Among the fisheries of Latin America and the Caribbean, shrimp has the highest export value after tuna. Trawling, the most popular and efficient way to harvest shrimp, has been a…
On the remote island of St. Paul, located in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, more than 350 severely emaciated carcasses of sea birds, primarily tufted puffins, washed…
The president of Brazil’s environmental regulatory agency has decided to ignore the recommendations of his own environmental team and authorize the auction of seven oil blocks located in highly sensitive…
In mid-May Chile finalized an agreement to publicly share proprietary data from its satellite system for monitoring fishing boats, known as a Vessel Monitoring System. The country will share the…
JAKARTA — Many of the fishing vessels operating in Indonesia’s waters at night do so undetected, masking what could be illegal fishing on a massive scale, according to a new…
Aquaculture, the commercial farming of finfish like salmon, shellfish and seaweed, has exploded over the past 30 years, becoming a nearly $250-billion industry globally. More than half of all seafood…
The ocean is increasingly becoming too hot to handle. And coral reefs are suffering as a result. Above-normal sea surface temperatures due to human-induced climate change are creating conditions that…
“Punta Fuego, good evening.” The smooth voice of DJ Armin Arana emanates from the radio on “Talking Fuego,” the call-in segment of “Punta Fuego,” as he greets a caller from…
When fisherfolk in India’s westernmost state of Gujarat find a whale shark tangled in their fishing nets, it’s an unwelcome sight. They can’t legally harvest the protected species, yet 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…
Illegal fishing, overfishing and pollution are common problems in the waters of South America. But the overarching problem, the one that enables the rest, is weak governance, according to experts.…
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…
Scientists have fretted over the expanding masses of plastic in the ocean for decades. Most have seen the rise with their own eyes, and yet the available datasets typically don’t…
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…
Scientists have mapped out an enormous network of potential protected areas, covering more than one-third of the world's oceans, to conserve marine biodiversity threatened by overfishing, emerging deep-sea mining, plastic…
Russian authorities have announced that they will release all 97 whales currently being held captive in the country’s Far East. The whales made news in November last year when an…
The government of Belize has approved a plan to nearly triple the area under its strictly protected waters, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced in a press release. According to the…
In 2011, the government of Honduras declared the country’s waters a shark sanctuary. The move obliged indigenous peoples who have been catching sharks for generations and for whom the fish represent…
JAKARTA — Two ships have been spotted allegedly dumping waste oil in the sea off the eastern coast of Sumatra, highlighting what activists say is poor enforcement against marine pollution…
Island-dwelling animals around the globe often face a common threat: alien species that compete with them for food, kill them and their young, and otherwise hamper their ability to survive.…
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…
In 1975, famed explorer and conservationist Jacques Cousteau traveled aboard his boat, the Calypso, in hopes of documenting one of nature’s most impressive underwater gatherings: the spawning of the Nassau…
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…
In a remote spot in the South Atlantic, roughly 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) from the coast of West Africa, lies Ascension Island, one of the U.K.’s Overseas Territories. In January…
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…
Coral reefs in protected areas that regulate fishing and pollution have declined to the same extent as reef systems in unprotected areas, according to recent research. The study, published in…
On Oct. 8 last year, Chile’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Huilliche-Chono indigenous people of Pu Wapi in their bid to take on management of 80 square kilometers…
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…
The waters of the eastern Baltic Sea around Finland are home to the flounder, a flatfish with both its eyes on one side of the head that uses its camouflage…