June 5, 2020 By Darryl Fears and Juliet Eilperin The Washington Post
President Trump signed a proclamation Friday that opened the Atlantic Ocean’s only fully protected marine sanctuary to commercial fishing, dismissing arguments that crab traps, fishing nets and lines dangling hooks can harm fish and whales.
June 4, 2020 By Benjamin Ryan The New York Times
Climate change, scientists suggest, has been fueling the squid bounty where Chile in particular is concerned. Two decades ago, South Pacific jumbo squid fishing was a mainstay industry in Peru, but the cephalopod went largely unfished in Chilean waters to the south. Since the early 2000s, the squid’s range has shifted farther and farther down Chile’s 2,700-mile coastline. It has also pulsed farther west into the high seas away from Peruvian shores.
June 1, 2020 By Nancy Lord Hakai Magazine
The endangered beluga whales living in Alaska’s Cook Inlet are still declining in number, despite protections put in place 20 years ago and the adoption of a recovery plan in 2016. The latest population estimate—released in January, based on a survey from June 2018—is only 279 animals, down from 328 just two years before. The federal agency in charge of whale management, the National Marine Fisheries Service, has called the trend “concerning.”
June 1, 2020 By Christopher Flavelle The New York Times
A billion-dollar program to protect cities from climate change is at risk of failing because of the pandemic.
May 29, 2020 By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis The Washington Post
A top official at the Environmental Protection Agency informed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Alaska late Thursday that the EPA would not formally object at this point to the proposed Pebble Mine, a massive gold and copper deposit where mining could damage the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.