Mongabay series: Oceans

Some types of coral reef islands could potentially grow as a result of climate change-driven sea level rise, according to a recent study, which suggests that all of these islands…

Papua New Guinea has announced its commitment to creating 7,500 square kilometers of marine protected areas in the Bismarck Sea by 2021. The government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) made…

Read the other stories in Mongabay’s three-part profile of the Maubere’s revival of tara bandu: Timor-Leste: Maubere tribes revive customary law to protect the ocean Timor-Leste: Q&A with a Maubere…

Mexico protected 10 species of parrotfish in October, a move that conservationists say will help the country’s coral reefs recover, in addition to safeguarding the species’ numbers. “It’s really good…

Life on the coast of Madagascar is increasingly precarious. In recent decades, the overexploitation of marine life has made it difficult for hundreds of thousands of small-scale fishers to make…

New, highly detailed maps now reveal the state of the world’s wilderness, both on land and at sea, and the picture looks bleak. In a series of recent studies, a…

Read the other stories in Mongabay’s three-part profile of the Maubere’s revival of tara bandu: Timor-Leste: Maubere tribes revive customary law to protect the ocean Timor-Leste: With sacrifice and ceremony,…

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — Global participants in the fifth Our Ocean Conference have pledged the highest amount of funding yet for new initiatives and commitments on the protection of a…

Some corals look like giant boulders, others like branching trees—anything but what they actually are: animals. That is, unless you are lucky enough to see coral at night, when their…

Read the other stories in Mongabay’s three-part profile of the Maubere’s revival of tara bandu: Timor-Leste: Q&A with a Maubere fisherman on reviving depleted fisheries Timor-Leste: With sacrifice and ceremony,…

Noise from ships changes the way that whales and dolphins communicate with each other, according to two studies published this week. Marine biologists know that an increasingly cacophonous ocean, filled…

A team of scientists has produced the most comprehensive assessment to date of trawling, a fishing technique that produces a sizable portion of the world’s seafood but is also seen…

Dead whales are a nutritional boon for polar bears, and they’ve likely helped bears survive lean periods during warm spells in the past when much of the Arctic was ice-free.…

MANILA, Philippines — Freedom Island is drowning in garbage. The last coastal frontier in the Philippine capital provides refuge to migratory birds and a thick mangrove forest there serves as…

Entanglement in fishing gear has claimed the life of a second North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) in 2018, according to reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).…

Some corals stand a chance of surviving the current rise in global sea temperatures, a team of scientists recently reported, thanks to the diversity of their algal counterparts. They found…

"We need to keep this river clean,” says Muhammad Yusuf, a fisheries official from Padang, the capital of the Indonesian province of West Sumatra. “We’ve got to keep people from…

The government of New Caledonia voted on Tuesday to establish marine protected areas across 28,000 square kilometers (10,800 square miles) of waters around the French overseas territory, safeguarding coral reefs, marine habitats,…

Whale sharks are capable long-distance swimmers, but it turns out that a lot of them are also homebodies. A new study published Aug. 9 in the journal Marine Ecology Progress…

For decades, researchers studying the global fishing industry had to cope with minimal data about what goes on out at sea. The ocean’s surface is so vast that most of…