This is the second in a four-part series on Moana Marae, the massive, recently enacted multiple-use marine protected area covering the Cook Islands’ entire exclusive economic zone. Other stories in…
Bringing the protection of the “Atlantic Galapagos” one step closer to becoming a reality, the Governor of St. Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha, Philip Rushbrook, designated a large-sale Marine…
SUMBERKIMA, Indonesia — In the waters off Bali’s northern coast, three men stand atop a floating cage that holds thousands of pearl oysters. In 2016, they were hired by the…
It turns out that manta rays might be as picky about their friends as you or me. Researchers have found evidence of structured social relationships among wild, free-ranging reef manta…
In what conservation groups are calling a major win, governments from around the world have voted to regulate the international trade in two species of mako sharks, six giant guitarfish…
With a reported top speed of 74 kilometers per hour (46 miles per hour), the shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) is one of the fastest creatures in the sea. It can…
When Chong Chen was in high school, he came across a paper published in 2003 that described a peculiar species of snail from the Indian Ocean, thousands of feet below…
A striking new species of wrasse discovered off the coast of Zanzibar, Tanzania, underlines how little is known about marine environments — even those relatively close to shore. Deeper-lying reefs…
The coral reefs of the lesser Sunda-Banda seascape in southeastern Indonesia host some of the planet’s most biodiverse marine ecosystems, which remain relatively untouched even as overfishing ravages sea life…
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…
In 2010, researchers surveying the eastern Gulf of Mexico to study what sperm whales eat, collected numerous animals from the ocean’s depths. While examining the collection in 2013, Mark Grace…
Great white sharks, bull sharks, tiger sharks: All are household names, synonymous with media hype, and made infamous through films and documentaries. These “deadly” names represent just three species of…
Beachgoers in the U.S. Virgin Islands will be slathering on more ecologically friendly sunscreens next year after lawmakers voted to ban common chemical sunscreen ingredients that can damage coral reefs.…
New research finds that thousands of sharks and rays could be entangled in the plastic polluting Earth’s oceans. Scientists at the UK’s University of Exeter examined existing scientific literature and…
Global climate change poses a severe threat to marine life, but scientists have found at least one species that appears to be successfully adapting to warmer ocean waters. A recent…
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has decided to list the Sea of Cortez and its islands in Mexico’s Gulf of California, the only place where the critically endangered vaquita is…
Today we speak with Jessica Crance, a research biologist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who recently discovered right whales singing for the first time ever. Listen…
Marine biologists survey fish assemblages and their associated habitat to understand the ecosystem of a place, compare fish communities over time or in response to changes in management, and examine…
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…
When collecting a DNA sample from a species in the wild just isn’t possible — it’s elusive, it may disturb the animal, or a host of other reasons — field…
