A blessed country of spectacular landscapes and the most diverse array of cultures on Earth, Papua New Guinea is also a global hotspot for biodiversity. Just in terms of species,…
How many ships and boats ply the world’s oceans for seafood today? Researchers have a new estimate: where there were about 1.7 million boats harvesting fish in 1950, the number…
JAKARTA — The widespread use of wooden fences to trap fish by coastal fishermen in tropical countries is causing extensive economic, social, and environmental damage, according to a new study.…
Among the fisheries of Latin America and the Caribbean, shrimp has the highest export value after tuna. Trawling, the most popular and efficient way to harvest shrimp, has been a…
Conventional wisdom holds that marine protected areas don’t offer much in the way of protections to highly migratory species of marine life, given that those species are unaware of the…
It’s hard to imagine how the oceans might operate without the sway of human activity. The recent assessment by the U.N. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found…
Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…
SUNGAI NIBUNG, Indonesia — The phone signal comes and goes and the electricity grid has yet to reach this patch of jungle on the west coast of Borneo. The quickest…
When fisherfolk in India’s westernmost state of Gujarat find a whale shark tangled in their fishing nets, it’s an unwelcome sight. They can’t legally harvest the protected species, yet the…
Illegal fishing, overfishing and pollution are common problems in the waters of South America. But the overarching problem, the one that enables the rest, is weak governance, according to experts.…
For more than three months, penguins living off the coast of Namibia have been battling an outbreak of bird flu. The worst of the disease seems to have passed, but…
Scientists have fretted over the expanding masses of plastic in the ocean for decades. Most have seen the rise with their own eyes, and yet the available datasets typically don’t…
Countries should concentrate on outcomes instead of actions when they set aside areas for parks and reserves to shore up the loss of biodiversity, according to a group of scientists.…
The shortfin mako, the world’s fastest known shark, which can reach speeds of up to 70 kilometers per hour (43 miles an hour), is one step closer to extinction. According…
On March 13, scientists announced that around 10 vaquitas (Phocoena sinus) are left on Earth, just as the environmental group Sea Shepherd said it had found one of the porpoises…
JAKARTA — Indonesia is racing to certify its world-leading tuna fisheries as sustainable, drawn by the lucrative global market for eco-labeled seafood. The government has since 2014 rolled out a…
JAKARTA — Marine conservationists in Indonesia say neither of the two candidates running in this year’s presidential election has shown any real commitment to boosting the sustainability of one of…
Hyperbolic headlines can be like catnip for newspaper editors. So when a local fisher hauls in what looks like a record-breaking catch, it often makes news. But a recent study…
This year, World Wildlife Day will celebrate life in the world’s oceans. It’s a fitting tribute. Oceans cover more than 70 percent of the world’s surface, harbor hundreds of thousands…
In a classic poem, an ancient mariner finds himself haunted by the albatross he killed. Two hundred years after Samuel Coleridge penned that poem, albatrosses still follow fishing ships. But…
