Narwhals are Arctic-dwelling whales with a unique feature: the males have spirally, sword-like tusks that can extend up to 3 meters (10 feet). But these magical-looking creatures are facing a…
Two silvery-white porpoises glide through the ocean, captured in the lens of a drone camera. The pair swim side by side, occasionally surfacing for a quick breath of air. After…
Each winter, southern right whales and humpback whales migrate to the waters off Brazil to feed on krill and phytoplankton, and to give birth to their young among the country’s…
Icelandic whaling company IP-Utgerd announced April 24 that it is stopping whaling completely, while the country’s largest whaling firm, Hvalur hf., says it won’t be hunting any whales for the…
While the world’s been focused on COVID-19, a piece of good news came out of Russia last month, although it went relatively unnoticed: Russia listed mammal-eating orca whales and Caspian…
A 4-year bioacoustic study of marine mammals in the northern Bering Sea will help scientists track the impacts of global climate change on Arctic ecosystems. Researchers with WCS (Wildlife Conservation…
Baby whales, like all young mammals, rely on their mother’s milk for their early development. A new video follows a nursing humpback whale and her calf and takes the calf’s…
Canada has made it illegal to catch and hold whales, dolphins and porpoises in captivity. On June 10, Canada’s House of Commons passed Bill S-203, or the Ending the Captivity…
The Araguaian river dolphin was just discovered and described to science in 2014, so it’s no surprise that there’s a lot we don’t know about the cetacean native to the…
DENPASAR/JAKARTA — In November 2017, when locals spotted 10 sperm whales stranded on a beach on the island of Sumatra, they had no idea what to do. Stuck in shallow…
When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914, triggering the First World War, Granny was out under the sea half a world away, catching salmon and communicating with her pod…
Recent top stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, revealed Peruvians’ hidden shark diet, new species in Colombia’s Chiribiquete National Park, dire predictions from Mexico’s “Batman,” and more. Peruvians are eating…
A new investigation sheds light on an illegal trade that endangers the world’s smallest and most endangered cetacean species, the vaquita porpoise (Phocoena sinus). The report released July 7 by…
An increasingly ice-free Arctic could test the adaptability of marine mammals, a new study has found, as hundreds of ships in recent years have used the newly open polar seas…
Shark-fishing outfits have for decades been catching dolphins, seals and other sea mammals to use as bait, helping drive some of those species closer to extinction, researchers have found. In…
In a span of five days in late April, Mexican police arrested two men attempting to take hundreds of dried swim bladders, harvested from a critically endangered species of fish,…
An Australian mining company aims to begin searching for minerals, as well as oil and gas, next to part of the Mekong River in Cambodia where the endangered Irrawaddy river…
For the first time, a team of scientists has captured and then released a vaquita (Phocoena sinus), a rare porpoise in the Gulf of California, as part of a project…
The slideshow in this story contains an image that some readers may find disturbing. Forbidding black cliffs relentlessly shuddered by massive Southern Ocean waves give way to a mountainous interior,…
Actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio has jumped into the fight to save the critically endangered vaquita together with the president of Mexico and the country’s wealthiest individual. An agreement signed…
For the first time ever, scientists have been able to observe what life is really like for dolphins beneath the ocean’s surface. Using custom-made, noninvasive underwater cameras that they attached…
True's beaked whales are notoriously elusive. Like other beaked whales, they dive deep into oceans for prolonged periods of time, and surface only for short breathing intervals, making them very…
Thanks to a five-year acoustic monitoring program, conservationists have detected the rapid decline of the vaquita before it is too late – giving them one last shot to save the…
On the latest episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we welcome journalist Sue Branford, a regular contributor to Mongabay who has been reporting from Brazil since 1979 when she was with…
The vaquita continues to earn its title as “the world’s most endangered cetacean species.” According to a recent report by the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA),…
This past July, U.S. President Barack Obama hosted Mexico’s President Peña Nieto at the White House to discuss bilateral cooperation on a range of issues, including several environmental matters. The…
There were as many as 570 vaquita in the world back in 1997, but now there are fewer than 60 left — and the species is facing extinction in the…
In 2009, two marine biologists -- Robert Pitman and John Durban -- observed a series of strange events enroute to the Antarctic Peninsula: humpback whales would rush in to rescue seals that…
From September, Mexico will permanently ban the use of gillnets throughout the range of vaquita porpoise (Phocoena sinus) in the upper Gulf of California. With just 60 individuals remaining in…
Between 2010 and 2014, more than a thousand common bottle-nosed dolphins washed ashore on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. These dolphin strandings were the “largest and longest cetacean…
