Climate Change Is Devastating Coral Reefs Worldwide, Major Report Says

The world lost 14 percent of its coral in just a decade, researchers found.

Opinion | We’re Living Through One of the Most Explosive Extinction Episodes Ever

The growing damage to the world’s biodiversity presents dire risks to human societies.

Swimming in an Uncertain Sea

The underwater filmmaker Ron Elliott describes what he’s learned from his encounters with sharks near the Farallon Islands.

Protected Too Late: U.S. Officials Report More Than 20 Extinctions

The animals and one plant had been listed as endangered species. Their stories hold lessons about a growing global biodiversity crisis.

Protected Too Late: U.S. Officials Report More Than 20 Extinctions

The animals and one plant had been listed as endangered species. Their stories hold lessons about a growing global biodiversity crisis.

This Fjord Shows Even Small Populations Create Giant Microfiber Pollution

Researchers found that one tiny Arctic village’s unfiltered sewage produces as much microplastic as the treated waste of more than a million people.

Dancers From the Deep Sea Shine on the U.N. for Climate Week

A Danish arts collective spotlights the bizarrely beautiful siphonophore, which performs a vital role in removing carbon from the atmosphere.

A Swirling Vortex Is No Match for This Deep-Sea Sponge

A new paper finds a glass sponge has the power to eliminate destructive vortices that are created when fluid moves around a blunt object.

‘Spaceship-Shaped’ Fossil Reveals Hungry Predator of Ancient Oceans

Titanokorys gainesi, turned up in the Canadian Rockies, was among the largest known predators 500 million years ago.

Do Lox and Other Smoked Fish Increase Cancer Risk? (Published 2019)

From a cancer risk perspective, the American Institute for Cancer Research considers smoked and cured fish in the same category as processed meats.

Next Food Frontier: Fish Made From Plants, or in a Lab

Sophisticated, plant-based alternatives that mimic seafood are cropping up at restaurants and grocery stores around the world. And “cultivated” seafood, grown in labs from real cells, is on the horizon.

New Research Helps Explain a Sudden Population Crash for Rare Whales

North Atlantic right whales had been making a slow recovery, but ocean changes linked to global warming are pushing down their numbers again, scientists say.

Satellites Spot Oceans Aglow With Trillions of Organisms

A new generation of detectors let scientists identify a dozen large episodes of bioluminescence, one a hundred times larger than Manhattan — and that’s the smallest.

The Wonders That Live at the Very Bottom of the Sea

Two new books, Edith Widder’s “Below the Edge of Darkness” and Helen Scales’s “The Brilliant Abyss,” explore the darkest reaches and all that glows there.

Taking the Pulse of the Ocean’s Comb Jellies

New kinds of molecular probes are revealing the true extent of ctenophores, a form of ocean life that has long eluded firm reckonings.

Fatal Attraction: Scientists Blame Sea Snake Attacks on Sex Drive

Sea snakes aren’t angry when they aggressively swim at divers, scientists say. They’re just confused and looking to mate.

This Brain Remained Intact in a 310 Million-Year-Old Fossil

The discovery suggested that horseshoe crab brains haven’t changed much and that there are more ways for soft tissues to be preserved in the fossil record.

Saved by a Bucket, but Can the Owens Pupfish Survive?

A new refuge in the California desert offers a long imperiled species its first real chance to thrive.

Opinion | What Does It Mean for a Whole Nation to Become Uninhabitable?

“It’s changing quite rapidly,” says a hunter in Canada. “And I’m not old at all. I’m 31.”

These Could Be the Oldest Animal Fossils Ever Found, or Just Squiggles

Critics challenged a study’s claim that a netlike structure found in rocks in a Canadian mountain range could be an 890-million-year-old sponge fossil.