Background Articles

When scientists found that Alaska sea otters were exposed to a sometimes-deadly virus that plagues seals in the North Atlantic, they were puzzled. Phocine distemper virus had not been previously found in Alaska waters.

The fast-warming Sea of Okhotsk, wedged between Russia and Japan, is a cautionary tale of the far-reaching consequences when climate dominoes begin to fall.

In just a few years, 8 million native angasi oyster hatchlings have been placed in the waters off Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia, on the recycled mollusc shells collected from restaurants. They've turned empty, sandy seabeds into thriving ecosystems.

The animal die-offs offer the world a stark example of the perils of rising ocean temperatures, which already are upending parts of the Bering Sea ecosystem.

As wholesale prices skyrocket for Pacific flying squid amid a record low catch in Japan, processing companies in the "squid town" of Hakodate, Hokkaido, ar

Conservation groups are calling for the immediate closure of the herring fishery in the Strait of Georgia following the release of new federal government data showing a four-year population biomass decline of almost 60 per cent. “We’ve been systematically overfishing these stocks and the Gulf of Georgia fishery is the last one left,” Pacific Wild...

With an increasing number of fisheries disaster requests coming from across the U.S., members of Congress and the federal government are looking for ways to improve the relief process.

Similar to what has happened in B.C., tens of millions of voracious purple sea urchins have chomped their way through towering underwater kelp forests in California.

Waters off the coast of Maine are warming faster than 99 percent of the world's oceans. That's forcing whales northward in pursuit of prey, threatening some of their already dwindling populations.

According to a recently released recap from the Department of Fish & Game, crabbing in the Norton Sound this year was underwhelming in many ways. At the beginning of 2019, ADF&G set the reg…

"What was unusual was the sheer number of them," Kuletz said. "Including the Bristol Bay area and the Pribilofs, it's up around 6,000 birds down on the beach. That's probably a small fraction of the number affected. This year stands out because of the huge shearwater die-off."

Ash, elm and rowan among trees threatened by pests and pollution, says biodiversity report

The federal agency tasked to manage ice seals this week declared an Unusual Mortality Event, UME for short, for bearded, ringed and spotted seals in the Bering and Chukchi seas.

Short-tailed shearwaters breed in the areas off Australia. They come to Alaska to gorge on krill, tiny copepods, fish and a variety of other marine food. Shearwaters that were not dead were found to be extremely weakened, some of them trying to eat scraps from Bering Sea fishermen’s nets.

U.S. government biologists are investigating the deaths of nearly 300 Arctic ice seals found on Alaska beaches since last summer.

From late June to early August, thousands of short-tailed shearwaters were reported dead and washing up on beaches in the Bristol Bay region, or observed weak and attempting to feed from salmon gillnets in inland waters,

Since June 1 2018, NOAA has received reports of 282 dead ice seals in the Bering and Chukchi seas. NOAA said they typically receive reports of about 29 ice seal strandings a year.

Scientists have made a new discovery they hope will provide more insight into declining salmon populations in our province.

With some of this year's salmon runs projected to be the lowest on record, West Coast salmon fishermen are demanding disaster relief from the federal and provincial governments.

A new study that suggests sockeye returns have dropped by three-quarters in the Skeena River over the last century should serve as a "wake-up call" for B.C., the lead researcher says.