In defiance of international protests, Japanese whaling vessels returned to port with another 333 minke whales on Saturday after its months-long hunt in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in Antarctic waters. According to the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research, among the whales collected, 152 were male and 181 were female. About 60 percent of the […]
Last year, China—the world’s largest importer of waste—announced it no longer wanted to take in other countries’ trash so it could focus on its own pollution problems. This unexpected policy shift, which took effect Jan. 1, has left exporters in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Germany and other European countries scrambling for solutions for their growing […]
By Maia Danks The U.S. military has plans to create genetically modified marine organisms that can be used as underwater spies for the military. Fantastic as this idea may seem, the Pentagon’s research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has actually launched a new program that aims to tap into the “natural sensing […]
More than 150 short-finned pilot whales stranded en masse at Hamelin Bay on the west coast of Australia early Friday morning. Most of the whales did not survive after beaching themselves, according to Jeremy Chick, incident controller at Western Australia’s Parks & Wildlife Service. Roughly 100 authorities and trained volunteers raced to save the 15 […]
On Saturday, March 24 at 8:30 p.m. local time, skylines around the world will go dark as millions celebrate WWF’s Earth Hour to spark global awareness and action on nature and the environment. From the Eiffel Tower to the Empire State Building, and the Bird’s Nest stadium to Burj Khalifa, thousands of landmarks will switch […]
By Sebastian Losada Over the last two weeks, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) has been in discussions in Jamaica. Its mission—to work towards the finalization of exploitation regulations, a so-called mining code, that will allow commercial deep sea mining operations to begin all around the world. In the quest for minerals, deep seabed mining means […]
The Trump administration is holding the biggest offshore oil and gas lease auction in U.S. history Wednesday, offering all 77 million acres of unleased, available federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico. The sale comes as administration officials seek to rescind drilling safety rules approved after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, reduce royalties paid by […]
A notorious Antarctic and Patagonian toothfish poaching vessel, famous for plundering the Antarctic, was arrested on March 13 in waters belonging to the West African state of Liberia by the Liberian Coast Guard, with assistance from the marine conservation group Sea Shepherd. The F/V Hai Lung, known to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic […]
If we don’t act now, plastic pollution in the world’s oceans is projected to increase three-fold within seven years, according to a startling new report. The Future of the Sea report, released Wednesday for the UK government, found that human beings across the globe produce more than 300 million metric tons of plastic per year. […]