BEIRUT, Lebanon — Beaches across the planet emptied as COVID-19 spread in 2020, with the first full lockdowns in many places coinciding with sea turtle nesting season. With less noise,…
When Peru declared the creation of the Nazca Ridge National Reserve in the country’s southern waters this past June, it also increased — in one fell swoop — the proportion…
COLOMBO — In its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone, Sri Lanka is home to an abundance of coastal and marine resources. And while national policies and development visions already…
(Baca dalam Bahasa Indonesia | 阅读中文版 | 日本語で読む) When Sepri was growing up, life in his village began to deteriorate. In the 1990s, the village, Serdang Menang, in the south…
The iTaukei, an Indigenous people of the Fiji Islands’ Ra province, have strong cultural ties to both land and sea. With their unparalleled knowledge of their home, these traditional Fijians…
MARSEILLE, France — Delegates at this year’s global conservation summit have voted overwhelmingly in support of a motion that calls for a moratorium on deep-sea mining and the reform of…
Scientists have completed the first-ever global, high-resolution map of the world’s shallow tropical coral reefs. The map is part of the Allen Coral Atlas, an open-access, user-friendly coral reef monitoring…
BLACK JOHNSON, Sierra Leone — Seated along the peninsula south of Freetown is the secluded village of Black Johnson. Rainforest covers the hills that rise behind it, home to chimpanzees…
An assessment in 2019 by shark experts identified the little-known family of wedgefishes as among the most threatened marine fish families worldwide. This prompted researchers to roll out a first-of-its-kind…
David McGuire lived through the summer of Jaws in 1975 and saw the impact. As a surfer in Southern California, the upside was fewer people in the water. But McGuire,…
In July 2021, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced that 866 West Indian manatees (Trichechus manatus) had died in the state of Florida in the first seven months of…
Humans have created so much plastic that it now exists from the slopes of Mount Everest to the extreme depths of the oceans. When we consider the effects of plastic…
The report came in from naturalists aboard a whale-watching boat: A 4-year-old whale calf was entangled in fishing rope. He appeared thin, and lesions mottled his body. A few days…
JAKARTA — Indonesia is scaling up its fight against fisheries-related crimes, going beyond boat crews to target the ultimate beneficiaries of these illegal practices. The country’s fisheries ministry announced the…
In 2018, philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss put $1 billion toward initiatives to help a range of stakeholders conserve 30% of the planet in its natural state by 2030 via protected areas,…
Few people likely associate the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven mostly oil-rich emirates on the Western shores of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, with biodiversity…
Fishing is integral to millions of Indonesians’ livelihoods and identities, with an estimated 2.5 million households involved in small-scale (non-industrial) fishing and aquaculture. Small-scale fishing includes a wide variety of…
Emmanuel Essien was sure he had evidence of illegal fishing on board an industrial trawler operating in the waters off the coast of Ghana. The 28-year-old fisheries observer had video…
Feisal Abdalla spends his days on the sea, taking tourists on whale-watching, snorkeling and diving trips. He and his wife, Amina Sabel, also manage a string of ecotourism cottages along…
AMBON, Indonesia — Conservation officials in Indonesia have deplored the cutting up of a dugong that had died in a stranding incident this week, with its body parts reportedly destined…
A group of researchers is preparing to dive into the shallow waters of Dale Bay in Wales. They’re on a mission to monitor the restoration of the local species of…
Up to 50 kilos of fish caught in Brazil are thrown away for every kilo that arrives on land; more than 400,000 tons of marine life were discarded between 2000 and 2018 in just four states.
The country’s lack of statistics and technical information made way for greater deregulation and private sector influence in Jair Bolsonaro's extremist government
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sunitha Rathnayake, a homemaker in southern Sri Lanka, was down to the last of her salt and planned to order some more from an online grocery…
DUMAGUETE CITY, Philippines — Local authorities in the central Philippines pushing ahead with a land reclamation project that will bury four marine reserves face strong opposition from scientists, fishers and…
This is part of a three-article series on industrial fishing in Madagascar’s waters. Part one focuses on offshore fishing; part two focuses on a new exclusive-access zone for small-scale fishers; and…
MATARA, Sri Lanka — The Polhena reef and the surrounding shallow seas in southern Sri Lanka are home to a number of marine turtles that stay there year round. Randunu…
A long-running territorial standoff over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea has seen vessels dumping enough raw sewage to threaten the marine ecosystem there — and the degradation…
On one of the first dry, hot days of summer, Rachel Langley walks past farmhouses and tractors, heading for the edge of the Colne Estuary in Essex, U.K. She’s on…
For decades, scientists speculated that seagrass seeds served only as a backup to vegetative proliferation; they settled into the sand beneath their parent plants, ready to germinate if anything untoward…
