Background Articles

An ocean heat wave off the U.S. West Coast from 2014 to 2016 drove humpback whales into a narrow band of cooler water, leading to a dramatic increase in whale entanglements with crab-fishing gear, according to a new study.

214 grey whales stranded in the Pacific in 2019, and scientists are preparing for more deaths in 2020 because whales are emaciated and skinny.

In Alaska, a new oil boom is on the horizon even as climate change arrives and greenhouse gas emissions climb.

In Alaska, a new oil boom is on the horizon even as climate change arrives and greenhouse gas emissions climb.

Scientists attending a national gathering of Arctic researchers are outlining a widening range of climate change risks for so-called 'sentinel' species, such as ringed seals and beluga whales, which have sustained Inuit for millennia.

Ringed seals in Nunavut are facing changes in their habitats because of climate change, a group of wildlife advisers say.

Temperatures across the Arctic have been warmer than usual this fall, with one community in the Northwest Territories recording above-average temperatures for 72 days in a row.

In the North, where food prices are notoriously high, beluga whales are a staple community resource

As sea ice in the Arctic decreases due to climate change, it’s opening the way for more than cruise ship travel. Scientists have found evidence that links the decline of sea ice to the emergence of a virus in Arctic marine mammals that has killed thousands of seals in European waters.

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.

When sea otters in Alaska were diagnosed with phocine distemper virus (PDV) in 2004, scientists were confused. The pathogen in the Morbillivirus genus that contains viruses like measles had then only been found in Europe and on the eastern coast of North America.

Regulations have lowered mercury emissions globally, but the risks to ocean ecosystems and human health may be getting worse.

The grey seal population has grown by an average of five percent annually since the turn of the millennium.

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.

Chukotka officials propose to classify polar bear sightings in populated areas as emergencies to mobilize resources for managing these situations.

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...

Cook Inlet Keeper and the Center for Biological Diversity have sued the Federal Government over issuing permits to Hilcorp .

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.

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.

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