When a seminal paper was published five years ago, the world decided that its core finding—8 million metric tons (MMT) of plastics enter the ocean annually—was simply unacceptable. Almost overnight, this Ocean Conservancy-supported analysis drove the world to respond with a shared sense of outrage that set off a series of ambitious commitments to address […]

Reviewing Article: Tierney, J.E., Zhu, J., King, J. et al. Glacial cooling and climate sensitivity revisited. Nature 584, 569–573 (2020). The Last Ice Age 20 thousand years ago, our planet’s climate was very different. Woolly mammoths roamed the Earth and island of Manhattan was under half a mile of ice. Known more commonly as the last ice age, climate scientists […]

The San Francisco Giants chose Hunter Pence as their Roberto Clemente Award nominee for 2020, Major League Baseball’s (MLB) annual recognition of the MLB player who best represents the game through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy and positive contributions, both on and off the field. A World Champion with the Giants in 2012 and 2014, […]

This is a guest post by Meaghan Efford. Meaghan is an archaeologist and historical ecologist looking at how Burrard Inlet has changed over the past 250 years. She is a PhD student at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia, working in collaboration with Tsleil-Waututh Nation.  Every summer in […]

“Oh, the places you’ll go.” This is not a reference I never thought I’d conjure while staring at dirty clothes in my laundry hamper. I recently came across a scientific paper from University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) researchers who investigated the global contributions of laundry graywater to microplastic emissions, finding roughly 5.6 million metric […]

Reviewing: Gary, S. F., Fox, A. D., Biastoch, A., Roberts, J. M. & Cunningham, S. A. Larval behaviour, dispersal and population connectivity in the deep sea. Sci. Rep. 10, 1–12 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-67503-7   Critical Connections Benthic animals are those who spend most, if not all, of their adult life on the seafloor, e.g., corals, barnacles, […]

For billions of people across the world, fish is an essential part of their diet and livelihood. Fish accounts for at least 13.8% of the animal protein intake of the human population and in many countries, the number is even higher. In Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, fish makes up approximately 40% of […]

Leah M. Crowe, Joshua M. Hatch, Samir H. Patel, Ronald J. Smolowitz, Heather L. Haas. Riders on the storm: loggerhead sea turtles detect and respond to a major hurricane in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. Movement Ecology, 2020; 8 (1) DOI: 10.1186/s40462-02 A loggerhead sea turtle like the ones that were tracked in the study. Photo […]

Over the decades, many shark species have become endangered. In an effort to save these fishes, humans have set up “safe zones” where the sharks are less likely caught by fishing vessels. But do we know if these zones match with the sharks’ natural stomping grounds?

Penned by Becca Robbins Gisclair, Nicholas J. Mallos, Michael LeVine and Henry P. Huntington, this blog is sourced from a featured column in the journal Environment on the threat plastic pollution poses in the Arctic Ocean. From our ocean’s surface to its darkest depths, plastic pollution is ever-present. No part of our blue planet is […]