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.…
Any aquarist who has tried to grow a variety of the colorful Acropora coral in a hobby tank knows how delicate they are – “not for beginners.” And yet this…
Faster and cheaper Surveying and studying coral takes a lot of work. It’s usually done manually, which requires wet suits and air tanks and SCUBA gear and people. But it’s…
Ritidian, a cliff-top refuge on the island of Guam, is one of the last places in the Pacific where you can find the mossy pillars and plunging crevices of a…
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…
First the good news: A sweeping survey of the Pacific Basin has found the population of endangered green turtles (Chelonia mydas) there is increasing. However, the hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata),…
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 analysis of 33 years’ worth of data finds that ocean winds and wave heights are becoming more extreme worldwide, with the Southern Ocean seeing the largest increases. In order…
The waters off the Galápagos Islands have nearly 10 times more alien marine invertebrates than previously recorded, a recent study has found. Located 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) off Ecuador, the…
Whales and sea turtles off the coast of California will have less time to contend with possible entanglements in crab fishing gear in 2019, after a one-and-a-half-year lawsuit settlement shortened…
Whales can behave quite differently in response to sonar depending on where they live and what they’re doing, new research has found. The pair of studies, on different species and…
Overfishing is rapidly pushing many of the world’s sharks and tunas toward extinction. The world’s fastest known shark, the shortfin mako, for example, was recently uplisted to endangered on the…
When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914, triggering the First World War, Granny was out under the sea half a world away, catching salmon and communicating with her pod…
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…
Blue whales in the northern Pacific Ocean use their memories to guide them to the best feeding spots, instead of seeking out the locations of shorter-term surges in prey, a…
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…
Wearing nothing more than leaves hanging from belts of woven vegetation, the three scientists stand in the rain with little idea of what to expect. They’ve lived and worked with…
At nearly 70 years, Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, is the world’s oldest known wild bird. She’s also a mother once again. Wisdom was previously spotted at her regular nesting site in Midway…
For thousands of years, people of the Lummi Nation in Washington state have treasured their deep connection to the orca pods that populate the waters of the Salish Sea. It’s…
Central Island province in the Solomon Islands has blocked new logging and mining operations in an apparent attempt to halt the degradation of the archipelago’s sensitive ecosystems. “With timber on…
The devastation wrought by hurricanes and cyclones, persistent and growing threats in today’s changing climate, can ripple through communities dependent on harvesting food from the sea, a new study has…
The government of Japan confirmed today that it is withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and will resume commercial whaling operations in the North Pacific. The IWC, an inter-governmental…
An ambitious plan to mine precious minerals from the ocean floor off the coast of Papua New Guinea looks to have run aground due to the developer's financial problems. In…
A recent study found microplastics in the intestines of humans around the globe, and new research has now done the same for sea turtles. Researchers at the UK’s University of…
Scientists have mapped whale stress levels in relation to human activity going back nearly a century and a half — using earwax collected from baleen whales. From 1870 to 2016,…
Of gaps and limitations Our knowledge about sea animals is riddled with holes. We may study and record sea lion colonies or sea turtle nesting and hatching events as they…
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 —…
When Luiz Rocha, a fish biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, goes scuba diving, he tacks on one and a half times his body weight in specialized diving gear.…
New research suggests that coral bleaching triggers rapid behavioral shifts in reef fish. Higher ocean temperatures caused by global warming are the leading cause of the mass bleaching events that…
From lavender to orange, pink to yellow polka dots — researchers have just described 17 stunning new species of sea slugs that live among coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific region.…