From pollution to overfishing to the escalating effects of climate change, human activities are placing mounting pressure on the world ocean, fueling what U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres describes as a “deepening crisis.” Those warnings are detailed in the third U.N. World Ocean Assessment, released June 8 and authored by approximately 600 experts from 86 countries. Covering the period between 2021 and 2025, the report echoes concerns raised in the U.N.’s earlier World Ocean Assessments, published in 2015 and 2021, which describe a global ocean under immense strain due to human-driven pressures. The authors point toward progress in ocean governance through a review of 57 global treaties related to ocean protection, including the recently ratified high seas treaty, known more formally as the marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) agreement. However, they caution that existing frameworks generally remain “fragmented” and cannot fully address the scale of the challenges facing the ocean. Even so, the authors argue that it is imperative to continue strengthening conservation efforts, regulations and international cooperation to mitigate the damaging impacts of human activities and preserve marine ecosystems. Some 52.1 million metric tons of plastic waste enters the ocean each year, impacting more than 4,000 marine species, including seabirds. Image by NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). “The imperative for a healthy and resilient ocean has never been more urgent,” Rafael González-Quirós, director of the Oceanographic Centre of Gijón, Spain, who played a key role in coordinating the report, said in…This article was originally published on Mongabay

This is part 2 of a two-part series examining the U.S.’s efforts to begin deep-sea mining in federal waters. Part 2 examines the regulations that would govern the industry. Part 1 explored the process behind proposed lease sales in U.S. federal waters and reactions to those plans. The deep-sea mining industry could launch in the near future in U.S. federal waters. Yet legal experts and former government officials warn that the regulations that would govern this industry are outdated and lack important oversight provisions. In April 2025, the Trump administration signaled its intention to enter the global race to mine the deep sea when it released an executive order calling for the development of the industry. Following the administration’s direction, in April 2026 the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) announced its plans to hold a series of seabed lease sales over the course of this year and into early next. The first one is slated for August in American Samoa, with subsequent lease sales planned for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and Alaska. If these go forward, they could mark the first commercial lease processes for deep-sea mining anywhere in the world. Critics say deep-sea mining could cause large-scale and irreversible damage to the marine environment, and some governments in areas slated for leasing have even taken steps to ban deep-sea mining. In 2024, the governor of American Samoa enacted a moratorium on seabed mining from its territorial waters, which extend 3 nautical miles (5.6 kilometers)…This article was originally published on Mongabay

JEJU ISLAND, South Korea — In April 2025, I zipped myself up into a thick wetsuit and inched down a steep, rocky ledge toward the gray-blue water encircling Beomseom, a small island off the southern coast of Jeju Island in South Korea. Then I leapt into the chilly sea and wriggled into my scuba gear while floating on the surface. In the water with me was Sanghoon Yoon, an adviser for Paran Ocean Citizen Science Center, a South Korean civil society group that advocates for the protection of the ocean. That day, Yoon was my scuba dive buddy. Yoon and I sank beneath the dangling legs of snorkelers into a watery realm of rocks and kelp. Once in deeper water, I encountered gelatinous stalks of soft coral. The polyps appeared purple, pink, red, and even orange, depending on the light. The islet of Beomseom off South Korea’s Jeju Island hosts colorful gardens of soft coral. Image courtesy of Paran. Sanghoon Hoon, an adviser to the Paran Ocean Citizen Science Center, dives among  corals in the waters off Jeju, South Korea. Image courtesy of Paran. The soft corals I saw that day were healthy. But in 2024, soft corals around Beomseom Island and other parts of Jeju experienced what scientists are calling a “slumping” event — and what Yoon describes as “melting” — which saw soft corals losing their shape, drooping, and even dying. The event was widely reported in local media and attributed to marine heat as Jeju waters hovered…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Physicist Stephen Volz had been working with colleagues at the U.S.’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for nearly 10 years to produce a new generation of geostationary satellites — instruments that would provide critical observations about atmospheric conditions, climate patterns and weather. But when Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, this long-term project was thrown into disarray. “This administration canceled three of the five instruments on that program,” Volz, the assistant administrator for NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, who has been on administrative leave since July 2025, told Mongabay. The cancellations applied to instruments that measured air pollutants, tracked lightning to forecast hurricanes and tornadoes, and monitored ocean color to detect events such as algal blooms, sargassum seaweed surges and salinity changes, according to Volz. “They said, ‘those are all wasted money, they’re climate alarmist, I don’t need air quality, I don’t need ocean color,’” Volz said about the administration’s decision. The axing of this project is just one example of what experts describe as a broad, long-term effort by the Trump administration to weaken NOAA. The long-standing scientific and regulatory agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce has historically been responsible for everything from forecasting the weather and monitoring the climate to managing fisheries and protecting marine mammals. The White House did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment. NOAA’s GOES-19 satellite, which tracks hurricanes and tropical storms in the Atlantic Ocean basin, as well as monitor severe weather, atmospheric rivers, wildfires, volcanic eruptions…This article was originally published on Mongabay

A version of this story was originally published by the Pulitzer Center, which supported Elizabeth Claire Alberts as an Ocean Reporting Network fellow. We didn’t set out to investigate China’s deep-sea mining fleet, but as our research into the burgeoning industry developed over our yearlong partnership, it became clear that an investigation into the fleet’s alleged military dual use was emerging as an important, untold story. Shortly after we embarked on our joint project, geopolitics around the deep-sea mining landscape began to shift dramatically. In February 2025, China signed an agreement with the Cook Islands government to collaborate on deep-sea mining research and exploration. At the same time, it was pursuing a similar deal with the archipelago nation of Kiribati, marking a notable expansion of Chinese influence in the Pacific. China holds the largest number of exploration contracts issued by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the U.N.-affiliated deep-sea mining regulator, and is also its biggest financial contributor. It also operates the world’s largest oceanographic research fleet. Against this backdrop, we kept returning to a central question: was China’s pursuit of deep-sea mining driven solely for accessing mineral resources, or was it also shaped by broader geopolitical strategy? Through extensive reporting, we learned that China’s interest in seabed mining was motivated by both of these things, and that some of its vessels were engaged in both deep-sea mining work and militarily strategic surveillance. Meanwhile, deep-sea mining efforts have been gathering pace in the United States. In March 2025, The Metals Company,…This article was originally published on Mongabay