Oceans News

Newly released video footage gives us a glimpse of a rarely seen behavior: baby humpback whales nursing in the sheltered breeding grounds of Maui. Here, the young calves must drink…

MANILA — Whale sharks, the largest fish in the sea, are a fascinating and mysterious lot. Growing as big as 10 meters (33 feet) in length and diving as deep…

European spiny lobsters create quite the rumble. By rubbing an antenna across its face, a spiny lobster can create a sound that might, under the right underwater conditions, be detectable…

A coalition of more than 5,000 villagers and a provincial government in Papua New Guinea has built a legal challenge against the world’s most productive battery nickel plant. The company,…

In 2018, something extraordinary happened in Phuket, Thailand. For the first time in five years, a leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) crept onto a local beach, dug a nest in the…

JAKARTA — Indonesia is considering a ban to prevent its citizens going abroad to work on foreign fishing vessels, after the latest report that one of them had died and…

Each winter, southern right whales and humpback whales migrate to the waters off Brazil to feed on krill and phytoplankton, and to give birth to their young among the country’s…

JAKARTA — As Indonesia ramps up its mining sector to feed the world’s hunger for zero-emission vehicles, it is faced with a problem: what to do with all the waste.…

BUTUAN CITY, Philippines — Villagers in the southern Philippines taking part in an initiative to protect turtle nesting sites have recorded their most successful season in recent years, with nearly…

JAKARTA — Conservationists are calling for an investigation into alleged illegal fishing by a Chinese tuna company that kept Indonesian seamen as virtual slaves, leading to the deaths of four…

When World War II broke out in 1939, it triggered an unintended fisheries experiment in the North Sea. Fishing vessels stayed away from fear of being blown up by naval…

MANILA — When reports came out that the microsatellite Diwata-1 of the Philippines had re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on April 6, ending its mission, it made headlines for being the…

Indonesia’s parliament is reviewing a new bill on job creation that will amend and repeal provisions from 77 existing laws and combine them into a single piece of legislation. This…

JAKARTA — Indonesia will start exporting baby lobsters after a previous ban aimed at conserving the wild population of the crustacean was lifted by the fisheries ministry. Minister Edhy Prabowo…

KALPITIYA, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka is known for the blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) that occur throughout the year in the waters around this Indian Ocean island. But a lesser-known…

JAKARTA — Conservationists see an opportunity to strengthen oversight of the shark trade in Indonesia as fishing activity grinds to a halt amid the COVID-19 outbreak. West Nusa Tenggara province,…

A microplastic is a tiny speck of a thing. At its largest, it’s about the size of a linseed, but smaller microplastics can’t be seen with the naked eye. Minuscule…

In 2018, Lauren Biermann was scouring a satellite image of the ocean off the coast of the Isle of May, Scotland, searching for signs of floating seaweed for a project…

JAKARTA — Fishers are taking advantage of a perceived drop in enforcement amid the COVID-19 crisis to operate illegally in Indonesian waters, officials say. Indonesia has since November 2014 banned…

Most of the tropical reef sites around the world are no longer able to simultaneously sustain coral reef ecosystems and the livelihoods of the people who depend on them, as…

While the world’s been focused on COVID-19, a piece of good news came out of Russia last month, although it went relatively unnoticed: Russia listed mammal-eating orca whales and Caspian…

LIMURU, Kenya — In the lush, rolling highlands of Limuru in central Kenya lies a farm like few others. From the outside, it could be growing anything in its rows…

Impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on vulnerable communities in the Global South go far beyond the looming public health emergency.  The broader economic and environmental ramifications are of profound importance…

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A hidden invasion is taking place beneath the waves of the Mediterranean Sea. In recent years, scientists have recorded more than 700 alien species in Mediterranean waters,…

Marine conservation group Sea Shepherd has made the difficult decision to suspend its campaign to protect the critically endangered vaquita porpoise in Mexico’s Upper Gulf of California. “We haven’t had…

The future for the world’s oceans often looks grim. Fisheries are set to collapse by 2048, according to one study, and 8 million tons of plastic pollute the ocean every…

When Terry Hughes peered through the window of a small plane gliding over the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, what he saw troubled him greatly. Instead of healthy reef systems,…

MANILA — The hundreds of islands that make up the Visayas region in the central Philippines are connected by a vast fleet of decades-old cargo and passenger ships. These vessels…

As people around the globe stock their pantries for long stretches at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, sales of tinned tuna are going through the roof. In the U.S., consumption…

LAMONGAN/JAKARTA, Indonesia — At a fishing port in eastern Java, fisherman Muhammad Fauzi was unloading his catch after spending days out at sea. He still goes fishing even though sales…