Marine News

The idea is simple but ambitious: protect the ocean by giving it the same kind of rights a person might have. No such legal mechanism is currently in place, but…

This is the second in a two-part series originally published in Spanish on Mongabay Latam. You can read the first part here. An investigation recently published by Mongabay Latam and…

JAKARTA — As Indonesia aims to protect more of its seas, scientists say in a new paper that effective management of these marine areas must be the government’s top priority…

This is the first in a two-part series originally published in Spanish on Mongabay Latam. You can read the second part here. The crystal-clear waters of the oceans surrounding Panama hold…

In April 2009, ocean explorer Enric Sala and a team of marine biologists dove into the waters around the southern Line Islands, an uninhabited archipelago in the central Pacific that…

JAKARTA/NORTH PENAJAM PASER, Indonesia — The Indonesian government’s strategy to minimize the marine impacts of building a new capital city on the island of Borneo is severely lacking, researchers and…

Everything about the Greenland shark seems to be slow: these long-bodied animals swim slowly, grow slowly and reach maturity slowly. Their maturity rate is so sluggish, in fact, that scientists…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has launched a program that will pay thousands of traditional fishers to collect plastic trash from the sea. The four-week initiative is part of wider…

Editor's note: Following the publication of this podcast, Spain’s Minister of Fisheries announced that the EC will allow Spanish trawlers to fish in 41 of the 87 areas where it is…

The trillions of pieces of plastic currently roving through the global ocean are known to be an assault on life. Turtles get tangled up in discarded plastic fishing nets. Whales…

JAKARTA/BATAM, Indonesia — Indonesian authorities are investigating a network smuggling wild-caught lobster larvae to Singapore, following the seizures of two shipments worth an estimated 33.9 billion rupiah, or about $2.2…

This is the second article in a two-part series. Read the first installment here. PANTURA, Indonesia — Not so long ago, Lestari Priyanto needed only sail for a week from…

This is the first article in a two-part series. Read the second installment here. PANTURA, Indonesia — More than 10,000 brightly painted trawlers regularly come and go from the rowdy…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government is drafting an updated five-year national strategy to protect an endemic reef fish species that’s popular in the global aquarium trade. Indonesia’s fisheries ministry said…

A spate of North Atlantic right whale deaths that began in 2017 shook the scientists who study the critically endangered species. That year, 17 whales died, and the losses prompted…

Colombo, SRI LANKA — Like floating mushrooms with thin and transparent tentacles, jellyfish would have been drifting in the oceanic currents for several millions of years and even predating the…

BRUSSELS — On Sept. 15, the European Commission made a historic announcement: it will prohibit bottom fishing across 16,000 square kilometers, or 6,200 square miles — an area about half…

On Sept. 14, the Hidden Gem — an industrial drill ship operated by a subsidiary of The Metals Company (TMC), a Canadian deep-sea mining corporation — left its port in…

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka has received $2.5 million in the third interim payment for the impacts caused by the sinking of the X-Press Pearl cargo vessel off the country’s western…

Hours after being born, oysters are already working to form their protective, chalk-layered shells. Drawing calcium and carbonate from seawater, they combine the two to form hardened shells. But as…

Heat waves are reshaping life in the Mediterranean, with few of the sea’s coves, bays and shorelines untouched, according to a recent study looking at the impact of marine heat…

WEST SUMBAWA, Indonesia — “Gentlemen present in the room — have you ever eaten turtle eggs?” This was how Musyafirin, the head of West Sumbawa district in Indonesia’s West Nusa…

In the Davis Strait between Greenland and Canada’s Baffin Island, where only the faintest rays of sunlight penetrate, swim strange-looking flat fish with both eyes on the right side of…

Balintang, PHILIPPINES — “Seaweeds are important to me because they give me joy when we plant them,” says Melinda Gimotea, as she crouches down among the pile of seaweed seedlings…

In 2021, faced with an economy battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the island nation of Maldives considered lifting a ban on shark fishing that had been in place since 2010.…

U.N. member states came tantalizingly close to sealing a deal for a high-stakes, legally binding treaty to conserve biodiversity on the high seas, areas beyond national jurisdiction that comprise two-thirds…

JAKARTA — The Citarum River that skirts the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, is infamous as the most polluted river on Earth. The rivers inside Jakarta aren’t in much better state, either,…

JAKARTA — Indonesia plans to expand protection of its seas to cover an area nearly the size of Germany by 2030 — and then tripling it by 2045. The country…

A new study has found that nearly 90% of assessed marine life will be at high or critical risk by the year 2100 if climate change accelerates along a high-emissions…

Healthy coral reefs, with their brightly colored corals and bustling schools of fish, are easy to spot underwater. New research into the marine soundscapes of reefs in the Sangkarang Archipelago…