape Hammond, Fernandina. Several of the specimens were new records for the Galapagos. One of the deep water species, was new to science, it was named Epigonus merlenii ( McCosker et al., 1997). All of these species, and more than 620 others, (Grove et al., 2022) will be treated in the new book, scheduled for publication, open access, in 2025. The book is titled; Galapagos, Natural History and DNA From the Shore to the Abyss.

REFERENCES
Grove, J.S., Long, D.J., Robertson, D.R. & Victor, B.C. (2022) List of Fishes of the Galapagos
Archipelago, Ecuador. Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation, 39, 14–22.
doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7065587

McCosker, J.E., G. Merlen, D.J. Long, R,G. Gilmore and C. Villon, 1997. Deepslope fishes collected during the 1995 eruption of Isla Fernandina, Galapagos. Noticias de Galapagos 58:22-58.

02/28/2024

A new species of wrasse we discovered on the recent Revillagigedo expedition:

Halichoeres sanchezi n. sp., a new wrasse from the Revillagigedo Archipelago of Mexico, tropical eastern Pacific Ocean (Teleostei: Labridae)

by myself and Ben Frable and Bill Ludt

https://peerj.com/articles/16828

https://coralreeffish.com/publications.html

02/21/2024

EPCA is sponsoring Panama Tarpon Conservation as part of its mission to promote scientific research on marine biology of the tropical eastern Pacific region. The tarpon is native to the Caribbean, but occurs in the Panama Canal and has crossed into the eastern Pacific where it has established a population. Very little is known about the status of the eastern pacific population at present.

07/19/2023

The EPCA is dedicated to the conservation and protection of marine life in the important region of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean called the East Tropical Pacific Corridor or Corridor Maritimo. The broad region between the continent and the Galapagos Archipelago is a critical migratory pathway for marine fauna and is linked to marine ecosystems throughout the vast area of remote islands and continental margins. The goal of the EPCA is to encourage, facilitate, and support marine biology education and scientific research in the region.