By Ryan Johnson With the first day of summer just around the corner, millions of Americans are flocking to the beach. In addition to being a family-friendly source of outdoor recreation, our beaches contribute billions of dollars to local economies across the country. In Florida alone, tourists spent an estimated $2 billion dollars from 2012 […]

By Christopher Thompson Single-use plastic is clogging oceans and landfills. The industry that makes it has waged a decades-long campaign to keep it on the market.New York’s Suffolk County had a trash problem. Facing brimming landfills and public pressure, legislators took a first-in-the-nation step: They banned plastic bags. But what the county saw as part […]

In a major breakthrough, instruments known as continuous plankton recorders (CPRs) — used to survey plankton population since 1931 — have accidentally recorded the history of plastic in oceans. CPRs are torpedo-like devices that have been in use since 1931 to survey plankton populations. In recent years CPRs have been constantly tormented by large fishing […]

If you’re sad when you see stories about dead whales washing ashore with dozens of pounds of plastic in their bellies or feel guilty when you forget to bring your reusable bags to the grocery store, there’s a good reason. The amount of plastic that’s been dumped into the ocean has been increasing, according to […]

Marine biologists will tell you that fish species such as tuna and swordfish, known as the deep-water divers of the ocean for hunting at depths of 200 metres, are today repeatedly coming to surface view. The reason for the behavioural quirk is that warming sea temperatures have zapped oxygen out of waters even far out […]

Adidas has spent the last four years curbing ocean pollution by recycling plastic beach waste into shoes – and because their customers have been so eager for the product, the company is kicking it up a notch. Adidas produced more than five million pairs of recycled plastic waste shoes in 2018, and they plan to incorporate […]

After a heat wave struck the waters of Western Australia in 2011, scientists noticed that warmer ocean temperatures caused fewer dolphin births and decreased the animal’s survival rate. Dolphins may be in serious trouble as temperatures rise with global warming. After a heat wave struck the waters of Western Australia in 2011, scientists noticed that […]

Plastic is kind of like a Twitter reply guy: It never goes away. And there’s more coming in. Each year, 8 million metric tons of plastic go into the ocean (that’s equal to about one garbage truck per minute), according to a 2016 report by the World Economic Forum, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and McKinsey […]

Somewhere in Hilo, on Hawaii’s Big Island, a team of scientists and engineers are tending to The Ocean Cleanup’s 600-metre-long rubbish-herding device, after its maiden voyage to the Great Pacific garbage patch was cut short in December 2018, because it fractured into two pieces. The project has had its fair share of problems since it […]

Just a few years ago, it looked as if humpback whale populations in the Pacific Ocean were booming. Receding sea ice due to climate change—though bad for polar bears and other wildlife—had lengthened the summer foraging season for hungry whales, and the U.S. government decided that certain populations had recovered enoughto be taken off the […]