By Sarah Wu 22 June 2018 (The Seattle Times) – With his paws perched against towering stacks of furniture, Benny forced his snout between two Saudi Arabian sofas and found a piece of elephant ivory that his handler had hidden as part of a drill. Smugglers trafficking in elephant ivory — one of the most […]
By Robin Mcdowell, Margie Mason, Martha Mendoza, Julie Jacobson, and Niniek Karmini 14 June 2018 MONTAUK, New York (Associated Press) – Even after winter storms left East Coast harbors thick with ice, some of the country’s top chefs and trendy restaurants were offering sushi-grade tuna supposedly pulled in fresh off the coast of New York. […]
By Jeanfreddy Gutiérrez Torres 21 May 2018 LAKE MARACAIBO, Venezuela (Mongabay) – The wildlife of Venezuela, one of 17 countries that account for 70 percent of the world’s biodiversity, has come under new pressure in addition to deforestation, toxic oil spills. and illegal trafficking: human starvation.The economic crisis that began in 2014 with the collapse […]
2 March 2018 (The Costa Rican Times) – Ten tons of hammerhead shark fins have been in storage in Costa Rican warehouses since 1 March 2015, when the government issued a ban on the export of hammerhead shark fins as part of its Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora […]
13 March 2018 (World Animal Protection) – Ghost gear accounts for 10 percent of all the debris accumulating in our oceans and is a major threat to marine wildlife. Global estimates in 2009 found that at least 640,000 tons of ghost gear are added to our oceans every year. This number is likely now even […]
2 March 2018 (The Costra Rican Times) – Ten tons of hammerhead shark fins have been in storage in Costa Rican warehouses since 1 March 2015, when the government issued a ban on the export of hammerhead shark fins as part of its Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora […]
By Shreya Dasgupta 24 February 2018 (Mongabay) – Industrial fishing takes place across more than 55 percent of the world’s oceans, according to a new study published in Science.Fishing is vital for food security and livelihoods across the globe, yet the extent of industrial fishing has remained largely unknown. Now, a team of researchers has […]
5 February 2018 (Murdoch University) – Scientists are warning that microplastics in our oceans are posing a significant risk to filter-feeding marine animals like manta rays and whale sharks.A new analysis for the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, led by Murdoch University PhD student Elitza Germanov, warns that microplastics could be hazardous because they […]
By Kelly Kasulis 15 September 2017 (Mic) – The world’s oceans are going to have more plastic in them than fish by 2050, according to World Economic Forum projections. But we don’t need to wait for the future to witness grim scenes of polluted waters.Just look at the photo below. Photographer Justin Hofman caught a […]
By Neha Jain 5 September 2017 (Mongabay) – It’s no secret that widespread overfishing is driving many shark species to extinction. Many of these apex predators are ensnared incidentally as bycatch in longline fisheries targeting tuna or swordfish. Shortfin mako sharks — the fastest sharks in the ocean — are among the shark species that […]
