The deep sea is the largest habitat on earth and incredibly important to humans, but it faces many threats – from increased human exploitation to the effects of climate change. As this exploitation expands…
When we sip our morning coffee or snack on a piece of chocolate, we hardly think about how these products came to us. The answer is: they were transported by sea. In fact, pretty much all the goods we…
The ocean, seen from a beach or from a plane, seems vast, ancient and invulnerable. It’s hard to imagine that 90% of life on earth lives below the waves, across 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of water and…
Not long after the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was declared missing, the world’s attention was focused on a remote, poorly known area of the Eastern Indian Ocean as the possible location of the lost…
Over the past few months, a lot of attention has been paid to the potentially strong El Niño event brewing in the Pacific Ocean. But there is also the potential for an emerging climate phenomenon in the…
As Western Australia’s Environmental Protection Authority and the federal environment minister Greg Hunt mull the question of whether to let the state government resume its controversial shark cull next…
The high seas cover about 50% of Earth’s surface and host a major share of the world’s biodiversity, but remain largely ungoverned. With increasing threats to open ocean ecosystems, now more than ever…
Carl Sagan’s description of our planet as a “pale blue dot” captured two important elements about the Earth: its loneliness in the enormity of space, and the ocean’s overwhelming dominance of the planet…
Scientists are meeting this week in Yokohama, Japan, to finalise and approve the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group II – the part of the IPCC process that…
When I first saw a sea sapphire I thought I was hallucinating. The day had been anything but normal, but this part will always stand out. I had spent the afternoon on a small dingy off the coast of Durban…
The “pause” in global warming since 2001 can be explained by the discovery of unusually strong winds in the Pacific, climatologists have found. Global surface air temperatures have more or less flatlined…
Some of the world’s most vulnerable marine habitats are being failed by the conservation orders put in place to protect them. As the Environmental Audit Committee meets to discuss how it will implement…
Each square kilometre of Australian sea surface water is contaminated by around 4,000 pieces of tiny plastics, according to our study published today in journal PLOS ONE and data repository Figshare. These…
In an emotional article making waves on social media at the moment, yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen reports seeing no marine life at sea, only floating rubbish, while sailing across the Pacific. He concludes…