Oceans

The Arctic sea ice extent for the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2023 is the fifth lowest on record. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) announced Wednesday that the Arctic sea ice likely reached its maximum extent on March 6 at 5.64 million square miles. That’s 398,000 square miles below the average maximum for […]

Like something out of a classic sci-fi film, marine scientists are tracking a giant seaweed blob approaching Florida’s Gulf Coast. The 5,000-mile-wide swarm of seaweed — which scientists say could be the biggest in history — is so large it can be seen from space. The colossal seaweed mat was caused by a huge sargassum […]

In 2019, the U.S. Department of Energy initiated the Waves to Water Prize. The contest’s goal was to encourage the development of small desalination systems which could help coastal communities in times of climate disaster and recovery and also to help provide clean drinking water to areas where water is scarce. In April of 2022, […]

The amount of plastic floating in the world’s oceans rose by an “unprecedented” degree over the last decade and a half to reach more than 170 trillion plastic particles in 2019. That’s the shocking finding of a new study from scientists at the 5 Gyres Institute, the University of California, Riverside, the Stockholm Resilience Center […]

The phenomenon known as red tide — caused by large amounts of the toxic algae Karenia brevis — has come earlier than usual to Florida this year, and in concentrations that are higher than normal. The harmful algae produce brevetoxins that can kill marine life and pose health problems for humans, reported BBC News. The […]

On Saturday, March 4, world leaders finally agreed on a treaty to protect the high seas.  The accord reached by the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction establishes a mechanism for sharing the benefits of scientific discoveries from marine life, enforces environmental impact assessments for new human activities in international waters […]

Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, sued the Biden administration Monday to stop the sale of oil and gas drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico. The lawsuit, filed in Washington, DC federal court, seeks to prevent the auction of approximately 13,600 blocks on 73.3 million acres by the U.S. Department of the […]

Negotiators working on a legally binding United Nations treaty to end plastic pollution will need to be as ambitious as possible with the final document.  That’s the main takeaway from a new report from Back to Blue — a collaboration between Economist Impact and the Nippon Foundation — released Monday. The report modeled what would […]