Marine protected areas News

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A humpback whale fluke.

Protect Antarctic krill to preserve the health of Africa’s coastal communities (commentary)

Carmen dos Santos 17 Jun 2026
Purple sea urchin on the Gaiola MPA sea floor. Image courtesy of Maurizio Simeone.

How a popular spaghetti dish is threatening Italy’s marine ecosystem

Manuela Callari 16 Jun 2026
Jannes Landschoff diving in the Great African Seaforest. Image courtesy of Jannes Landschoff.

World Oceans Day: Marine protected areas surpass 10% mark in 2026

Mongabay.com 8 Jun 2026
Dugong rescue in Thailand

Thai island community rallies to protect beloved dugongs, revive declining seagrass

Carolyn Cowan 21 May 2026
Sea pen in the South Arran MPA. Image © COAST/Howard Wood.

Seabed life triples after bottom trawling ban in Scotland protected area

Shanna Hanbury 14 May 2026

At world’s largest shark conference, scientists warn of a grim outlook across the board

Philip Jacobson 14 May 2026
Endangered Antarctic fur seals on South Georgia Island. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

China and Norway push to increase krill harvests around Antarctica

Francesco De Augustinis 14 May 2026
A waddle of chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarctica) on Deception Island, Antarctica. Image courtesy of Jay Williams / WWF.

The Southern Ocean is key to our planet’s future & we have a chance to protect it this year (commentary)

Zac Goldsmith 13 May 2026

Ocean philanthropy: small sums for a vast domain

Rhett Ayers Butler 11 May 2026
Green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) feeding on seagrass. Image courtesy of Liam McGuire via Ocean Image Bank.

With its first marine reserve, Ghana protects its ocean to secure its future (commentary)

Emelia Arthur 4 May 2026
A man on the Philippine island of Boracay walks beside a drainage pipe discharging untreated sewage into the ocean in 2018.

Nearly three in four marine protected areas undermined by wastewater pollution

Elizabeth Fitt 29 Apr 2026

Chile’s plan to protect another 10% of its ocean is stalled by the new government

Shanna Hanbury 23 Apr 2026
Jannes Landschoff diving in the Great African Seaforest. Image courtesy of Jannes Landschoff.

A campaign to protect one of the planet’s only expanding kelp forests takes shape

Alexandra Talty 21 Apr 2026
Alannah Acaq Hurley in Dillingham, Alaska. January, 2026. Image by Goldman Environmental Prize.

Goldman Prize winner Alannah Hurley fights Pebble Mine “from a place of love”

Claudia Geib 20 Apr 2026
Cape Three Points village, Ghana. Image by Tini Maier via Flickr. CC BY 2.0.

Ghana declares its first marine protected area

Victoria Schneider 14 Apr 2026

Council recommends opening US Pacific marine monuments to commercial fishing

Bobby Bascomb 13 Apr 2026
A Mediterranean moray (Muraena helena). Image ©gianfrs via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Creating the North Atlantic’s largest MPA network: Interview with Azores President José Manuel Bolieiro

Maria José Mendes 9 Apr 2026

At high seas treaty summit, a dispute over fisheries managers’ role in conservation

Edward Carver 7 Apr 2026

10% of the ocean is protected. Now just 20% more to go

Elizabeth Claire Alberts 6 Apr 2026
Fishers in the Philippines. Image courtesy of Rare Conservation.

What ‘paper parks’ reveal about the limits of conservation policy (commentary)

Kevin Green 31 Mar 2026
Fisherman Chapoka Miongo speaks from his traditional dugout canoe at the Shimoni channel, in Kwale county, Kenya, on Tuesday, June 14, 2022. Artisanal fisheries on Kenya's coast say climate change, overfishing by large foreign vessels and a lack of other job opportunities for coastal communities is draining the Indian Ocean of its yellowfin tuna stocks. Miongo explained that warming waters forced tuna species to alter their migration patterns, making it harder for local fishers to catch them. Image by AP Photo/Brian Inganga.

New strategy to reverse Kenya’s shark decline tries to bring fishers on board

Anthony Langat 27 Mar 2026
Sperm Whales Up Close Underwater in Indian Ocean, Western Australia. Photo credit: © Alex Westover

The ocean’s enforcement gap

Rhett Ayers Butler 23 Mar 2026
The Albardão dune fields in the extreme south of Brazil’s southernmost Rio Grande do Sul state. Image courtesy of ICMBio.

Brazil protects huge coastal area with endangered dolphins and megafauna fossils

Shanna Hanbury 18 Mar 2026
Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus); the species is one of 19 cetacean species that spend time in the Azores.

Azores dodges proposal to overturn no-fishing zones in its giant new MPA network

Maria José Mendes 23 Feb 2026
Common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) ride the bow wave of a research vehicle in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in 2024. Image courtesy of Alex DeCiccio/University of Rhode Island Inner Space Center for Mystic Aquarium, public domain.

Trump opens only US marine national monument in Atlantic to fishing — again

Edward Carver 10 Feb 2026
Across Kep province, fishing communities fear the Funan Techo Canal will see them lose their homes on land and their livelihoods at sea. Image by Gerald Flynn / Mongabay.

Cambodia’s canal mega-project threatens coastal communities and marine life

Gerald Flynn, Phoung Vantha 10 Feb 2026
Loggerhead turtle swimming around fish aggregation device (FAD) belonging to the Ecuadorean purse seiner 'Ingalapagos', which was documented by Greenpeace in the vicinity of the northern Galapagos Islands.

Abandoned tuna-fishing devices pollute the Galápagos Marine Reserve

Marlowe Starling 9 Feb 2026
A great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias).

Critical shark and ray habitats in Western Indian Ocean largely unprotected: Study

Victoria Schneider 6 Feb 2026

A new treaty comes into force to govern life on the high seas

Rhett Ayers Butler 17 Jan 2026
A Samoan coral reef from the air. Image courtesy of Andy Estep.

Marine protected areas expanded in 2025, but still far from 30% goal

Shanna Hanbury 8 Jan 2026
Sperm whales inside Azores MPA Network. Image courtesy of Andy Mann/National Geographic.

Azores must respect its exceptional network of marine protected areas (commentary)

Enric Sala 5 Jan 2026
Scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna lewini), photographed in Yonaguni, Japan.

Top ocean news stories of 2025 (commentary)

Alfredo Giron, Ana Spalding, Erin Skoczylas, Vanessa Constant 24 Dec 2025

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