JAKARTA — When Indonesian authorities seized a notorious fishing boat last April carrying 30 kilometers (18 miles) of illegal gillnets, they found they had essentially caught a ghost. The STS-50…
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…
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…
1. The race is on to map the seafloor Is it true that we have explored the moon and Mars more thoroughly than the bottom of the ocean? Embarrassingly, yes.…
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…
South of Tasmania, hundreds of undersea mountains mark the deep ocean floor. Now, a monthlong survey of these seamounts in and around Australia's Huon and Tasman Fracture marine parks has…
The number of whales ensnared in fishing nets and other debris in U.S. waters didn’t change much between 2016 and 2017, according to a report by the National Oceanic and…
Competition for fish stocks with fisheries to feed humans could be forcing seabirds to go hungry, according to new research. The study, published Dec. 6 in the journal Current Biology,…
Brazil’s environmental regulatory agency, Ibama, announced last Friday that it was denying French oil company Total license to drill for oil near the Amazon Reef. The reef system, discovered off…
Data from GPS-tagged seabirds, as they were swept along in the strong currents of the Irish Sea, could help researchers move a step closer to harnessing the energy in those…
The Trump Administration announced today that it will issue five Incidental Harassment Authorizations (IHAs) for airgun blasting off the Atlantic coast. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) stated:…
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.…
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 —…
On October 14, the crew of a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship called the Henry B. Bigelow reported a whale carcass floating about 100 miles east of…
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — In a bid to beef up fisheries security, Panama and Namibia have announced their intentions to make information on the location of fishing boats in their…
LIMA, Peru — On Oct. 25, the Peruvian government made public its satellite surveillance data on 1,300 commercial fishing vessels plying Peru’s waters via the open-access platform Global Fishing Watch.…
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…
