Bangladesh, a least developed country in South Asia, has made remarkable progress in various development sectors over the last few decades. From agricultural production and food security to infrastructural development,…
MEDAN, Indonesia — On a recent morning in Kampung Nelayan, a village on the northeastern coast of the island of Sumatra, fisherman Heri Gunawan returned home frustrated and dissatisfied. Heri…
DHAKA — Wasim Ali, 45, lived in one of the 55,000 houses destroyed by the deadly Super Cyclone Amphan in May of 2020. The tropical storm whipped up a tidal…
For years, seabird ecologist Jennifer Lavers longed to survey the colonies of short-tailed shearwaters on Figure of Eight Island off the coast of Western Australia. She’d identified this remote island…
Antarctic krill — tiny, filter-feeding crustaceans that live in the Southern Ocean — have long existed in mind-boggling numbers. A 2009 study estimated that the species has a biomass of…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has abandoned a plan to contract out long-term fishing rights to companies, following intense criticism from small-scale fishers and experts that the move would effectively…
DJERBA, Tunisia, and SICILY, Italy — On the deck of the Ghanem, which in Arabic means “winner,” sit eight boxes crawling with life. Blue legs and claws teem with each…
JAKARTA — Seagrass meadows are the fishing grounds of choice for many households in four Indo-Pacific countries, according to a new study that calls for better-informed management of these often-overlooked…
Ultra-strong fibers, multi-legged robots, pain relievers — all are human innovations inspired by spiders. Now, conservationists in Indonesia are rehabilitating coral reefs using what’s known as the coral spider technique.…
It starts with tiny deep-sea fragments — shark’s teeth or slivers of shell. Then, in a process thought to span millions of years, they get coated in layers of liquidized…
A new model that links climate change-reduced oceanic oxygen levels to smaller ectotherms predicts marine microorganisms could shrink as the world gets warmer, with impacts up the food chain, impacting fisheries.
In deep waters off the coast of Japan, a hermit crab is wearing haute couture. On its shell is the new-to-science anemone species Stylobates calcifer, named after the fire demon…
On July 12, oceanographer and geographer Dawn Wright was sealed inside a submersible, traveling to Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. Wright and…
New legislation passed by the Chilean government in May 2021 aims to rid the nation of all single-use products in the food and beverage industry, including plastics, within three years.…
Delegates of the International Seabed Authority are currently meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, to negotiate a set of rules that would pave the way for a controversial activity: mining the seabed…
In the Indonesian village of Kun-kun, where illegal loggers once cut mangroves for timber, a new livelihood has come to the fore: crab fishing. “Without the mangroves, the crabs cannot…
In 2018, marine scientist Joni Pini-Fitzsimmons received an unusual stingray video from a colleague. It showed a mangrove whipray (Urogymnus granulatus) gliding over a reef in the Gili Islands of…
Authorities in Bangladesh have been slammed for harassment and lack of compassion after arresting 59 people from forest-dependent communities for violating a ban on entering the Sundarbans, the world’s biggest…
In late June, New Zealand parliamentarian and Māori activist Debbie Ngarewa-Packer boarded an international flight to begin a 40-hour journey to Lisbon to attend the U.N. Ocean Conference. At various…
NATUNA/JAKARTA, Indonesia — A year after it was introduced as a replacement for a type of fishing net long seen as unsustainable, the square-mesh seine net has prompted concerns from…
For decades, the nomadic Bajo people have crisscrossed the seas of Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. But due to pollution, climate change, overfishing and other harmful practices, their way of…
A hawksbill turtle’s protective shell is in some ways its greatest weakness. Exquisitely patterned and thick enough to sculpt, hawksbill shells are the most popular type of tortoiseshell, a material…
JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Ashani Arulananthan says she can recall childhood visits to the beach in her home village in Sri Lanka’s northern district of Jaffna. She would collect washed-up…
JAKARTA — Coastal communities in the tropics that rely heavily on both agriculture and fisheries are most vulnerable to the losses caused by high global carbon emissions, a new study…
RAROTONGA, Cook Islands – Every Saturday, a group of Cook Islands Māori youth slide into scuba gear, grab sticks from the ironwood trees (Casuarina equisetifolia) growing along Rarotonga’s beachfront, and…
COLOMBO — It was a perfect morning in Pigeon Island National Park in eastern Sri Lanka, where a group of tourists in a boat was taking in the rich marine…
Nearly one in four people across the planet don’t have access to a nutritious diet. But the latest “State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture” (SOFIA) report by the U.N.’s Food…
In the eastern waters off Hong Kong, a group of scientists searching for coral-eating nudibranchs stumbled upon a colorful surprise: three new species of sun corals. These orange, purple and…
The increasing difficulty of accessing clean water is forcing young women in coastal areas of Bangladesh to try to halt their menstrual cycles by misusing contraceptive pills, putting their long-term…
Earth’s vast underwater kelp forests are a vital source of food, pharmaceuticals, and more, while storing huge amounts of carbon. These undersea forests are also at risk, but researchers are working to restore them.
