Oceans News

POILÃO ISLAND, Guinea-Bissau — On a moonlit night in September, hundreds of sea turtles have crawled out of the sea to nest on Poilão Island. A team of turtle monitors…

It doesn’t get talked about much, but 7.8 billion humans make a lot of waste, and a lot of it is flowing into the planet’s rivers, estuaries and oceans, with major impacts on clean water, biodiversity and public health.

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government plans to reopen its capture fisheries sector to foreign investment, prompting concerns among marine observers about a return to the rampant illegal fishing practices that…

POILÃO ISLAND, Guinea-Bissau — Castro Barbosa's eyes still light up when he recalls the first time he saw a sea turtle, in 1993. He was on a visit to Guinea-Bissau's…

Conservation ecologist Thomas Davies has long known that natural light plays a pivotal role in the lives of many marine organisms. “They use it as a clock,” Davies, a lecturer…

Maritza Sepúlveda grew up in San Felipe, a town far from the ocean in central Chile. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, her curiosity about the ocean began early…

In 2008, a team of researchers boarded an expedition vessel and set sail for the anchovy-rich waters off the coast of Peru. They were searching for a place to extract…

TANAKEKE ISLANDS, Indonesia — Wading through a mangrove swamp in the coastal waters of Indonesia’s Tanakeke Islands, Hayati wiped the sweat from her brow and tried her best to keep…

Ten countries in the western Indian Ocean are banding together to create a network of marine conservation areas under the banner of the Great Blue Wall. The idea is to…

BOMBANA, Indonesia — Syukur Dullah grew up surrounded by a fringe of intact reefs off Lora, before the bombings decimated corals near the village in Indonesia’s Southeast Sulawesi province. “This…

COLOMBO — There was little relief from the scorching sun on the beach, but the volunteers kept at their work, scouring the sand for small plastic pellets known as nurdles.…

This is part three of a three-article series on industrial fishing in Madagascar’s waters. Part one looked at offshore fishing; part two focused on a new exclusive-access zone for small-scale…

This is part two of a three-article series on industrial fishing in Madagascar’s waters. Part one focuses on offshore fishing; part three looks at changes to the near-shore trawling sector.  …

1. The ocean-climate nexus The presence of the ocean was felt more strongly than ever at this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP 26), held Oct. 31 to Nov. 12…

JAKARTA — Indonesia is launching a program to make the country’s ports more environmentally friendly in an effort to reduce its carbon emissions and protect the marine ecosystem. The so-called…

With humans sending probes to Mars and the sun, one might think we’ve already explored the full extent of our own planet. But scientists say we’ve only begun to find…

On the morning of Dec. 10, 20 Greenpeace activists jumped onto inflatable boats and motored across the gray waters of an industrial port in Rotterdam, Netherlands. They stopped in front…

In one of the largest and most spontaneous protests in post-apartheid South Africa, thousands of people gathered on the country’s eastern coastal beaches last Sunday to voice their dissent against…

When BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig flooded the Gulf of Mexico with 4 million barrels of oil in 2010, the catastrophe was headline news across the world for months.…

In the 1970s, coral reefs in the Western Indian Ocean were relatively untouched by people. Today, these same reefs are at a tipping point with more than 69 million people…

As climate change worsens, sea turtles on the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf seaboards, and in other coastal areas around the world, are increasingly at risk from cold-stunning events. But rescuers often await.

Nestled between steep mountains and a sandy shoreline that slopes into the Solomon Sea, the village of Baniata is testimony to resilience and self-sufficiency. Located on the remote southern shore…

Twenty years is a long time to talk about fish. But hopes that World Trade Organization (WTO) members would finally reach a meaningful agreement to ban subsidies that enable overfishing…

Southern right whales, one of the most historically hunted whales globally, have recovered nicely since the whaling era. But a new analysis has shown that El Niño events, which warm…

Tiger sharks sometimes swim thousands of kilometers—far enough to move among oceans. Their flexible diets and adaptable behaviors set them up to be successful jet-setters, zipping around the world and…

It’s six in the morning and the beach is empty. The tide has erased the footprints from the sand, and the surface is a blank slate of white and perfectly…

Quinta Monteiro and her son Nivaldo watch a Nigerian comedy show on TV as they sit in their living room in Guinea-Bissau’s capital, Bissau. The sound of cars zooming by…

Defeat for Japan’s opposition party in last month’s national elections has dashed hopes for a quick resolution to the contentious relocation of a U.S. military base on the island of…

It’s not easy to try to describe how a dolphin experiences sound in the ocean, says Lindy Weilgart, a noise pollution expert at Dalhousie University in Canada. “We have terrestrial…

For the second year in a row, La Niña conditions have developed across the Pacific Ocean. A climate pattern that occurs every few years, La Niña heralds broadly cooler and…