Surging storms and rising seas threaten millions of U.S. residents and billions of dollars in property along coastlines. The nation's strongest defense, according to a new study by scientists with…
The oceans are more acidic now than they have been for at least 300m years, due to carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, and a mass extinction of key…
From massive hotel development through the agriculture industry, humans are destroying the second largest barrier reef in the world: the Mesoamerican Reef. Although global climate change and its effects on…
You can now visit up-close and personal some of the world's most imperiled ecosystems on Google Earth: coral reefs. The Google team is working with scientists to provide 360 degree…
With islands and atolls scattered across the ocean, the small Pacific island states are among those most exposed to the effects of global warming: increasing acidity and rising sea level,…
Three weeks after Typhoon Bopha: all the Acropora coral species are dead and covered in algae and sediment. Photo courtesy of ESI. When Typhoon Bopha, also known as Pablo, ran…
Coral surveying in a cloud of fish. Photo by: Joshua Feingold. The Galapagos Islands have been famous for a century and a half, but even Charles Darwin thought the archipelago’s…
Outbreaks of the coral eating crown of thorns starfish have been responsible for 42 percent of the decline in coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef between 1985 and 2012.…
Fan coral off the coast of Belize. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Only 8 percent of the Caribbean's reefs today retain coral, according to a new report by the International…
Calcification rates by reef-building coral communities on Australia's Great Barrier Reef have slowed by nearly half over the past 40 years, a sign that the world's coral reefs are facing…
A ship approaches the Caribbean Island of Navassa. Photo by: Eddie Gonzalez. Don't feel bad if you‘ve never heard of Navassa Island, even though it's actually part of the U.S.…
Purple coral off the coast of Maui, Hawaii. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In an unprecedented show of concern, 2,600 (and rising) of the world's top marine scientists have released…
A new video by Google Earth and the World Resources Institute (WRI) highlights the world's many endangered coral reefs. A part of the WRI's Reefs at Risk program, the video…
Fleshy whorls of thick brown algae blanket the once-vibrant corals in Glover’s Reef, Belize. According to a controversial study published August 14 in the journal Coral Reefs, a decade of…
The thylacine, the dodo, the great auk, the passenger pigeon, the golden toad: these species have become symbols of extinction. But they are only the tip of the recent extinction…
Researchers with the Smithsonian have catalogued almost as many crab species on tropical coral reef bits measuring just 20.6 square feet (6.3 square meters) as in all of Europe's seas,…
A new report finds that the oceans are facing a mass extinction. One day many of the world's marine species may only be found in aquariums, if at all, such…
Marine scientists have been warning for years that coral reefs, the most biodiverse ecosystems in the ocean, are facing grave peril. But a new comprehensive analysis by the World Resources…
The world's coral reefs are in trouble. Due to a variety of factors—including ocean acidification, warming temperatures from climate change, overfishing, and pollution—coral cover has decline by approximately 125,000 square…
While research has shown that ocean acidification from rising CO2 levels in the ocean imperils the growth and survival mature coral reefs, a new study has found that it may…
Most Americans don't understand the basics of climate change, according to a new poll by researchers with Yale. The poll found that over half of Americans deserve an 'F' on…
An interview with Dr. Christopher N. Herndon. In all the discussions of saving the world's biodiversity from extinction, one point is often and surprisingly forgotten: the importance of the world's…
It is one of the most worrisome observations: fast massive death of coral reefs. A severe wide-scale bleaching occurred in the Philippines leaving 95 percent of the corals dead. The…
A large-scale bleaching event due to high ocean temperatures appears to be underway off the coast of Sumatra, an Indonesian island, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). An initial survey…
Kristian Teleki, Vice President for Science Initiatives for SeaWeb and former Director of the International Coral Reef Action Network (ICRAN), spoke with Laurel Neme on her "The WildLife" radio show…
Steve Simpson, Senior Researcher at the University of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, spoke with Laurel Neme on her "The WildLife" radio show and podcast about ocean sounds and how…
The biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis, the deforestation crisis: we are living in an age when environmental issues have moved from regional problems to global ones. A generation or two…
Climate change threatens coral reefs and precipitation along coasts. Twenty years of research has led Dr. Graham Jones of Australia's Southern Cross University to discover a startling connection between coral…
A study in the Caribbean has found that coral reefs can recover from global warming impacts, such as coral bleaching, if protected from fishing. Marine biologists have long been worried…
A new study from the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity has synthesized over 300 reports on ocean acidification caused by climate change. The report finds that increasing acidification…
