Dr. Gorka Sancho is currently on sabbatical leave in Spain.  He has been working on two different projects. The first includes coordinating an angler-lead tagging program of dolphinfish in the Western Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic.  This project is done in collaboration with Don Hammond of the Dolphinfish Research Program in Charleston and the anglers from the Confederacion Española de Pesca Maritima de Recreo Responsable. Tagging of dolphinfish will start in August of 2009, and will provide information on movement patterns of this pelagic species in the Atlantic Ocean.  This research will compliment the extensive dataset collected in the Western Atlantic by the Dolphinfish Research Program. His second project has been in collaboration with Courtney Murren and Matt Rutter from the CofC Biology Department.  Dr. Sancho and his research team has been collecting large amounts of field data on the natural history and ecology of Arabidopsis thaliana, a small annual plant that grows in the surroundings of Trujllo. With the help of Laura Ferguson, a marine biology undergraduate student, they have monitored, measured and collected seeds from over 100 plants from two different river basins (Tajo and Guadiana). A lot of preliminary work has been done locating populations of this plant, which will hopefully lead to future intensive studies of this plant species in the years to come.