oceans

Stunning Portraits Put a Human Face on Climate Change

Stunning Portraits Put a Human Face on Climate Change

By Clara Chaisson The image of a solitary polar bear stranded on a melting ice floe is the unofficial poster child of the climate movement. But the world’s climbing temperatures are threatening more than charismatic megafauna; people’s lives and cultural heritage are at risk, too. With his portraits, artist Sean Yoro is helping to put […]

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    Obama Takes Historic Action, Protects Arctic Ocean From Offshore Oil Drilling

    Obama Takes Historic Action, Protects Arctic Ocean From Offshore Oil Drilling

    The Obama administration made another historic move today to decrease America’s dependence on dirty fossil fuels, this time protecting the Arctic Ocean from offshore drilling. In the newly released final five-year program for oil and gas development on the Outer Continental Shelf, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management removed the Chukchi and Beaufort seas for […]

    Why Seabirds Tragically Mistake Ocean Plastic for Food

    Why Seabirds Tragically Mistake Ocean Plastic for Food

    By Matthew Savoca Imagine that you are constantly eating, but slowly starving to death. Hundreds of species of marine mammals, fish, birds and sea turtles face this risk every day when they mistake plastic debris for food. Plastic debris can be found in oceans around the world. Scientists have estimated that there are more than […]

    Bizarre Two-Headed Sharks Showing Up in Many Parts of the World

    Bizarre Two-Headed Sharks Showing Up in Many Parts of the World

    A slew of rare two-headed sharks have been found from California to the Caribbean and from Mexico to the Mediterranean, leading scientists to ponder why. Reminiscent of the classic “Simpsons” three-eyed fish, Blinky, the mutated sharks are raising eyebrows. Fox A two-headed embryo of an Atlantic sawtail cat shark was found recently in the Mediterranean […]

    World’s Largest Marine Reserve Created Off the Coast of Antarctica

    World’s Largest Marine Reserve Created Off the Coast of Antarctica

    Today, the largest marine protected area in the world was created in the Ross Sea, off the coast of Antarctica. This is a huge victory for the whales, penguins and toothfish that live there and for the millions of people standing up to protect our oceans. A group of Adeli Penguins are seen here in […]

    Massive Plunge in Wildlife Expected by 2020

    Massive Plunge in Wildlife Expected by 2020

    By David Miller Every two years, the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London report on the health of the planet with an updated index of wildlife populations. This year, the numbers are especially bleak: Populations have already declined on average by 58 percent between 1970 and 2012. And unless we act quickly, […]

    Our Ocean Conference Confronts Ocean’s Biggest Threats

    Our Ocean Conference Confronts Ocean’s Biggest Threats

    The third annual Our Ocean Conference kicked off today in Washington, DC, to tackle some of the biggest threats facing our oceans, from plastic waste to climate change. Our Ocean Conference The two-day event is hosted by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Hundreds of world leaders, foreign and environment ministers, scientists, philanthropists, heads of […]

    Humans Are Driving ‘Unprecedented’ Mass Extinction in Oceans

    Humans Are Driving ‘Unprecedented’ Mass Extinction in Oceans

    By Nadia Prupis People are driving marine ecosystems to “unprecedented” mass extinction, according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Science. Large-bodied animals will be the first to go, the study says—blue whales, great white sharks and bluefin tuna, for example. Their size is part of their vulnerability, making them more susceptible to […]