Rebecca Kessler

Canned tuna is trending in the U.S. again: after a tail-off in its consumption in the three decades through 2016, the cheap and shelf-stable protein’s popularity surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, last year, it got a major boost from young foodie influencers on TikTok: apparently, tuna-based date nights have become a thing, with the […]

Scientists remember the years between 2014 and 2017 as a particularly bad time for coral reefs. Elevated temperatures fueled by an El Niño climate pattern harmed about three-quarters of the world’s reefs in both hemispheres, forcing corals to release their life-sustaining zooxanthellae and turning them ghostly white in a process known as coral bleaching. About […]

PUERTO NATALES/PUNTA ARENAS, Chile — Pristine waters, partially covered in sea ice, reflect the early morning light while a flock of flamingos basks in the warmth of the sun near the coast. A few meters away, on the mainland, stands a huge white shed with a red roof: a factory for processing salmon, completed just […]

Damselfish can be fastidious farmers. They prune and cultivate small patches of algae, often no more than half a square meter (5 square feet) in area, ensuring they have a steady food source. One species in the Caribbean even herds tiny mysid shrimp around their underwater “gardens,” which the shrimp dose with their fecal fertilizer. […]

HONG KONG — Thousands of grayish, oval-shaped oysters pepper the mudflats of far northern Hong Kong, clustering together on fragments of rock lining the shoreline or clamping onto abandoned concrete posts. Despite being stuck in between a proverbial rock and a hard place — the bustling megalopolis of Hong Kong sprawling behind and the spiky […]

1. Negotiations for historic global plastics treaty break ground Global leaders cheered to the strike of a recycled-plastic gavel in March, signifying a landmark decision by the United Nations Environment Assembly to create the first-ever legally binding international treaty to curb plastic pollution. With 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic having been produced to date, […]

A stone causeway connects an islet, the famed Aragonese Castle perched atop it, to the island of Ischia off the coast of Naples in southern Italy. Below water, along the islet’s northern and southern contours, CO2 bubbles from volcanic rocks. Across these effervescent strips of seabed, pH ranges from an extreme low of 6.6 to […]

An area of salt marsh twice the size of Singapore has disappeared since the turn of the century, NASA scientists determined by analyzing satellite images from around the globe. Severe storms were partially responsible for the loss, which resulted in “significant” carbon emissions, according to a rec…

READER ADVISORY: This story contains images of dead cetaceans that some viewers may find disturbing. On May 9, Bogdan Bulete, regional head ranger at the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve in Romania, received what he thought was yet another routine call to check out a possible dolphin stranding near th…

The United States has sanctioned Chinese individuals and companies allegedly involved in human rights abuses and fishing violations while operating in other countries’ or international waters. On Dec. 9, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced the sanctions t…

For people who fish for a living, removing bycatch from nets is a tedious task. It’s expensive, labor-intensive and causes wear to the fishing vessel and gear. For marine animals unintentionally captured, the results are more debilitating — mostly fatal. From an ecological point of view, killing too…

DA NANG, Vietnam — Industrial-scale fishers will no longer be able to use two types of shark-fishing gear in the western and central Pacific Ocean after the international body in charge of tuna fisheries there agreed to ban the devices. The measure, adopted last week at the annual meeting of the Wes…

Famed undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau had a favorite shark: the oceanic whitetip, or Carcharhinus longimanus. He said they were the most dangerous of all sharks, more so than the great white (Carcharodon carcharias). Some researchers believe the species used to be one of the world’s most abundant…

The Mediterranean Sea isn’t the source of plenty it once was. It now contains some of the most ecologically degraded marine areas in the world, and has been the site of dead zones and fish stock collapses in recent decades. Populations of countless species are in decline, including sharks, seagrasses and marine mammals. The sea […]

The black-and-white motion-triggered video looks like an outtake from a cheap horror movie: A handful of rats circle a smooth, platter-sized mound of sand. Suddenly a sea turtle hatchling appears, digging out of the nest. A rat grabs it by its head and quickly drags it off-camera. A second hatchling…

In December 2004, the worst tsunami in recorded history devastated the region encircling the Indian Ocean, killing more than 200,000 people in 14 countries. One year later, researchers showed that mangrove forests confer protection from the sea: They reduced the energy of the tsunami waves, protecti…

The disappearance of billions snow crabs from the Bering Sea has captivated the world’s attention since Alaska shut down the fishery for the first time in October 2022. But where exactly did these snow crabs go? And what caused them to vanish so quickly? Scientists are still grappling with these que…

On Nov. 4, the 41st annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) closed without making significant progress toward the establishment of new marine protected areas (MPAs) and fishery regulations. The scientific community and most delegates to the…

During the decade-plus in which he ran a program in China designed to reduce demand for wildlife products like shark fin, tiger bone, rhino horn and elephant ivory, Steve Trent visited the country over 100 times, working with national broadcasters to develop messaging campaigns regularly seen by ove…

When Niueans are babies, their parents traditionally take them down to the seashore and throw them in the water so they learn to swim, Mona Ainu’u told Mongabay. That’s more important in Niue than most places. The country’s 260-square-kilometer (100-square-mile) land area is a single chunk of coral…