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.
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.
Climate change is now adding new layers of complexity to the nexus between migration and the environment.
The United Nations will make its third - and perhaps final - attempt at reaching an agreement to launch negotiations for an international biodiversity treaty governing the high seas.
A surge in wildlife crime is fuelling criminal syndicates, perpetuating terrorism, and resulting in the loss of major revenues from tourism and industries dependent on iconic species while also endangering the livelihoods of the rural poor.
But this surge in wildlife crime is not only threatening iconic species, which include elephants, rhinos and tigers, but also lesser-known animals that are also on the brink of extinction.
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.
Local fishermen are singing the blues over a sweeping set of new ocean management regulations, signed into law by the Barbuda Council, to zone their coastal waters, strengthen fisheries management, and establish a network of marine sanctuaries.
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.
The world's 52 small island developing states (SIDS), some in danger of being wiped off the face of the earth because of sea-level rise triggered by climate change, will be the focus of an international conference in the South Pacific island nation of Samoa next month.
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.
A marine biologist has cautioned that the mass deaths of starfish along the United States west coast in recent months could also occur in the Caribbean region because of climate change, threatening the vital fishing sector.
At a political level, when the United Nations speaks of a "high seas alliance", it is probably a coalition of countries battling modern piracy in the Indian Ocean.
When Olive Ridley sea turtles nest on the beach in his village, little Warthy Raju can barely wait for the millions of hatchlings, with their three-inch shells and thumb-sized heads, to scramble out.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is convinced there is sufficient global capacity to produce enough food to adequately feed the world's seven billion people.
Minda Moriles, 56, has worked at sea most of her life. A resident in a coastal community in the city of Las Pinas, part of the Philippines’ National Capital Region, her earnings are dictated by what she can catch off the shores of Manila Bay.
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.
Boats were tying up at the jetty and there was a bustle of activity as vendors cried their wares, offering shellfish to potential buyers, while young people, sharp knives in hand, filleted sea bass and red snapper. Meanwhile, on the promenade, octogenarian musicians played old-style cumbias and boleros for restaurant patrons.
Of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) -development targets agreed upon by the international community, whose 2015 deadline is approaching fast - MDG 7 has proven a particular challenge, especially for sprawling, populous countries like India.
Somali pirates on the southwest Indian Ocean have become one of the biggest security risks for commercial maritime shipping over the last several years. But even as piracy gave rise to international furore, an unlikely benefactor emerged: bluefin tuna stocks in the Indian Ocean.
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.
The authorities in Mexico seem to have thrown in the towel in the fight against illegal fishing, which is hurting fisheries, the environment, and incomes.