How To Protect The Ocean

The Straw Backlash: Why Guilt Doesn't Work

"You can't care about plastic. Your phone is made of plastic." If you've ever heard that, you know what it's for. It's designed to make you feel like a hypocrite, so you

The Beach That Doesn't Need Cleaning Anymore

Picture a beach cleanup. Two hours of hauling bottles, wrappers and foam off the sand. Now picture the same beach ten years later, where you walk the whole length and com

Too Enthusiastic? How to Find Your Place in Ocean Action

Do you ever feel disconnected from ocean action? You sign the petition, you donate, you share the post, and you still don't feel like you're doing the work. Andrew know

Come for the Impact, Stay for the People: Inside Surfrider Canada

Do you ever feel like ocean action is happening somewhere else? You sign the petition, maybe donate, but you're not really part of the work. Lilly Woodbury knows that fee

One Promise: How a Postcard Changed Behaviour for a Year

Picture a kid at an aquarium in Durban, standing in front of the penguins with a pen and a postcard. She writes one sentence, a promise to change one habit for the ocean,

Why Saying "Fishing Is Bad" Backfires

Picture a woman on a beach before sunrise, sorting the night's catch to feed her kids. Now picture a campaign poster that says "Stop eating fish." That poster just reache

The Reef That Built Itself Back: Coral Recovery After Bleaching

In 2023, a marine heat wave settled over Palmyra Atoll, a remote ring of coral islands about 1,000 miles south of Hawaii, and stayed for more than half a year. Some of th

Why Nobody Can Name a Marine Protected Area

Quick test: name one marine protected area in your country. If you came up blank, you're in good company. When an aquarium in Durban, South Africa surveyed its visitors,

Can You Name One Marine Protected Area? Dr. Judy Mann-Lang on MPA Day

Most people can't name a single marine protected area in their own country. Dr. Judy Mann-Lang found that out the hard way when she asked aquarium visitors to name one an

What the Sustainable Seafood Label Can't See

You bought the fish with the green check mark. Investigators with The Outlaw Ocean Project then checked the supply chains behind hundreds of seafood companies making sust

Ships Without License Plates: The Dark Fleet Behind Fishmeal

In a single day in March 2024, Gambian navy officers arrested eight industrial trawlers. Seven were fishing in waters reserved for local canoes, four were using illegal n

Whose Dinner Becomes Fish Feed?

On a May morning in 2017, the people of Gunjur in The Gambia woke to find their lagoon had turned red, with dead fish on the surface. Investigators traced the pollution t

The Fish That Feed Your Fish: What Farmed Salmon Really Eat

The family behind the world's largest salmon farming company built a global industry. Now one of its members is asking how it can be sustainable to grind up fish from poo

What Your Farmed Salmon Ate: Inside a Five-Year Fishmeal Investigation

More than half the seafood eaten on Earth now comes from fish farms, and most of those farmed fish are raised on fishmeal made from wild-caught fish. Maya Martin, deputy

How to Read the Seafood Counter Like a Marine Biologist

Picture a big sign over the seafood counter promising sustainable fishing, with a fish every independent guide says to avoid sitting on ice right below it. In most countr

Is Bottom Trawling Always Bad? It Depends Where

Off the south coast of England, about 100 kilometres out, sits Haig Fras, a granite reef covered in jewel anemones and cup corals. For years it was protected on paper, ye

The Trapdoor That Saves Sea Turtles From Shrimp Nets

A Kemp's ridley sea turtle, the most endangered sea turtle on Earth, gets swept into a shrimp trawl. It hits a metal grid, slides out through a flap in the net, and swims

The Cod Came Back: What a Fishery Collapse Teaches Us About Overfishing

Five centuries ago, explorers off Newfoundland described cod so plentiful that a weighted basket lowered into the sea came back full. By July 2, 1992, so few remained tha

How to Choose Sustainable Seafood

You want to eat seafood the right way. Then you hit the seafood counter and face a wall of labels, a sign promising "sustainable practices," and an employee who has no id

Slow Down for Whales: How Global Shipping Learned to Share the Ocean

Blue whales can't dodge ships. When scientists tracked blue whales alongside cargo ships off Southern California, the whales responded in just over half the encounters, a