North Atlantic right whales face an increasingly uncertain future. Despite two decades of intensive monitoring and protection, their numbers have hit a seven-year skid, with an estimated 451 right whales…
It was announced today that the 2018 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement will go to two biological oceanographers based in the United States: Paul Falkowski, a professor of Geological and…
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…
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…
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…
Weeks of flooding in Bangladesh in August 2017 reportedly claimed the lives of over 100 people, displaced tens of thousands more, and destroyed more than one million acres of crops.…
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…
TANINTHARYI, Myanmar — When viewed from the bow of a boat, the shoreline near the city of Myeik in southern Myanmar is all green. In every direction, low-slung mangroves blanket…
The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on Sunday to convene negotiations for an international treaty to protect the marine environments of the high seas. Vast areas…
As the world recommitted to Paris carbon cuts last month, Britain and Brazil have moved to tap 176 billion barrels of undersea oil, risking further climate destabilization.
It’s not just the Great Barrier Reef — coral reefs around the globe are in decline due to climate change, ocean pollution, and a number of other impacts of human…
The fourth and final meeting of a United Nations Preparatory Committee ended last week with a recommendation that the UN General Assembly convene treaty negotiations aimed at protecting the high…
On Wednesday, all eyes were on Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf as a long-awaited one-trillion tonne iceberg, the size of the U.S. state of Delaware, was found to have finally…
The slideshow in this story contains an image that some readers may find disturbing. Forbidding black cliffs relentlessly shuddered by massive Southern Ocean waves give way to a mountainous interior,…
Beneath their prehistoric-looking shells, turtles conceal an extraordinary ability to hold their breath underwater, going without oxygen for hours, even months, at a time. This cellular-level capacity to survive underwater…
Even if all the world’s nations fully cooperated to reduce carbon emissions and limit climate change, elevated carbon dioxide levels will continue to harm our oceans in the coming decades.…
Ocean oxygen levels have been dropping since the 1980s in a pattern consistent with expectations from global warming, according to a new analysis of 50 years of global ocean data.…
Rising ocean temperatures are bleaching reefs around the world at unprecedented levels, and, with little standing in its way, this coral-killing force is unlikely to relent, according to a new…
Evolution can be an exquisite hammer, tapping out finely honed strategies for the survival of life on Earth against the blunt force of the environment. But mess with those surroundings too…
