(Natural News) An environmental group in Australia claimed that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic also caused a pandemic of plastic waste, foremost among them the surgical face masks. Sydney-based organization Clean Up Australia (CUA) put forward this claim in time for the launch of its citizen science project on March 6. The endeavor aims to […]

(Natural News) A new paper published in a top-ranked biology journal found that concerns about the acidification of ocean water are grossly overblown. Published in PLOS Biology on February 3, the paper analyzed 91 studies on the effect of ocean acidification on fish behavior. The paper found that better-quality studies tended to find smaller effects on fish […]

(Natural News) More than half a million hermit crabs in the Indian and Pacific Oceans are dying because they mistake plastic waste for a home, according to a study published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. Australian and British researchers found that around 508,000 hermit crabs have died taking shelter inside plastic waste on Cocos (Keeling) Island, […]

(Natural News) Cultivating different species of seaweed in less than one percent of Gulf of Mexico waters could help the United States achieve pollution reduction goals, according to a study by researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The Gulf of Mexico is infamous for its “dead zones.” These are oceanic zones with too little oxygen in […]

(Natural News) A massive underwater avalanche off the coast of West Africa has spread more than 600 miles across the seafloor of the Atlantic Ocean. This is according to an international team of researchers, who detected the colossal two-day event in the Congo Canyon, a deep submarine canyon near the mouth of the Congo River. The underwater avalanche […]

(Natural News) A machine that “eats” garbage floating in the water has been cleaning up the bays of Baltimore. Called Mr. Trash Wheel, the 50-foot-long contraption has gobbled up more than three million pounds of trash in the historic Inner Harbor since its debut in 2014, according to CNET. John Kellett, founder of Clearwater Mills, a locally owned and operated logistics company, […]

(Natural News) A new study published in the journal Nature Sustainability found that plastic items used for packaging takeout food and drinks contributed nearly half of the plastics in the world’s oceans. Researchers arrived at this finding after examining 36 global inventories of marine trash from seven major aquatic environments. The researchers found that only 10 plastic products make up 75 […]

(Natural News) A new study published in the journal Current Biology suggests that sharks use the Earth’s magnetic field to find their way in the sea. Researchers led by biologist Bryan Keller reported this after exposing bonnethead sharks to different magnetic conditions. In one test, the bonnetheads were tricked into thinking that they were located south of their home. In […]

(Natural News) Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison launched its first National Plastics Plan last month in an attempt to curb the country’s mounting plastic pollution crisis. The plan involves banning “single-use plastics” over the next four years. On Thursday, April 16, the country’s environmental ministers met to confirm that the ban covers eight kinds of “problematic and unnecessary” plastic […]

(Natural News) Marine microplastic pollution is a pervasive problem. Microplastics are small plastic fragments that form when larger pieces of plastic debris in aquatic environments break down due to exposure to the elements. But scientists have found that the amount of microplastic waste entering freshwater environments like streams and rivers differs from the amount of microplastic waste present […]