Mongabay series: Oceans

1. Negotiations for historic global plastics treaty break ground Global leaders cheered to the strike of a recycled-plastic gavel in March, signifying a landmark decision by the United Nations Environment…

A stone causeway connects an islet, the famed Aragonese Castle perched atop it, to the island of Ischia off the coast of Naples in southern Italy. Below water, along the…

When it comes to news about fishing, bottom trawling sparks some of the most dramatic stories. In September, for instance, Greenpeace activists took it upon themselves to drop 18 boulders…

Ocean-dwelling sharks and rays, including the majestic reef manta ray (Mobula alfredi), have declined globally by an estimated 71% since 1970 due to fishing. But a new study of reef…

The United States Senate recently passed legislation that will ban the shark fin trade, a largely unregulated industry impacting millions of sharks, within the U.S. On Dec. 15, policymakers approved…

KAHU-KAHU, Indonesia — Fishers in this village on the northwestern tip of Selayar Island, in eastern Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province, are a fortnight into a community experiment. For three months,…

READER ADVISORY: This story contains images of dead cetaceans that some viewers may find disturbing. On May 9, Bogdan Bulete, regional head ranger at the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve in…

BONTHE, Sierra Leone — As the sun rises over Bonthe, a small city on the coastline of Sierra Leone’s remote Sherbro Island, echoes of a not-so-distant colonial past bathe in…

At the recent G20 summit in Bali, Indonesian President Joko Widodo brought world leaders to the Ngurah Rai Grand Forest Park, a former fish-farming site being converted into a conservation…

On Dec. 6, legislators in Argentina’s southernmost province of Tierra del Fuego approved a law to permanently protect the land and sea of the Mitre Peninsula at the tip of…

DA NANG, Vietnam — Industrial-scale fishers will no longer be able to use two types of shark-fishing gear in the western and central Pacific Ocean after the international body in…

JAKARTA — Indonesian authorities have cracked down on a private developer’s bid to carve out foreign tourism enclaves within a marine reserve in the country’s eastern Widi Islands. The country’s…

In November, Mongabay revealed a massive illegal shark fishing and finning operation across the fleet of Dalian Ocean Fishing (DOF), a distant-water fishing firm that has claimed to be China’s…

MAKASSAR, Indonesia — At the end of September, fishermen on Sapuka Island in eastern Indonesia’s Flores Sea made a surprising announcement. They would regulate their sea cucumber harvests, they declared,…

Famed undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau had a favorite shark: the oceanic whitetip, or Carcharhinus longimanus. He said they were the most dangerous of all sharks, more so than the great…

The Mediterranean Sea isn’t the source of plenty it once was. It now contains some of the most ecologically degraded marine areas in the world, and has been the site…

CAPE TOWN — Seabird ranger Eduard Drost was busy with a routine inspection in an African penguin colony off the South African coast in 2021 when he noticed a troubling…

One in five fish sold globally is caught illegally, according to C4ADS, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that tracks illicit trade networks. That’s between 11 million and 26 million metric…

Nations are proposing to protect dozens of shark and ray species in danger of extinction by regulating their international trade. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild…

Tuna is ubiquitous in Japan, from high-end sashimi to go-around sushi chains and every neighborhood grocery store. But despite tuna’s central place in Japanese food culture, few know what really…

On Nov. 7, French President Emmanuel Macron announced at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, that France is calling for a complete ban on deep-sea mining. This marks…

On Nov. 4, the 41st annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) closed without making significant progress toward the establishment of new marine…

The disappearance of billions snow crabs from the Bering Sea has captivated the world’s attention since Alaska shut down the fishery for the first time in October 2022. But where…

When Niueans are babies, their parents traditionally take them down to the seashore and throw them in the water so they learn to swim, Mona Ainu’u told Mongabay. That’s more…

During the decade-plus in which he ran a program in China designed to reduce demand for wildlife products like shark fin, tiger bone, rhino horn and elephant ivory, Steve Trent…

When Adhi Tayuh Braka joined one of China’s largest fishing fleets in 2018, he planned to catch tuna, knuckle down and save money to get married. To pass the time,…

Over the past two decades, fewer vessels have trawled the South Pacific’s high seas. Companies from only one country have kept at it, an island nation with a green reputation:…

In September, scientists boarded submersibles and dived into the waters surrounding the Maldives, a nation of islands peppered across the Indian Ocean. Very little is known about the Maldivian sea…

The population of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales continues to dwindle, sparking concerns that the species might be creeping closer to extinction. A newly released estimate suggests that only…

As Arctic sea ice begins melting out fully in summer, the frequency of strong El Niños could increase by 35% by century's end, causing extreme weather events to increase, says recent modeling study.