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Are You Giving Flowers with a Side of Plastic?
The Upwell: Notes from the Editor is a semiregular column that brings you analysis of emerging issues impacting coastlines around the world. Over a century ago, flower retailer Florists’ Telegraph...
View ArticleWildlife Wins When Western Science and Traditional Knowledge Work Together
When conservation scientist Junior Novera was growing up in Mapisi Village, on a bend of the Sinamut River in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, he’d never heard the term conservation. There were sacred...
View ArticlePreparing for a Storm the Ni-Vanuatu Way
Mango flowers and hornets’ nests might seem strange bedfellows for meteorological satellites, but on Futuna Island, a craggy volcano at the eastern edge of the archipelago of Vanuatu, they play a...
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Gone to the Dogs
Kit saw the ocean for the first time on an iron-skied February afternoon. My wife and I had spent the last three years in eastern Washington State, a region landlocked by 600 kilometers of forests,...
View ArticleCalling in the Seabirds
Scientists are rebuilding a seabird paradise on Lehua Island, a small, crescent-shaped volcanic cone 35 kilometers west of Kaua‘i, Hawai‘i. Before the arrival of European explorers in the 1800s, the...
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In Graphic Detail: Humans Scare More Reef Fishes Than Sharks Do
Around Lizard Island in Australia, small reef fishes—gaudy damselfish and parrotfish—nip around, while the larger fishes—grunt, emperor, snapper, and grouper—rest on top of the corals. The smaller...
View ArticleCoastal Job: Great Barrier Reef Ranger
Some people work in cubicles, others work in kitchens, but the most intriguing workplace of all may be the coast. Meet the people who head to the ocean instead of the office in our Coastal Jobs...
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When Deep-Sea Miners Come A-Courting
The Cook Islands’ main harbor is a small indentation in the island of Rarotonga, which is the most developed of the nation’s 15 islands, yet still the kind of place where you give directions in mango...
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Managed Retreat? Please, Not Yet
Salt water is already seeping through gardens, under homes, and among the headstones on Serua Island, Fiji. As climate change rolls on, and as the sea level continues to rise, this low-lying island off...
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The Batavia’s Story of Mutiny and Murder Gets a New Chapter
He knew the missing skeleton was here. Somewhere. It was 2014, and Daniel Franklin, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Western Australia, was on Beacon Island, a tiny patch of land off...
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What’s Killing Baby Yellow-Eyed Penguins?
The mystery illness first showed up in November 2019. Conservation rangers started bringing newly hatched yellow-eyed penguins into the wildlife hospital in Dunedin, New Zealand. The chicks were days...
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The Details Are in the Devil’s Tumors
This article provides an update to the story “Devils Go to Prison,” published in 2015, which discusses how contagious cancers have ravaged the Tasmanian devil population and the efforts to control the...
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Kelp Keeps a Record of Environmental Calamity
On November 14, 2016, a huge earthquake rocked Kaikōura, a town on New Zealand’s South Island, killing two people, triggering a tsunami, and thrusting stretches of coastline six meters up out of the...
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Rāhui and the Art of Marine Conservation
Located in a quiet part of Tahiti, in French Polynesia, the village of Tautira sits on the ocean’s edge, framed by black sand beaches and a turquoise lagoon. With a population of just over 2,500,...
View ArticleWeaving the Harbor Back to Life
Tī kōuka are tough. These Seussian, palm-like trees, native to New Zealand, are topped with tufts of fibrous, bladed leaves. Also known as cabbage trees, tī kōuka are the nemesis of the nation’s lawn...
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One Great Shot: The Fog Walker
Early one morning in July 2022, I was searching for the famous kangaroos of Lucky Bay, in Western Australia’s Cape Le Grand National Park, when I noticed a pied oystercatcher a little farther up the...
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One Great Shot: Herculean Hurdles for Tiny Turtles
Green sea turtle hatchlings must make a perilous journey from nest to ocean. While scrambling across the sand and into the water, the tiny turtles must contend with countless dangers—from birds and...
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One Great Shot: Paddling in Paradise
At the end of a fulfilling day spent photographing local dive sites off Papua New Guinea’s Lissenung Island, I was heading back to my resort as the sun was setting. The tide was low enough that the...
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The Marshall Islands Aren’t Giving In to Sea Level Rise
This article provides an update to the story “Landlocked Islanders,” published in 2015, which examined whether rising sea levels caused by anthropogenic climate change would force residents of the...
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Seagrass Can Stash Away Dangerous Heavy Metals
The mud along a stretch of the upper Spencer Gulf, Australia’s largest estuary, is a toxic slurry of heavy metals. Zinc, cadmium, and lead permeate the seafloor, a hazardous legacy of buried...
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