Marine Ecosystems News

Jarrod Hodgson is one of very few scientists who have used rubber ducks as part of their Ph.D. research. Hodgson and colleagues at the University of Adelaide compared the accuracy…

On Tuesday, a Vietnamese court sentenced Hoang Duc Binh to 14 years in prison for activism related to a chemical spill that resulted in a massive fish kill in 2016.…

On today’s episode, we discuss the cutting-edge remote sensing technologies used to monitor ecosystems like rainforests and coral reefs. We also listen to a few ecoacoustic recordings that are used…

The Galápagos Islands are not widely known for their coral reefs. Most visitors to the islands’ waters seek big charismatic residents like sharks, manta rays, sea lions and whales, or…

KAMPOT, Cambodia — As the Trapeang Sangke estuary opens up into the Gulf of Thailand, the dense green mangroves that line its edges taper off in stages, from thick, full-grown…

Is Australia’s Great Barrier Reef losing its male sea turtles? A new study has found that green sea turtle hatchlings in one of the world’s largest colonies are increasingly female,…

In 1962, at the First World Conference of National Parks in Seattle, U.S., Carleton Ray, a marine biologist at the University of Virginia, pleaded the cause of setting aside “unmolested”…

A recent report tracking the health of the Mesoamerican Reef indicates that conservation efforts might be helping to turn the tide for the reef itself and the people who depend…

The government of Belize halted all exploration for oil in its territorial waters from Dec. 29, becoming one of the first developing countries to turn away from oil in favor…

Vast swaths of the world’s oceans are turning into “dead zones” as global warming and pollution strips them of oxygen, threatening marine life on a massive scale, a new study…

The Trump Administration has unveiled its plan to open nearly all of the United States’ coastal waters to oil and gas drilling. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced…

Coral bleaching has accelerated to a clip at which established reefs can no longer keep up, reports a team of scientists Thursday in the journal Science. Severe bleaching can blot…

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…

For years, sovereign rights in the South China Sea have been an object of fierce contention among the states that border it: the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Vietnam (all…

KEP ARCHIPELAGO, Cambodia – It’s not long before midnight and an outlaw trawler has been spotted. The captain — a weather-gnarled old fisherman wearing just boxer shorts — winces as…

A sliver of ocean on the Southern Africa coast is getting a new chance at success thanks to an agreement announced Dec. 6. The National Administration of Conservation Areas of…

The past couple weeks have brought major news about two important new marine reserves. On November 24, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto signed a decree creating the Revillagigedo Archipelago National…

Some of the fishing boats around Phu Quoc Island off southwestern Vietnam use trawl nets that drag along the seafloor, catching everything in their sweep. Others send divers into the…

When Samuel “El Sammy” Gallardo Castro was shot and killed on a Mexican beach in 2014, it could have been just another gangland killing of a drug dealer from the…

There are well over 100 known species of butterflyfish, iconic coral reef dwellers that feature an array of distinctive and often colorful patterns. Because they are relatively well studied, scientists…