Oceans Stories

WWF and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Global Maritime Crime Program have launched a new partnership to advance innovative knowledge-sharing to protect the waters around Ecuador.

A 44,000-acre conservation easement will protect four of the world's most important rivers for salmon habitat.

Though the world faces two existential crises—a rapidly warming planet and declining biodiversity—and continues to battle a global pandemic, conservation still made major strides toward protecting wildlife, wild places, and people in 2022.

WWF wants to create healthy oceans that benefit the planet, people, prosperity, and peace. Advancing peace through ocean conservation is the focus of our newest program, Oceans Futures.

A historical decision by Alaska Native landowners, in conjunction with a landmark proposal by the EPA, could finally rip plans for a ruinous mine up from the roots and stop the project for good.

To protect our rapidly changing seas—and those who depend on them—we need to apply a bold way of thinking, one that tackles challenges in a systematic way and focuses on holistic improvements: place-based approaches.

Along the northern coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, communities, tourists, developers, and conservation groups like WWF are working together to protect and restore mangroves.

Meet the Matas and learn about the many interconnections that allow both coastal ecosystems and communities to thrive.

Seafood is one of the most frequently traded commodities on earth, so it’s essential that fishing is well-regulated around the world. But regulations must be complied with to be effective, and unfortunately, too much of the fish that comes to market is caught illegally.

Over the course of the last year, with support from hundreds of internal and external collaborators, a group of amazingly dedicated people at WWF developed and is launching our new ocean strategy.

The growing dangers whales face worldwide along their epic migrations are signs of an ocean in peril, and reveal how these waters connect us all.

We need policymakers and business leaders to take game-changing actions to help us transition from our current linear, “take-make-waste" relationship with plastic to a circular one.

Scientists from WWF, Fiji, and partner organizations spent 20 days scuba diving around the reef to collect data on the wildlife and ecosystem that they’ve compiled into a new report

Mangroves, with their incredible ability to capture and store carbon, can be a solution to the climate crisis.

Only 366 critically endangered North Atlantic right whales are left, experts say, representing a shocking 8% decline in a single year and the lowest number in about 20 years for this iconic species. Human impacts—specifically entanglements in fixed fishing gear and vessel strikes from ship traffic—remain the biggest threats to the survival of this species.

WWF co-developed a mobile application called TrazApp with fishers, government, and other supply chain actors, and has been training fishers across three fishing co-ops in northern Peru to use it.

Our oceans provide food, regulate Earth’s climate, and are rooted in cultural traditions and community livelihoods around the world. When we work on ocean conservation, we are inherently also working with people dependent on the ocean, particularly those who live along coastlines.

Alexandria Abuzanuq Ivanoff, who is from Unalakleet, Alaska, a small hunting and fishing community on the northwest coast, discusses how warming waters and increased shipping could impact Indigenous peoples and wildlife. 

 

More than one-third of all sharks, rays, and chimaeras are now at risk of extinction because of overfishing, according to a new study re-assessing their IUCN Red List of Threatened Species extinction risk status. Governments and regional fisheries bodies must act now to stop overfishing and prevent a global extinction crisis.

Did you know that mangroves only cover 12% of the world’s coasts, but you can see them from space? 

As of June 2020, Indonesia had designated more than 7% of its marine area as MPAs, protecting some 43% of coral reefs, 25% of mangrove forests, and 37% of mapped seagrass beds.

Jack Sagumai grew up in a coastal community in Papua New Guinea, where much of his life revolved around the ocean; now he works with WWF and other community members to save it.

WWF's senior vice president for ocean conservation, Johan Bergenas, tells us why he loves the ocean, and why we cannot afford to lose it.

An exorbitant amount of plastic waste continues to plague our oceans, threatening marine life and the people who depend on these waters for their livelihoods. Despite the dire scope of this crisis, the growing momentum to address it is promising.