The Caribbean Basin is drowning in waste, especially plastic trash that’s contaminating rivers and the surrounding sea.
Senegal now faces a decision it’s faced before. In the mid-2000s, small-scale fishers there mobilized in opposition to a fishing agreement with the European Union that allowed in many dozens…
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network, where Philip Jacobson is a fellow. Four years of investigating jaguar parts trafficking rings in Latin America led Andrea…
Two hundred meters below the surface of the sea is a cold, faintly lit layer of water known as the mesopelagic, or twilight, zone. Here lives a menagerie of peculiar-looking…
PULAU SERIBU, Indonesia — Mustaghfirin unmoors his boat every day in the Thousand Islands archipelago, two hours’ sailing from the Jakarta coast, and sets off into a sea filled with…
Representatives of 170 nations met in Ottawa, Canada, last week pushing a final U.N. plastic pollution treaty agreement closer to completion. But much remains to be done, with debate over plastic production limits and other barriers still unsettled.
Global plastic pollution talks in Ottawa came to a close April 30, and with them a group of Indigenous leaders from the Arctic are on their way home. But the…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government is resuming a controversial policy of exporting lobster larvae — the latest chapter in an eight-year saga that began over concerns for wild lobster stocks…
Illegal trafficking of shark fins and bodies from Ecuador to Peru has gone on for years. On Feb. 6, Ecuador announced measures to restrict fishing of these animals. The announcement…
ATHENS — At 88, Sylvia Earle is at an age when most people would be slowing down. But retirement doesn’t appear to be on the radar of the famous oceanographer…
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Just 60 kilometers (37 miles) outside the city of Rio de Janeiro, dozens of Guiana dolphins swim cautiously past the motorboat, cutting through the water’s…
CALABRIA, Italy — "On our coasts there is … a massive presence, that everyone can see, of poachers and illegal fishermen," a fisher in Calabria, in southwestern Italy, told Mongabay.…
BLUE HILL, Maine — January brought a pair of rough storms to the northeastern U.S. They hit when the tides were high and pushed higher than normal by rising sea…
The Emperor Seamount Chain is a massive and richly biodiverse set of underwater mountains stretching about 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) south from the Aleutian Islands in the northwest Pacific. From…
When he was a teenager at the end of the 1980s, Evanildo Sena would come back from a day of fishing dragging 5 or 6 tons of fish with his…
In 2015, smelly mats of a brown macroalgae called sargassum piled as high as 1.2 meter (4 feet) on the beaches of Barbados, recalls Joshua Forte. It was the fourth…
The ninth Our Ocean conference takes place this week in Athens, Greece. It is the largest and highest profile conference of its kind, and attracts presidents and celebrities, who all…
No one on the Colombian island of Providencia was prepared for what happened on the night of Nov. 16, 2020. Not even Josefina Huffington, who had survived four hurricanes. That…
SEMBILAN ISLAND, Indonesia — Until recently, skippers on this island relied on their day’s catch of grouper, mackerel and snapper tipping the scales at around 50 kilograms (110 pounds). Today,…
RAJA AMPAT, Indonesia — Nearly a million people visit the Shark Reef Aquarium on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada every year. There’s a chance they see zebra sharks (Stegostoma…
States jostling for territorial dominance in the South China Sea have inflicted untold damage on the marine environment, according to a new investigation by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI)…
JAKARTA — Indonesia is rich in marine and fisheries resources, but how abundant are they exactly? That’s the question a group of experts, led by Annisya Rosdiana from the Fisheries…
Since he was old enough to work, Sam Elong has been a fisherman in Kribi, a coastal town of more than 90,000 inhabitants that stretches along the shore of the…
Deep-sea mining could begin in international waters as early as next year, yet policymakers are still disputing how to govern such activities. Between March 18 and 29, representatives from the…
AMCHIT, Lebanon — Amchit’s harbor bustles with activity on a sunny January morning, one of the first in more than three weeks. A group of 16 youths from the coastal…
RAJA AMPAT, Indonesia — Tucked in the curve of a bay in Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago, a floating structure appears like the tip of an iceberg. Below the surface, it’s…
Thousands of miles off the southeast coast of South America lies a set of remote islands, one broad and comma-shaped, the others a series of small dots that trail off…
ANTANANARIVO — Madagascar recently released its first fisheries transparency report, part of an effort to open up, democratize, and improve the sustainability of its fisheries sector. The report is a…
JAKARTA — Indonesia is developing a satellite constellation to beef up monitoring of its marine and fisheries resources with the maiden launch of a nanosatellite scheduled this July. That inaugural…
In September 2021, Colombian police received an alert from a shipping company urging them to inspect some cardboard boxes that were about to be exported to Hong Kong from El…