A new report shows that the world’s top fishing nations are using subsidies worth billions of dollars to exploit the high seas and the waters of other nations, including some…
At a glance, Japan’s seafood sector is a financial success story. Indeed, between 2010 and 2019, the 70 publicly-listed companies exposed to the sector on the Tokyo Stock Exchange enjoyed…
The prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, also known as the “Green Nobel Prize” will be awarded today to six environmental activists, one from each of the world’s inhabited continents. This year’s winners…
Within months of newly discovered species of snakes, geckos and turtles being described (along with their locations) by scientists, traders find and harvest the animals for sale on the Internet.
The US, China, UK, EU, Japan, South Korea, Canada and others upped their climate ambitions at Joe Biden’s Earth Day Leaders Summit on Climate, but activists pointed to duplicitous policies on forest biomass, coal, and more.
Many marine megafauna share a similar behavior of swimming in circles, often when in search of food, but also while engaged in a range of other activities, according to a…
On the wide-open plains of the Sugadaira and Minenohara highlands, red-budded great burnets dot the landscape amid lavender hues of Japanese lady bell flowers, relics of the last Ice Age…
Scientists implore US, EU, Japan, South Korea and UK to stop harvesting forests to turn into wood pellets to burn as fuel at converted coal-burning power plants; a policy the UN has erroneously condoned as “carbon neutral.”
Timber linked to one of Russia’s largest illegal logging scandals has entered the E.U. despite rules meant to tackle the illicit trade, according to a new report. The report, titled…
A Japanese ship that wrecked off the coast of Mauritius in July and sparked one of the worst environmental disasters in the country’s history may have run aground because of…
The use of coal as an energy source is steadily declining in the U.S. and Europe, but coal mining and the construction of coal-fired power plants continues across South and…
Waving a stinky tail in a potential partner’s face may sound like a bizarre way to attract a mate, but scientists believe this is what male ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta)…
In 2017, Japanese scientists found hundreds of shrimp-like creatures in an unusual place: on the gill rakers of a female whale shark, the world’s largest fish, living in a fish…
JAKARTA — Japan is exporting pollution and endangering public health overseas by funding coal-fired power plants that wouldn’t meet the strict emissions standards it imposes at home, a new report…
When Kenji Suetsugu is out looking for plants in Japan’s forests, he's not looking for the usual green ones. Instead, on dark forest floors, where little light penetrates, Suetsugu painstakingly…
From Japan’s Amami-Oshima and Tokunoshima islands, researchers have described a new-to-science species of orchid that produces dark brown flowers that likely never bloom. Kenji Suetsugu of the Kobe University Graduate…
Chances are the locally caught fish you bought down by the wharf was spawned thousands of miles away, migrating on ocean currents, a new study has found. An estimated 90…
For years, Japan exploited a loophole in international rules to continue hunting whales despite being a member of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) bound by the commercial whaling moratorium that…
On World Otter Day 2019, a new documentary film has been released that shines a spotlight on the illegal trade in the Asian small-clawed otter, a species listed as vulnerable…
The government of Japan confirmed today that it is withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and will resume commercial whaling operations in the North Pacific. The IWC, an inter-governmental…
Parrots around the globe are captured and sold as pets in a thriving illegal market that has carried more than 19 million birds across borders since 1975. The deadly beak…
From the peak of Mt. Rausu, a clear view of the Shiretoko Peninsula opens from the Okhotsk Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean on the east. Below, a…
Noise from ships changes the way that whales and dolphins communicate with each other, according to two studies published this week. Marine biologists know that an increasingly cacophonous ocean, filled…
Not all monkeys have a sweet tooth. Some, like the Asian colobine monkeys, whose members live on a diet comprised mainly of leaves, cannot taste natural sugars and show no…
Researchers have just described a species of colorful pygmy seahorse that’s both adorable and very easy to miss. The newly described creature, occurring in the waters off the coast of southeast Japan,…
New research confirms the fragility of life living in the world’s oceans, which are growing warmer and more acidic as carbon dioxide levels rise. The carbon dioxide that ends up…
Much of the fishing that takes place in international waters would be unprofitable without the billions of dollars in subsidies pumped in by governments to sustain the ecologically destructive industry,…
A single Pacific bluefin tuna sold for 36.45 million yen, or $323,111, during the famed New Year auction at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market last Friday, Jan. 5. The sale took…
1. U.S. drops out of Paris In our 2015 ocean top 10 list, we celebrated the adoption of the Paris Agreement as a monumental achievement for slowing the warming, acidification…
The Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) of Sumatra is both the world’s newest known great ape species and its most threatened, after being officially categorized this week as “Critically Endangered,” or…
