Background Articles

A meeting of the Yukon River Panel focused on a surprising discrepancy between measurements at two different sonar stations. This could mean fish are dying or being miscounted, or that harvesting is going unreported.

Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration believe they have identified a new species of whale in the Gulf of Mexico. The Rice's whale is a filter feeder that can grow to 42 feet. It's also critically endangered. There are believed to be fewer than 100 of them left.

Sweden is to build up to a dozen bridges so reindeer can safely cross railway lines and major roads in the north of the country as global heating forces them to roam further afield in search of food.

The Bering Sea region, the Pacific gateway to the Arctic Ocean, is home to ecosystems on land and in the ocean that are both abundant and fragile. It’s also changing very quickly — and those changes offer a preview of the changes in store for other parts of the Arctic.

Residents of the Southwest Alaska village are hauling water from the Kuskokwim River, collecting rainwater and drinking donated bottled water as officials seek a viable option.

A decade-long warming trend in the Gulf of St. Lawrence continued in 2020. Water temperatures at depths of 200, 250 and 300 metres were higher than any measured in the Gulf since records started in 1915, hitting highs of 5.7 C, 6.6 C and 6.8 C. All were well above the normal variations.

The Haines Borough Assembly’s Commerce Committee began chipping away at a plan to address the borough’s bear problem at a meeting Tuesday. Proposals ranged from stronger enforcement of bear-attractant laws, to the development of education and grant programs to help people secure their attractants, to a complete overhaul of the community’s solid waste management system.

The Department of Civil Protection has raised the level of alert from Uncertain to Dangerous, due to a risk of avalanches. This morning it was found that an avalanche had fallen on the Skarðsdalur Ski area. Nine houses in Siglufjörður will be evacuated.

A new report from the Governor's Salmon Recovery Office shows salmon and steelhead populations in Washington state teetering on the brink of extinction. Five or the populations of salmon and steelhead listed a threatened or endangered, are in crisis.

Sitting in the Port of Dutch Harbor, the Polar Star is nearly 400 feet long and can break ice up to 21 feet thick. On Tuesday, the ship arrived for a pit stop with 136 crew members, 30 days into a months-long deployment to the Arctic. Their goal is to assert maritime sovereignty and security in the far north.

January 15, 2021 - Following a summer and fall of cloudy waters in Great Slave Lake and the Hay and Slave Rivers, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (ENR)...

See Kazakh figure skater Elizabet Tursynbayeva skating to “Znai (Know)” by Dimash Kudaibergen on the frozen lakes of Kazakhstan.

Cold temperatures and traffic congestion at the Panama Canal has resulted in a shortage of natural gas and exploding prices in parts of Asia. Now, Novatek aims to send LNG from the Arctic to Japan during the middle of winter in an untested high-risk, high-reward strategy. 

It will become clearer in the coming days how the sunken barge owned by Laxa aquaculture in Reyðarfjörður, East Iceland, will be re-floated after this weekend’s storm. Divers are working on the vessel again today and, so far, it appears no diesel or other oil has leaked into the sea.

See video of Yekaterina Nekrasova 40, swim an 85-meter distance beneath the ice of Lake Baikal. Nekrasova beat the current under-ice swim record of 70 meters set by South African Amber Fillary in Norway last year.

The national weather agency reported that as of 7 a.m., the snowfall in Madrid reached a level unseen in half a century.

Bocaccio rockfish have made a huge comeback in B.C. since being deemed endangered in 2013, but the success story is being met with some trepidation as trawler fishermen can’t seem to avoid netting them now.

Permafrost in Canada's northwest is thawing much faster than researchers predicted 20 years ago, according to the president of the International Permafrost Association.

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