The potentially imminent start of deep-sea mining in international waters could impact whales, dolphins and porpoises, particularly in terms of noise pollution, according to experts who say there needs to…
FEBE, Cameroon — In Febe, just six kilometres (about four miles) from Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé, a stone quarry overlooks a mountain slope and the bustling life of the village. Twice…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s parliament has passed into law a sweeping set of amendments to the country’s Criminal Code, which experts have warned will weaken environmental protections. The House of Representatives…
CAPE TOWN — Seabird ranger Eduard Drost was busy with a routine inspection in an African penguin colony off the South African coast in 2021 when he noticed a troubling…
JAKARTA — An ambitious and long-anticipated plan by Indonesian lawmakers to revise the country’s criminal code, inherited from the Dutch colonial era, could make it much more difficult to prosecute…
Generally, the word pollution conjures images of billowing smokestacks, oily water and trash-filled highway medians. But for whales, dolphins and porpoises, a subtler and perhaps more sinister source of pollution…
A tiny, poppy seed-sized particle of plastic might seem innocuous on its own. But when a speck of plastic is coupled with organic pollutants, the chemical makeup of that plastic…
Defeat for Japan’s opposition party in last month’s national elections has dashed hopes for a quick resolution to the contentious relocation of a U.S. military base on the island of…
It’s not easy to try to describe how a dolphin experiences sound in the ocean, says Lindy Weilgart, a noise pollution expert at Dalhousie University in Canada. “We have terrestrial…
Croatia’s Lošinj archipelago is home to a large resident population of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), which suffered a decline between 1995 and 2003. Driving the drop, among other factors, is…
While the pandemic has increased stress levels for many people, the reduction in human activity has coincided with a rare spell of good news for whales. "I think, overall, the…
It’s sometimes easy to forget that birds have ears, craftily concealed as they are. Which is why the thunderous passage of airplanes sends ripples of disquiet in their ranks. Now,…
India’s Ganga is a noisy river. There’s the churning of sediment, the hums, grunts and growls of fishes and turtles. There are the cacophonous stretches of cities and industries breathing…
CAT BA ISLAND, Vietnam – While approaching Hai Phong, a major city on Vietnam’s northeast coast, it is impossible to miss signs of the country’s fast-growing economic might. GDP growth…
With India just a few weeks away from the general elections, a new survey has shed light on what the country's voters want. The survey, released by the NGO Association…
Whales can behave quite differently in response to sonar depending on where they live and what they’re doing, new research has found. The pair of studies, on different species and…
Researchers have developed a web-based application to enable citizen scientists to listen to the sounds of killer whales in the northeast Pacific in real time. Publicly launched on Nov. 1,…
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…
For 19th-century adventurers like Sir John Franklin, navigating a path through the ice-choked Northwest Passage — the Holy Grail of Arctic exploration — was a treacherous and often deadly undertaking.…
KUCHING, Malaysia — Conservationists have called on governments and the private sector to do more to mitigate the impact of global shipping activities on marine ecosystems and communities in the…
Human beings evolved among trees. Even today, hundreds of millions of people live in and around forests, and depend upon them directly for their food, fuel, and livelihoods. Many of…
Animals in the world’s oceans have faced an ever-increasing cacophony in recent decades. They’re inundated with sonar intended to keep countries safe, air gun charges that help energy companies find…
The Trump Administration has taken steps to open up the United States’ Atlantic waters to offshore oil exploration and drilling, sparking fierce resistance up and down the coast. For instance,…
Humans make quite a racket, and all of the excessive noise we make is not just a problem in urban areas. About 14 percent of the land mass in the…
rossbow in hand, Jo Marie Acebes strides the deck of the outrigger fishing boat she has refitted for tracking whales off the Philippines’ Babuyan Islands. She’s scanning for a target…
Imagine living in an environment of constant noise where you cannot get anything accomplished. Ocean noise pollution caused by shipping, oil and gas development, and other human activities is making…
Traffic noise is just another inconvenience for many of us. But for wildlife, noise from honking, and zooming vehicles can often be an insidious threat: it can degrade habitats without…
Energy has become a contentious and politicized topic, spurring activism, whether it be the fossil fuel divestment campaign, Keystone pipeline protests, or concern over wind turbine harm to birds. But…
Turtles communicate to synchronize hatching, socialize Turtles comprise one of the oldest living groups of reptiles, with hundreds of species found throughout the world. Many have been well-researched, and scientists…
Transporting a stranded pygmy killer whale back to the wild. All photos by: Scubazoo. On Tuesday a female pygmy killer whale (Feresa attenuata) was found stranded on Tanjung Aru beach,…