Ocean Crisis News

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A misty rain blows against my face as I follow Farah Obaidullah along Scheveningen Beach in the northwest part of The Hague. Despite the wind and…

When flesh-footed shearwater chicks hatch from their eggs, their parents start working to fill the chicks’ stomachs with as much food as possible. They do this for about 80 to…

Environmental advocates have long called for a ban on bottom trawling on seamounts in the South Pacific’s international waters, and they hoped one would finally be instituted at a regional…

International delegates attending the eighth annual Our Ocean Conference in Panama March 2-3 have pledged billions to protect the world’s oceans. Participants made 341 commitments worth nearly $20 billion, including…

Ocean fisheries experts Daniel Pauly and Rashid Sumaila have been awarded the 2023 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, referred to as a “Nobel Prize for the environment,” in recognition of…

In 2009, a group of Indonesian researchers published a report on the vulnerability to climate change of the eastern Indonesian island of Lombok, home to about 4 million people. Their…

Scientists remember the years between 2014 and 2017 as a particularly bad time for coral reefs. Elevated temperatures fueled by an El Niño climate pattern harmed about three-quarters of the…

What comes to mind when you hear the word “fishing”? A supertrawler unloading a massive net bursting with fish onto its deck, attended by a dozen crewmembers? Or a pair…

Imagine showers of little green sand grains drifting through the ocean: collecting on coral reefs, rolling off the backs of whales, sprinkling schools of tuna — and helping to save…

A resplendent rainbow fish, a frog that looks like chocolate, a Thai tarantula,  an anemone that rides on a back of a hermit crab, and the world's largest waterlily are…

1. Negotiations for historic global plastics treaty break ground Global leaders cheered to the strike of a recycled-plastic gavel in March, signifying a landmark decision by the United Nations Environment…

A stone causeway connects an islet, the famed Aragonese Castle perched atop it, to the island of Ischia off the coast of Naples in southern Italy. Below water, along the…

When it comes to news about fishing, bottom trawling sparks some of the most dramatic stories. In September, for instance, Greenpeace activists took it upon themselves to drop 18 boulders…

Melting sea ice may evoke images of polar bears stranded on shrinking floes or dramatically collapsing ice shelves. But according to a study published recently in the journal Science, ice…

The Mediterranean Sea isn’t the source of plenty it once was. It now contains some of the most ecologically degraded marine areas in the world, and has been the site…

On Nov. 7, French President Emmanuel Macron announced at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, that France is calling for a complete ban on deep-sea mining. This marks…

On Nov. 4, the 41st annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) closed without making significant progress toward the establishment of new marine…

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay/PUNTA ARENAS, Chile/PORDENONE, Italy — A mountain of krill meal has been packed inside a huge warehouse: divided into bags and stacked in hundreds of piles that stretch almost…

Sea turtles lumber from ocean to shore to lay their eggs in the sand. In some places, this effort is protected by humans who patrol beaches on foot, warding off…

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…

DAKAR — A fishers’ collective called Taxawu Cayar has brought a case before the Senegalese courts to demand the closure of a fishmeal factory in the Grande Côte area, around…

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…

Unstudied at sea until recently, this huge, fast-moving ocean current may hold a key to resolving climate change uncertainties. But doing remote research in southern oceans poses financial, data gathering, and unexpected challenges.

Small- and large-scale fishers report an increase in the volume and variety of fish species in the Patos Lagoon and the coast of Rio Grande do Sul state. Such abundance came after a bill banning motorized trawling on the state’s coast was passed and signed into law in 2018. Drafted by fishers and scientists and passed unanimously in the state parliament, the law goes against the interests of President Bolsonaro’s allies.

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…

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…

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…