Nestled between steep mountains and a sandy shoreline that slopes into the Solomon Sea, the village of Baniata is testimony to resilience and self-sufficiency. Located on the remote southern shore…
Pelenatita Kara travels regularly to the outer islands of Tonga, her low-lying Pacific Island home, to educate fishers and farmers about seabed mining. For many of the people she meets, seabed mining…
All seven sea turtle species are already endangered. Now humanity’s overshoot of planetary boundaries — climate change, ocean acidification, pollution and more — is upping the ante. Can turtles, people and conservation adapt?
The iTaukei, an Indigenous people of the Fiji Islands’ Ra province, have strong cultural ties to both land and sea. With their unparalleled knowledge of their home, these traditional Fijians…
Humans have created so much plastic that it now exists from the slopes of Mount Everest to the extreme depths of the oceans. When we consider the effects of plastic…
Kolombangara Island forms a 30-kilometer (19-mile) circle of green in the Solomon Sea. One of more than 900 islands that make up the Solomon Islands, it is fringed by coral…
The Pacific island nation of Nauru has stated its intention to start deep-sea mining in two years’ time, despite the fact that the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the U.N.-mandated body…
In the Wai‘anae Mountains, a range on the western side of O‘ahu, Hawaii, a group of scientists were surveying the land for tiny, terrestrial snails when they came across something…
In 2007, a submersible with a large drill descended 1,600 meters (5,250 feet) into the sea off the coast of Papua New Guinea (PNG), landing near a network of hydrothermal…
KOKOPO, Papua New Guinea — Change. That’s what Monica Yongol has seen in her 54 years. In that time, the loggers and then the oil palm companies have moved into…
In 2012 I spent 3 weeks in Palau as part of the ‘Micronesia Challenge,’ a conservation approach sponsored by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in conjunction with Palau International Coral Reef…
The scale of excavation for copper and gold in the 1970s and 1980s at the Panguna mine, then one of the world’s largest open-pit mines, was massive: It swallowed up…
Goldman Environmental Prize winner Jacqueline Evans has launched the Moana Foundation to advance environmental and social activism in her home country of the Cook Islands. Evans won the Goldman Environmental…
Over the course of seven months in 2012 and 2013, more than 70 scientists collaborated to study and map the coral reefs around the islands of French Polynesia in the…
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea — The upstart deforestation over the past year and a half that's sidling up to Pochon Lili’s land has him worried. "As a landowner, I'm…
A group of seven women in their 60s and 70s, who call themselves “the fantastic grandmothers,” have helped uncover a surprisingly large population of venomous sea snakes in the waters…
This story is part of a series on Marae Moana, the massive, recently enacted multiple-use marine protected area covering the Cook Islands’ entire exclusive economic zone. Other stories in the…
This story is part of a series on Marae Moana, the massive, recently enacted multiple-use marine protected area covering the Cook Islands’ entire exclusive economic zone. Other stories in the…
This story is part of a series on Marae Moana, the massive, recently enacted multiple-use marine protected area covering the Cook Islands’ entire exclusive economic zone. Other stories in the…
Coral reefs in Hawaiian waters are facing the prospect of another major bleaching event as ocean temperatures rise above the norm. “We found the first signs of [coral] bleaching off…
A New Zealand-based research team assessing the utility of small, multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to survey and study humpback whales determined that video data collected from a UAV improved…
In our last Reefscape story, we explored the northern Marshall Islands in search of answers about the long-term effects of nuclear fallout on coral reefs. We visited Rongelap and Ailinginae…
An international effort to halt a massive oil spill from a wrecked ship in a far-flung province of the Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific has finally succeeded. But the…
Politicians in Papua New Guinea are ratcheting up their support for a new foray into coal mining and power generation, even as neighboring states call for a global reduction in…
Read other stories in this three-part profile of the Ruatāhuna community’s stewardship of its forest. A Māori community leans on tradition to restore its forest What makes a forest healthy?…
LAE, Papua New Guinea — Across the more than 600 islands that make up Papua New Guinea, the majority of the country’s culturally diverse population relies on agriculture for both…
The highly toxic brown tree snake, which has killed off most of the native birds on the Pacific island of Guam, was once thought to have its own distinctive venom.…
Women of childbearing age from small-island states and countries have been found to have toxic levels of mercury, a potent neurotoxin that can harm unborn children, a new report shows.…
GILDIPASI, Papua New Guinea — After a short walk from his community on Papua New Guinea’s northern coast, Yat Paol clears away dried leaves from a shady patch of ground…
When a vibrant coral reef teeming with life transforms into a barren skeleton in the tropical shallows — as a result of bleaching linked to climate change, for example —…
