Rebecca Kessler

2 weeks ago | news.mongabay.com | Edward Carver |Rebecca Kessler

The United States has long been an international leader in fisheries and oceans science, with influence at international fora that it has sometimes wielded to support conservation measures and crackdowns on illegal fishing. However, U.S. influence at fisheries and oceans fora appear to be waning during the second Trump administration, which could compromise fisheries health and marine conservation, experts say. The administration, which took office Jan.

2 weeks ago | news.mongabay.com | Rebecca Kessler

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on April 24 to expedite the process of exploring and mining for valuable minerals found on the deep ocean seafloor, in both U.S. and international waters. It’s a highly controversial move that critics say imperils an important but poorly understood ecosystem and flouts international rules on deep-sea mining. Miners are mainly after potato-size nodules lying at the bottom of the ocean 4,000–5,500 meters (12,000–18,000 feet) deep.

1 month ago | news.mongabay.com | Rebecca Kessler |Keith Anthony Fabro

Fewer than 150 critically endangered Malayan tigers (Panthera tigris jacksoni) remain in the wild, and poaching for the illegal wildlife trade poses a major threat to their survival. A new study links human trafficking to Malayan tiger poaching, tracing how indebted Vietnamese migrant workers in Malaysia enter the illegal wildlife trade, and how network managers and fishing boat captains smuggle tiger parts to Vietnam by boat.

Jan 7, 2025 | news.mongabay.com | Rebecca Kessler

With just two weeks remaining as president, Joe Biden invoked the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling for the entire U.S. East Coast, West Coast, eastern Gulf of Mexico and sections of the North Bering Sea in Alaska. The move will ban fossil fuel extraction from nearly 2.5 million square kilometers (977,000 square miles) of federal water, an area larger than Texas and Alaska combined.

Dec 20, 2024 | news.mongabay.com | Rebecca Kessler

Toamasina, a coastal city in eastern Madagascar, is surrounded by an extensive network of coral reefs that are home to near-threatened species. For decades, these reefs have been under threat from an unusual activity: The use of coral in the construction of septic tanks. Mongabay spoke with Abraham Botovao, a boat skipper and the president of a local fishers’ association, who has been closely monitoring this trade and its impact on the local marine environment.