Nations are proposing to protect dozens of shark and ray species in danger of extinction by regulating their international trade. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild…
On Nov. 7, French President Emmanuel Macron announced at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, that France is calling for a complete ban on deep-sea mining. This marks…
In September, scientists boarded submersibles and dived into the waters surrounding the Maldives, a nation of islands peppered across the Indian Ocean. Very little is known about the Maldivian sea…
The population of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales continues to dwindle, sparking concerns that the species might be creeping closer to extinction. A newly released estimate suggests that only…
In 2016, Barack Obama, the U.S. president at the time, made a proclamation: he would expand the protection of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, a stretch of ocean fringing the…
The idea is simple but ambitious: protect the ocean by giving it the same kind of rights a person might have. No such legal mechanism is currently in place, but…
In April 2009, ocean explorer Enric Sala and a team of marine biologists dove into the waters around the southern Line Islands, an uninhabited archipelago in the central Pacific that…
Everything about the Greenland shark seems to be slow: these long-bodied animals swim slowly, grow slowly and reach maturity slowly. Their maturity rate is so sluggish, in fact, that scientists…
In 2006 and 2010, Congolese researcher Raoul Monsembula collected catfish and other species from the rivers in Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Then he hopped…
On Sept. 20, the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research, or EDGAR, a scientific group associated with the European Commission, released its 2022 report detailing the CO2 emissions of every…
BRUSSELS — On Sept. 15, the European Commission made a historic announcement: it will prohibit bottom fishing across 16,000 square kilometers, or 6,200 square miles — an area about half…
A new study conveys a dire warning for the future: multiple tipping points could be triggered if global warming exceeds the critical threshold of 1.5°C. Published this week in Science,…
On April 10, 2019, a fishing vessel known as Da Wang left Taiwan to sail out into distant waters in search of tuna. Two months into the voyage, a disturbance…
A new study has found that nearly 90% of assessed marine life will be at high or critical risk by the year 2100 if climate change accelerates along a high-emissions…
Taiwanese filmmaker Chris Chang moved to Berkeley, California, in August 2021, when the state was already experiencing a deep environmental crisis. In 2020, thousands of wildfires in California burnt through…
Antarctic krill — tiny, filter-feeding crustaceans that live in the Southern Ocean — have long existed in mind-boggling numbers. A 2009 study estimated that the species has a biomass of…
It starts with tiny deep-sea fragments — shark’s teeth or slivers of shell. Then, in a process thought to span millions of years, they get coated in layers of liquidized…
On July 12, oceanographer and geographer Dawn Wright was sealed inside a submersible, traveling to Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. Wright and…
New legislation passed by the Chilean government in May 2021 aims to rid the nation of all single-use products in the food and beverage industry, including plastics, within three years.…
This week, member states of the U.N. General Assembly — the highest UN body that wields considerable influence over its member states — adopted a historic resolution: the recognition that…
Delegates of the International Seabed Authority are currently meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, to negotiate a set of rules that would pave the way for a controversial activity: mining the seabed…
In 2018, marine scientist Joni Pini-Fitzsimmons received an unusual stingray video from a colleague. It showed a mangrove whipray (Urogymnus granulatus) gliding over a reef in the Gili Islands of…
In late June, New Zealand parliamentarian and Māori activist Debbie Ngarewa-Packer boarded an international flight to begin a 40-hour journey to Lisbon to attend the U.N. Ocean Conference. At various…
LISBON — Should we mine the seabed, a part of the world rich in resources, but less mapped than the surface of the moon? A growing number of politicians, scientists…
With its bright green plumage and range of vocalizations, the rose-ringed parakeet is one of the most sought-after birds in the pet trade. To supply ongoing demand for these birds,…
When Kristin Laidre began working on a long-term project to study polar bears in eastern Greenland, she didn’t expect to find a new subpopulation of the species — and she certainly…
Plastic has been found in the most unexpected places: in the deepest parts of the ocean, in the remote mountain air, in human blood. And now, it’s even been found…
During what scientists have named the “Sixth Mass Extinction” (the fifth one wiped out the dinosaurs), conservationists are racing against the clock to carry out critical monitoring as quickly as…
In 2004, Charles Clover published a book called The End of the Line that painted a dismal view of our oceans due to rampant overfishing. The book, as well as…
Between 1869 and 1870, the H.M.S. Porcupine sailed into the North Atlantic Ocean and scraped a dredge along the seafloor. When the sailors pulled the dredge back to the surface,…
