How shark tracking data shaped Papua New Guinea’s ocean sanctuary
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Papua New Guinea announced on May 13 that it will protect roughly 214,000 square kilometers (about 82,600 square miles) of the Bismarck Sea from all fishing and extractive activity, an area approaching the size of the United Kingdom. The Western Manus Marine Read More...
Revealing the history of the earliest transoceanic seafarers
A study carried out by geneticists at Harvard University, in collaboration with Indigenous communities, has revealed five previously undocumented migrations around remote Pacific islands. These people were the world’s earliest transoceanic seafarers, being able to navigate long journeys across Read More...
Study shows female elephant seals have built-in GPS
Most of the year pregnant female elephant seals are journeying 10,000 kilometers for 240 days across the Eastern North Pacific Ocean. This trek is not only long and has to be perfectly timed so the mothers can give birth within five days of their arrival to the breeding beaches at Año Nuevo Read More...
New study finds world’s oceans suck up twice as much CO2 as we thought
Looks like we’ve completely underestimated the carbon-sucking power of the world’s oceans. Yes, we knew the ocean plays an important role in regulating the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but what we didn’t know was that it sucks up twice as much carbon than previously thought. Read More...
Environmentalists pulled 40 tons of abandoned fishing nets out of the Pacific
When it comes to ocean pollution, fishing nets are especially dangerous to marine life as they drift through the ocean, entangling whales, seals, and turtles. In an effort to rid the ocean of this harmful marine debris, nonprofit Ocean Voyages Institute managed to pull 40 tons of abandoned Read More...