Stories written by Christopher Pala

How Peter Thiel Got His New Zealand Citizenship

In January, the revelation that Peter Thiel, the libertarian Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Trump adviser, secretly got a New Zealand citizenship six years ago caused an uproar, mostly because he was the first to get one without pledging to live there.

New Public Website Offers Detailed View of Industrial Fishing

In a giant step for transparency at sea, environmentalists on Thursday unveiled a website that allows anyone with an Internet connection to see for free exactly where and when most of the world’s industrial fishing boats actually fish.

African Fisheries Plundered by Foreign Fleets

In 2011, Dyhia Belhabib was a volunteer in the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver when she was asked to participate in the Sea Around Us’s project to determine how much fish had been taken out of the world’s oceans since 1950 in order to better avoid depleting the remaining populations of fish.

One Fish Two Fish, No Fish: Rebuilding of Fish Stocks Urgently Needed

A major new study has revealed that the global seafood catch is much larger and declining much faster than previously known.

Pacific Islands’ Marine Reserve: Safe Haven for Depleted Tuna and New Holiday Spot

President Tommy Remengesau Jr. of the Pacific island nation of Palau has cemented a legacy as the world’s most effective protector of marine life by creating a giant marine reserve that will directly benefit his people through increasing tourism and securing its food supply, scientists say.

In Hawaii, Concern Rises about Use of Farm Pesticides

Tammy Brehio stood on the back balcony of her home in Kihei on the island of Maui and pointed to a brown field a few hundred yards away.

Championing Ocean Conservation Or Paying Lip Service to the Seas?

President Barack Obama this week extended the no-fishing areas around three remote pacific islands, eliciting praise from some, and disappointment from those who fear the move did not go far enough towards helping depleted species of fish recover.

Protecting America’s Underwater Serengeti

U.S. President Barack Obama has proposed to more than double the world’s no-fishing areas to protect what some call America’s underwater Serengeti, a series of California-sized swaths of Pacific Ocean where 1,000-pound marlin cruise by 30-foot-wide manta rays around underwater mountains filled with rare or unique species.

Kiribati President Purchases ‘Worthless’ Resettlement Land as Precaution Against Rising Sea

You can count the inhabitants of this isolated, tidy village of multi-coloured houses and flower bushes among global warming’s first victims – but not in the usual sense.

Kiribati Bans Fishing in Crucial Marine Sanctuary

After years of claiming untruthfully that the world’s most fished marine protected area was “off limits to fishing and other extractive uses,” President Anote Tong of the Pacific island state of Kiribati and his cabinet have voted to close it to all commercial fishing by the end of the year.

Predatory Lionfish Decimating Caribbean Reefs

The lionfish, with its striking russet and white stripes and huge venomous outrigger fins, wasn’t hard to spot under a coral reef in 15 feet of clear water. Nor was it a challenge to spear it.

Rising Seas Not the Only Culprit Behind Kiribati’s Woes

Scientists say dredging, building causeways and natural climate variations are largely responsible for the flooding events that many officials here point to as evidence that climate change-induced sea-level rise is shrinking and destroying their tropical Pacific island.

Fishing Undercuts Kiribati President’s Marine Protection Claims

A growing chorus of politicians, scientists and environmentalists are urging President Anote Tong of Kiribati to actually do what he claims was already done in 2008: create the world's most effective marine protected area in a remote archipelago in the Central Pacific Ocean.

Senegal’s Leader Urged to Save Sardinella

Hours after President Macky Sall of Senegal met in Washington with President Barack Obama late last month, he stepped into a brightly lit hotel meeting room to accept the Peter Benchley Award for National Stewardship of the Ocean, the only prize for ocean conservation given to heads of state.

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Banned Kazakh Opposition Press Vows to Continue Online

Kazakhstan, an oil-rich ex-Soviet nation in Central Asia best known for voluntarily forsaking the world’s fourth-largest nuclear arsenal, is carrying out an unprecedented media crackdown that will leave it virtually without any opposition newspapers for the first time in its 21-year history as an independent nation.

Billions in Subsidies Prop up Unsustainable Overfishing

Calls are mounting for the world's big fishing powers to stop subsidising international fleets that use destructive methods like bottom trawling in foreign coastal waters, drastically reducing the catch of local artisanal fishers who use nets and fishing lines.

Tough Job? Try Reporting on Corruption in Kazakhstan

Lukpan Akhmedyarov, a 36-year-old reporter for an independent weekly in western Kazakhstan who was recently ambushed and nearly killed, was awarded the Peter Mackler Award for Ethical and Courageous Journalism this month – the first journalist from that country to receive international recognition in 10 years.

Blue Crab Revival Offers Hope for Ailing Fisheries

Authorities in Maryland and Virginia have rescued the Chesapeake Bay's blue crab from the brink of collapse, tripling its population in five years, by using methods that emerging crabmeat-exporting countries in Asia and Central America could emulate, scientists say.

Kazakhstan Divided Over Fugitive Banker

As the trial began this week of 37 alleged participants in a strike-related riot, the man who did the most to help the striking oil workers and to publicise their cause, Mukhtar Ablyazov, remained far beyond the Kazakhstan government’s grasp.

Kazakh Media Faces Harsh Crackdown

President Nursultan Nazarbayev is orchestrating a media crackdown that editors and independent analysts say is the harshest since he began ruling this Central Asian republic in 1989.

KAZAKHSTAN: Dissent Stifled Amid Indifference

President Nursultan Nazarbayev, re-elected last April with an improbable yet typical 93 percent, presided last weekend over parliamentary elections that maintained his iron grip on his oil-rich country’s parliament, and further stifled dissent.

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