Squid fishing could be getting out of control due to the industry’s lack of regulations, scientists say, prompting calls for greater oversight. Thousands of squid fishing vessels operate across the…
When flesh-footed shearwater chicks hatch from their eggs, their parents start working to fill the chicks’ stomachs with as much food as possible. They do this for about 80 to…
International delegates attending the eighth annual Our Ocean Conference in Panama March 2-3 have pledged billions to protect the world’s oceans. Participants made 341 commitments worth nearly $20 billion, including…
The Peruvian diving petrel is a tiny, thrush-sized seabird that spends more time in the water than in the air. True to its name, it plunges into the chilly waters…
During the 16th century, European traders sailed to the Maluku Islands, in what is today eastern Indonesia, seeking spices like nutmeg, cloves and pepper. The traders also found something else…
The potentially imminent start of deep-sea mining in international waters could impact whales, dolphins and porpoises, particularly in terms of noise pollution, according to experts who say there needs to…
Collecting core samples from the Greenland ice sheet is no easy task. During a recent expedition, scientists and drilling experts boarded a ski-equipped aircraft and flew to a site at…
New research has found that carefully managed fisheries can help dwindling shark and ray populations recover, illustrating a pathway for protecting species from fishing pressure. Published in the Proceedings of…
Scientists remember the years between 2014 and 2017 as a particularly bad time for coral reefs. Elevated temperatures fueled by an El Niño climate pattern harmed about three-quarters of the…
The U.S. government has denied two petitions to immediately protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales during the species’ calving season, raising concerns that this population of whales will continue…
New research has generated a comprehensive system for tracking and monitoring fishing vessels — from the moment they disembark from the shipyard to their eventual dismantlement at a ship graveyard —…
In spring and summer, visitors flock to Northern Ireland’s Rathlin Island to catch a glimpse of the bright-billed Atlantic puffins that stop there to breed. But in recent years, the…
Stuart Sandin’s first impression of Palmyra Atoll, a remote island in the central Pacific Ocean, during a visit in 2004, was troubled. There were seabirds, but their presence was fragmented,…
The United States Senate recently passed legislation that will ban the shark fin trade, a largely unregulated industry impacting millions of sharks, within the U.S. On Dec. 15, policymakers approved…
On a Russian-led expedition in the northern Pacific Ocean in the 1740s, German botanist Georg Wilhelm Steller laid eyes on a species that captured his imagination. It looked like a…
The United States has sanctioned Chinese individuals and companies allegedly involved in human rights abuses and fishing violations while operating in other countries’ or international waters. On Dec. 9, the…
On Dec. 6, legislators in Argentina’s southernmost province of Tierra del Fuego approved a law to permanently protect the land and sea of the Mitre Peninsula at the tip of…
As global biodiversity loss persists, a team of international scientists is calling for a more holistic approach to biodiversity protection: by coupling conservation efforts with human justice measures. In a…
The asprete, a ray-finned freshwater fish species that lives only in Romania, has long captured Mircea Marginean’s imagination. He remembers hearing about the species in 2011, when he was a…
Amid a global biodiversity crisis, nations have agreed to protect threatened species like sharks, songbirds, glass frogs and tropical timber by regulating their trade. Over the past two weeks, member…
For about 70 years, jaguars were absent from Iberá Park in northeastern Argentina’s Corrientes province. To rectify this, conservationists reintroduced three jaguars into the park in 2021, followed by seven…
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…
The disappearance of billions snow crabs from the Bering Sea has captivated the world’s attention since Alaska shut down the fishery for the first time in October 2022. But where…
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…
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…
The trillions of pieces of plastic currently roving through the global ocean are known to be an assault on life. Turtles get tangled up in discarded plastic fishing nets. Whales…
