Oceans News

Marine ecologists have described a bright-red species of coral from Panama that’s new to science. The researchers found the coral growing at a depth of 45 to 50 meters (148…

New research finds that the mass bleaching event that led to the death of 30 percent of shallow-water corals on the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 also had a substantial…

In a video that went viral in 2015, researchers spent nearly 10 minutes pulling out a 10-centimeter (4-inch) plastic straw from the nostril of a male olive ridley turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea)…

Last year, a loggerhead named Eliza Ann took the crown. This year, Lucaya, the speedy leatherback, has pulled ahead to take an early lead. Every summer, a handful of sea…

On the morning of March 1, 1954, the United States tested its largest thermonuclear bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Code-named “Castle Bravo”, the explosion was more than…

Some corals stand a chance of surviving the current rise in global sea temperatures, a team of scientists recently reported, thanks to the diversity of their algal counterparts. They found…

"We need to keep this river clean,” says Muhammad Yusuf, a fisheries official from Padang, the capital of the Indonesian province of West Sumatra. “We’ve got to keep people from…

A little-known penguin in New Zealand makes an epic journey for food, a new study has found. The Fiordland penguin (Eudyptes pachyrhynchus), or tawaki as it’s locally known, lives in…

Whale sharks don’t need help being spectacular. The world’s biggest fish is impressive in nearly every aspect, growing as long as 12 meters (40 feet) and weighing up to 21…

Researchers at the Cape Eleuthera Institute (CEI) have been mapping the deep waters at the northern end of the Bahamian archipelago for many years, but their efforts got a boost…

DENPASAR, Indonesia — Hundreds of people in Bali are celebrating a key victory against a multi-billion-dollar land reclamation project that would have destroyed vast swaths of mangroves on the resort…

The local fishermen looked on skeptically. From the deck of a small motorboat, scuba divers grabbed odd chunks of ceramic – which could be described as rocky brains stuck on…

The most popular stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, this past week investigated how land trafficking is destroying Lima’s fragile hill ecosystems; government inaction and oil spills in Venezuela; open…

At the start of August, for the second time this year, a corridor of open water developed along the north shore of Greenland, this one more than 100 kilometers (over…

The most popular stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, in the last week investigated how human hunger is driving hunting in Venezuela (and danger for zoo animals, pictured above), how…

Researchers have just described a species of colorful pygmy seahorse that’s both adorable and very easy to miss. The newly described creature, occurring in the waters off the coast of southeast Japan,…

The government of New Caledonia voted on Tuesday to establish marine protected areas across 28,000 square kilometers (10,800 square miles) of waters around the French overseas territory, safeguarding coral reefs, marine habitats,…

Where do the biggest fish in the sea go to find enough food? Turns out, not too far, if they live in a region with lots of food. Whale sharks…

We know very little about the growth and reproductive biology of whale sharks, the world’s largest fish species. Because they’re listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, scientists are…

Whale sharks are capable long-distance swimmers, but it turns out that a lot of them are also homebodies. A new study published Aug. 9 in the journal Marine Ecology Progress…