For years, Jack Auty studied how inflammation in the human body drives diseases, ranging from stroke to sepsis to Alzheimer's, at the Tasmanian School of Medicine. But a visit to…
EILAT, Israel — Rugged red mountains tower over the aquamarine waters off Eilat in southern Israel. A group of divers plunges beneath the waves on a warm winter morning, bound…
Unprecedented numbers of emaciated dugongs have washed up dead along Thailand’s Andaman Sea coast over the past three years, prompting marine scientists to urgently investigate what’s driving their decline. Thailand’s…
JAKARTA — A thresher shark conservation effort in eastern Indonesia focusing on alternative sources of income has reduced up to 90% of catches of the globally endangered species, a new…
On Jan. 15, 2022, more than 11,000 barrels of oil spilled into the ocean off the Peruvian coast. It flowed from a pipeline that had broken while the Mare Doricum,…
Satish Bhaskar was a curious man. From a very young age he was fascinated with the sea and the diverse marine creatures, especially turtles. When he learnt that sea turtles…
Rhythmic clicks, grunts and roars fill the Año Nuevo Island Reserve in California, home to a large breeding colony of northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris). For nearly 60 years, scientists…
What better way to track whales than listening in on them? Passive acoustic monitoring, in which microphones are placed underwater to pick up any sounds, has long helped scientists detect…
Rosie knows the Lighthouse Reef Atoll like the back of her fin. She calls this atoll home and is a matriarch of the thriving population of Caribbean reef sharks (Carcharhinus…
ROBERTSPORT, Liberia — The sun was scorching hot in the town of Robertsport as James Dayougar shook debris from his nets, which he’d just returned from fishing with moments earlier.…
DENPASAR, Indonesia — Conservation foundations on the Indonesian island of Bali raised concerns in February over the volume of live sea turtles seized from traffickers so far this year. “The…
Within only a couple of weeks during their breeding season, more than 100 olive ridley turtles were found dead at Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar Beach. Conservationists blame the indiscriminate use of…
BATAM, Indonesia — Stress levels among the population of Batam reportedly spiked in January after extreme rainfall over a saltwater crocodile farm allowed more than 100 captive predators to explore…
Bottom trawling, a fishing technique in which vessels drag weighted nets along the seafloor, has long been condemned by conservationists for disrupting seabed habitat and capturing species indiscriminately. Yet it…
Hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) died on fish farms in Scotland in the final months of 2024. The mass mortality events took place as a parliamentary committee…
When certain algae flourish in the sea, they produce neurotoxins that can sicken both humans and marine animals. Acute exposure to these toxins is known to kill whales and other…
Marine biologists diving in the Gulf of Thailand were thrilled in 2023 to rediscover several colonies of a rare type of ocean sponge once thought to be extinct in the…
This month Washington banned salmon aquaculture over environmental concerns, making it so there are no active operations on the U.S. West Coast. A new lawsuit now takes aim at operations…
GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS — Marco Andres Vizcaino Garcia is probably the most qualified naturalist guide a person could hire during their visit to Galápagos National Park and its adjacent marine reserve.…
1. Long-awaited plastics treaty flops, for now Despite around-the-clock efforts from delegates, negotiators and numerous advocacy groups, the fifth session of the U.N. Environment Programme’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) on…
In the 1990s, a single moratorium announcement wiped out an entire industry, leaving 37,000 people unemployed overnight. The ecological collapse of the Canadian Grand Banks Cod Fisheries is the most…
Evolution has perfected the world’s sharks and rays for more than 420 million years. Unlike the ammonites or pterosaurs that they once shared the oceans with, sharks and rays persevered…
A giant anaconda, a vampire hedgehog, a dwarf squirrel, and a tiger cat were among the new species named by science in 2024. Found from the depths of the Pacific…
On Dec. 6, Iceland’s caretaker government announced it had issued five-year licenses to hunt fin and minke whales in Icelandic waters. It granted the fin whale hunting license to Hvalur…
The spade-toothed whale is among the rarest and least-studied of whales. Until recently, only six records of the species existed, collected over the past 150 years. In early December, scientists…
In Cabo Verde, as in many low-income countries in Africa, the historical record of fish catch is incomplete, making it hard to know what’s been lost and what’s required to…
PHUM RIANG, Thailand — The sea is quiet except for the swish of the longtail boat cutting sharply through the waves. Fishermen Sutham Abmanee and Komsan Witan, from Phum Riang…
Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are finding a new place to roam in the rapidly changing Arctic Ocean. Though Indigenous people in the region have seen the whales, also known as…
ULLAPOOL, U.K. — The fish float on the surface by the dozen, their bellies pointing toward the still-dark sky of the early morning. We are peering into a cage of…
Among marine ecosystems, the capacity of mangroves, seagrass meadows and kelp forests to store carbon is well documented, but less is known about the sediments of the ocean floor. Two…
At 8 a.m., 15 divers from the Artisanal Fishers Association Cristóbal Colón meet on Carrizales beach in the Marcona district of Nazca province in southern Peru. They tie a mesh…
The international body in charge of conserving marine life in Antarctic waters has failed again to reach agreement on creating new marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean and rolled…
