The government aims to dramatically reduce the areas offered full protection and expand zones where fishing is allowed, while also claiming that this will still deliver good conservation.
This wood tower on Bikeman islet, in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati, used to be on the sand. Now it’s in the water. Further out, locals fish.
David Gray/Reuters
A new study finds that even in best-case scenarios, the fishing communities most hurt by climate change are on small island nations such as Kiribati, the Solomon Islands and the Maldives.
There are a number of ways the global community can protect the oceans.
Shutterstock
Many African countries are sitting on vast and under-utilised oceanic territories that have the potential to unlock enormous economic value, if properly governed.
This newborn fiddler ray will be released back into the ocean. But will it survive?
Leonardo Guido
Rays caught unintentionally by fishing trawlers often spend time on deck before being returned to the ocean. New research shows the stress of this experience affects pregnant rays, and their babies.
Coastal indigenous peoples consume nearly four times more seafood per capita than the world average and have strong cultural ties to the sea. Global ocean policies should preserve these connections.
State conservation officials from Florida and Georgia work in 2014 to remove a heavy length of fishing rope from a right whale’s mouth.
FL Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission/Flickr
Matt Burgess, University of California, Santa Barbara and Rob Williams, University of St Andrews
A new US seafood import rule requires supplier countries to control accidental bycatch of whales, seals and other marine mammals – showing that global trade and conservation can reinforce each other.
After years of stalled negotiations, China has ended its opposition to the world's largest marine park off Antarctica - part of a wider trend towards increased Chinese involvement in global governance.
Australia has the third largest marine jurisdiction in the world, a vast ocean territory that contains important natural and biological resources. And it needs protecting.
An illegal fishing vessel caught off the coast of Sierra Leone, a region where illegal fishing is a serious problem.
Reuters
The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is huge win for preservation, but it also poses outsized management challenges for the National Park Service.
Filipino fishers in the South China Sea.
EPA/FRANCIS R. MALASIG
