Seventy-six countries and the European Union have now signed the high seas treaty, signaling interest in ratifying the agreement designed to protect marine biodiversity in international waters. The signing of…
As climate change raises global sea temperatures, coral bleaching events are becoming more frequent and intense around the world. Yet researchers say some coral reefs may have found a way…
How had we missed this until now? An undersea mountain as tall as three Eiffel Towers. DDT contamination spread across an area of the seabed as large as San Francisco.…
KINGSTON, Jamaica — In November, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France was calling for an international ban on deep-sea mining, a proposed activity that has received much attention due to…
Deep-sea mining is facing growing opposition at a critical moment that could either enable the prospective industry to advance or halt it in its tracks. On July 10, the U.N.-associated…
In 2013, scientists found octopuses doing something unusual at Dorado Outcrop, a small seamount off the west coast of Costa Rica. While most octopuses are known to be solitary animals,…
Scientists have discovered that soft, branching corals deep in the Mediterranean Sea have remained unharmed by heat stress. In contrast, the corals in shallow waters have noticeably suffered as temperatures…
National science academies from across Europe have become the latest group to announce their support for a moratorium on deep-sea mining, a proposed but disputed activity that would extract minerals…
On March 12, a team of scientists gathered in the control room of the RV Falkor (too), an oceanographic research vessel operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute. They watched the…
Norway is moving forward with plans to mine its continental shelf to procure minerals critical for renewable energy technologies. However, some scientists, members of civil society and even industry leaders…
A landmark agreement for a legally binding treaty aimed at protecting biodiversity and ensuring the sustainable use of resources in international waters has at last been reached by U.N. member…
Environmental advocates have long called for a ban on bottom trawling on seamounts in the South Pacific’s international waters, and they hoped one would finally be instituted at a regional…
Ocean fisheries experts Daniel Pauly and Rashid Sumaila have been awarded the 2023 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, referred to as a “Nobel Prize for the environment,” in recognition of…
At first, Katy Croff Bell and her team had just wanted to make underwater cameras to give to school students from communities living along the Pacific Ocean. But when the…
On Nov. 7, French President Emmanuel Macron announced at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, that France is calling for a complete ban on deep-sea mining. This marks…
Over the past two decades, fewer vessels have trawled the South Pacific’s high seas. Companies from only one country have kept at it, an island nation with a green reputation:…
In September, scientists boarded submersibles and dived into the waters surrounding the Maldives, a nation of islands peppered across the Indian Ocean. Very little is known about the Maldivian sea…
Small- and large-scale fishers report an increase in the volume and variety of fish species in the Patos Lagoon and the coast of Rio Grande do Sul state. Such abundance came after a bill banning motorized trawling on the state’s coast was passed and signed into law in 2018. Drafted by fishers and scientists and passed unanimously in the state parliament, the law goes against the interests of President Bolsonaro’s allies.
BRUSSELS — On Sept. 15, the European Commission made a historic announcement: it will prohibit bottom fishing across 16,000 square kilometers, or 6,200 square miles — an area about half…
On Sept. 14, the Hidden Gem — an industrial drill ship operated by a subsidiary of The Metals Company (TMC), a Canadian deep-sea mining corporation — left its port in…
In the Davis Strait between Greenland and Canada’s Baffin Island, where only the faintest rays of sunlight penetrate, swim strange-looking flat fish with both eyes on the right side of…
It starts with tiny deep-sea fragments — shark’s teeth or slivers of shell. Then, in a process thought to span millions of years, they get coated in layers of liquidized…
On July 12, oceanographer and geographer Dawn Wright was sealed inside a submersible, traveling to Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. Wright and…
Delegates of the International Seabed Authority are currently meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, to negotiate a set of rules that would pave the way for a controversial activity: mining the seabed…
In late June, New Zealand parliamentarian and Māori activist Debbie Ngarewa-Packer boarded an international flight to begin a 40-hour journey to Lisbon to attend the U.N. Ocean Conference. At various…
LISBON — Should we mine the seabed, a part of the world rich in resources, but less mapped than the surface of the moon? A growing number of politicians, scientists…
Between 1869 and 1870, the H.M.S. Porcupine sailed into the North Atlantic Ocean and scraped a dredge along the seafloor. When the sailors pulled the dredge back to the surface,…
HALMAHERA, Indonesia — Yoksan Jurumudi came home with a long face after spending the whole day looking for fish in the waters off the Obi Islands in Indonesia’s North Maluku…
1. The ocean-climate nexus The presence of the ocean was felt more strongly than ever at this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP 26), held Oct. 31 to Nov. 12…
On the morning of Dec. 10, 20 Greenpeace activists jumped onto inflatable boats and motored across the gray waters of an industrial port in Rotterdam, Netherlands. They stopped in front…
