Background Articles

Plastic pollution is threatening the wildlife in the Mekong River Basin.

An endangered species of whale that lives off the East Coast is having its best season for new babies in several years.

Enlarged tooth projecting from upper jaw of males offers window onto life in frozen seas as far back as 1960s. From 1990 until 2000, ice in northwest Greenland began to decline and the diet of the narwhals shifted to open-ocean prey such as capelin and polar cod. Narwhals accumulated small quantities of mercury as the new items of prey sat lower in the food chain.

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, at least 358 manatees have died in Florida since Jan. 1. This is a staggering number compared to just 122 deaths by this time last year.

The study shows the destruction of the kelp forest was related to an explosion in the population of purple sea urchin, which eats it, and two warm water events that lasted from 2014 to 2016.

For the fourth year in a row, weekly summer water quality tests show that most Ketchikan beaches have elevated levels of bacteria that could make people sick. That happened this year even without dozens of cruise ships sailing through the Inside Passage and discharging wastewater.

Decline in system underpinning Gulf Stream could lead to more extreme weather in Europe and higher sea levels on US east coast.

Following a nuclear-powered icebreaker, a Russian tanker has sailed through the frigid Northern Sea Route for the first time ever in February. “Won’t somebody think of the poor ice?”, climate-conscious commenters shouted.

There is a unexplained trend with sea otter carcasses on the beaches in Katmai National Park and Preserve. Many of the dead animals appeared to be in their prime.

The Bering Sea region, the Pacific gateway to the Arctic Ocean, is home to ecosystems on land and in the ocean that are both abundant and fragile. It’s also changing very quickly — and those changes offer a preview of the changes in store for other parts of the Arctic.

A decade-long warming trend in the Gulf of St. Lawrence continued in 2020. Water temperatures at depths of 200, 250 and 300 metres were higher than any measured in the Gulf since records started in 1915, hitting highs of 5.7 C, 6.6 C and 6.8 C. All were well above the normal variations.

Sitting in the Port of Dutch Harbor, the Polar Star is nearly 400 feet long and can break ice up to 21 feet thick. On Tuesday, the ship arrived for a pit stop with 136 crew members, 30 days into a months-long deployment to the Arctic. Their goal is to assert maritime sovereignty and security in the far north.

Cold temperatures and traffic congestion at the Panama Canal has resulted in a shortage of natural gas and exploding prices in parts of Asia. Now, Novatek aims to send LNG from the Arctic to Japan during the middle of winter in an untested high-risk, high-reward strategy. 

It will become clearer in the coming days how the sunken barge owned by Laxa aquaculture in Reyðarfjörður, East Iceland, will be re-floated after this weekend’s storm. Divers are working on the vessel again today and, so far, it appears no diesel or other oil has leaked into the sea.

Bocaccio rockfish have made a huge comeback in B.C. since being deemed endangered in 2013, but the success story is being met with some trepidation as trawler fishermen can’t seem to avoid netting them now.

A closeup view of a bottlenose dolphin shows signs of skin lesions associated with a deadly skin disease known as ulcerative dermatitis. The increasing frequency and severity of storm systems drastically decrease the salinity of coastal waters, causing fatal skin disease in dolphins worldwide.

As winters get warmer, the number of drowning deaths is going up. "I just don't think we have appreciated that is one of the costs," said one scientist.

The appeal was sent to president Putin on 30 October on behalf of Moscow and St Petersburg surfing federations, pointing his attention to the fact that traces of rocket fuel were found in samples from the polluted area. It means that the anthropogenic version of the recent environmental catastrophe mustn’t be brushed aside, the surfers say.

The event caused a die off of up to 95% of marine life along the seabed. The Russia's Academy of Sciences announced that the mass death was due to the effects of toxins from single-cell algae. Environmentalists are conducting their own inquiries and were not yet able to confirm the official probe's findings.

Environmental campaigners said they were conducting their own inquiries and were not yet able to confirm the official probe's findings.

Now believed to be caused by an unprecedented algae bloom, the decimation of bottom-dwelling sea life may have devastating ripple effects.