IPCC Chair @jimskeaclimate.bsky.social addressed the opening of the 12th Session of @ipbes.net in Manchester today, emphasising the importance of the scientific link between @ipcc.bsky.social & IPBES, such as IPBES's participation in the upcoming IPCC Workshop on Engaging Diverse Knowledge Systems.

Biology! There’s always one. Love this 👇🏻🩵

Research funding decisions in these people’s hands… www.beehive.govt.nz/release/next...

🩵 Current obsession is checking the swim4theocean @LiveOcean site to see Jono Ridler’s progress. Swimming the east coast North Is - Aotearoa New Zealand to get people thinking & talking about bottom trawl fisheries. Epic human 👊🏻🩵 🏊‍♂️ liveocean.org/swim4theocea...

This week has shown (once again) that extreme weather events in a changing climate pose growing risks to Aotearoa's communities and ecosystems. We're developing tools to prepare for extreme weather events, and we're looking for a masters student to help → www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/posts/master...

What’s driving the decline? The crisis isn’t just fishing — it’s invisible fishing. Much shark & ray catch is under-reported, aggregated, or mislabeled, masking real mortality & delaying management. What we don’t measure, we don’t manage. @cgmull.bsky.social @nathanpacoureau.bsky.social

Here are the daily color stripes for the global sea-surface temperature anomaly, up-to-date through Jan. 19, 2026. You can see the easily spot the cooling trend in 2025, but with a coming El Nino, the future is maroon.

See out thread summarizing the paper here: bsky.app/profile/nick...

New paper out today in @natrevbiodiv.nature.com by the #GlobalSharkTrends team: Bending back the curve of shark & ray biodiversity loss; Read the paper here: rdcu.be/eZ9n9 @sfu.ca @sfubiosciences.bsky.social @earth2ocean.bsky.social

Your 'bonus moment of doom' for today: In other words, about 8 billion Hiroshimas worth of heating. "Ocean heat content (OHC) increased by around 500 zettajoules – billion trillion joules – since the 1940s." www.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the...

Not just sobering, but a kick in the goolies 😖 New national climate plans have done barely anything @unep.org’s 2025 #EmissionsGap Report warns that even if all current targets are fully implemented, global temperatures still projected to rise 2.3–2.5°C this century www.unep.org/resources/em...

The red dot is a baby North Atlantic right whale trying to migrate up the east coast of the United states. The blue streaks are fast moving shipping vessels entering and leaving New York City harbor. One collision and the whale is dead. We need *mandatory* speed limits for these vessels! 🧪🦑🌍

Deep-Sea Mining Watch reveals where vessels are exploring deep-sea mineral sites, helping bring accountability to one of the ocean’s last frontiers. @paulwoods.io , Global Fishing Watch Chief Innovation Officer, highlights the role of transparency in ocean governance. 🔗 https://bit.ly/4a1Qvex

Looking forward to reading this! I'm lucky to be making a small contribution to the volume: a piece discussing the unique perspectives bio-logging has provided on blue whales' lives. Can't wait to learn from the rest of the articles as well!

🧪New preprint! tinyurl.com/mr7km2pv When & why do predators share social information? Blue whales produce foraging calls when prey (krill) are abundant & dense, conditions arising from physical oceanographic forcing across temporal scales. Variation in ocean physics shapes blue whale communication!

"The International Visitor Levy was introduced to help manage the impacts of ballooning tourist numbers. So why is it instead funding millions in marketing to lure even more tourists, while DOC warns conservation is about to go backwards, and towns can't afford to upgrade overflowing toilets?"

😞 Vale Emma. An ocean woman who truly made a difference. Condolences to her family & to all who were privileged to know her. 🩵 theconversation.com/emma-johnsto...

Environmental defenders & conservationists who died in 2025

"Assumption of at least a moderate El Nino beginning in 2026 leads us to the projection in Fig. 5, with global temperature reaching a minimum at or above +1.4°C within several months and then rising to a record global temperature of about +1.7°C in 2027." mailchi.mp/caa/global-t...

It looks like 2025 will end up at about 1.47°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial baseline, making it likely the third hottest year in the last 120,000+ years. Meanwhile, the 3-year running average is going to end the year above 1.50°C for the first time.

Since the deep-sea accounts for over half the surface of the planet and more than 90% of this world's biosphere, in a very really and quantified way, the unknowable wonders of the deep are the normal ones and us terrestrial outliers are the weird ones.

New episode!! 🎙️🎉 A chat w/ @pbrakes.bsky.social about animal cultures and animal conservation. Culture was once thought to be uniquely human. No longer. We now know culture is found throughout the natural world. How does this complicate conservation? Listen: disi.org/the-value-of...

This graph shows the average November volume of Arctic sea-ice. As you can see, November, 2025, set a new record low for sea-ice volume. Volume, thickness and extent are all at record lows right now for the date. The Climate 8-ball is chanting, "Ice free by twenty-fifty."

Northern bottlenose whales have struggled to rebound even decades after whaling bans. But a population off Canada’s east coast is finally recovering after the Gully submarine canyon became a Marine Protected Area in 2004 — a rare marine conservation success.

“Silence fell across the court as the death of yet another hoiho was announced. It was a potent reminder of why we are here. We want to see hoiho stand a chance of surviving,” -- ELI’s Senior Legal Advisor Megan Cornforth-Camden. #hoiho #penguins #conservation

Oceanic whitetip sharks are now listed under Appendix I, the highest level of protection offered by CITES, banning all trade. A victory for one of the most imperiled shark species on the planet newsroom.wcs.org/News-Release...

On Monday, we begin our urgent hearing in the Wellington High Court, where we will be challenging the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries’ emergency set-net fishing closure. Why? We argue that the closure is inadequate to protect the critically endangered northern hoiho population. #hoiho #penguins

1/3: Help us welcome Jelly to the world — a newly hatched endangered zebra shark pup in Indonesia! 🦈💙 Thanks to parents Peanut and Butter at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium and our partnership with the global coalition ReShark, this tiny pup represents real hope for her species.

Beautiful ♥️

New paper on dolphin motor synchrony led by master's student Sam Hill-Cousins with a fantastic team of co-authors @danaipapageorgiou.bsky.social @emmachereskin.bsky.social @researchdolphin.bsky.social 🐬🐬🐬: Male dolphins use synchrony to both maintain and strengthen their social bonds rdcu.be/eQ543

South Georgia’s breeding population of female southern elephant seals may have been halved by highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, according to research in Communications Biology. go.nature.com/4hWKRMF 🧪

Bad news in from South Georgia - the population of breeding female elephant seals has nearly halved following a bird flu outbreak on the sub-Antarctic island. Here's what we know so far... 📸 Connor Bamford

What would New Zealand be without kiwi? Without Fiordland rainforest, or the haunting call of kōkako? If we run down our ecosystems, and thin out the ocean, is the weight of that loss not greater than the commodity value of the timber or tonnage of fish?

one reason it will be hard for academics to take back uk/aus/nz universities from the business-brained folk who are in charge is that it's basically impossible to speak to them without going insane

Important new paper by Allison Cluett highlighting what has happened to the PDO. It's still there, it's just swamped by the global warming signal since 2024. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thinking only of Rosalind Franklin today, and what was stolen from her (and so many other female scientists alongside her).

Real action requires looking forward, not back The world is changing at pace – a pace that requires approaches that are anticipatory, not reactionary Some thoughts on a recent call for a more anticipatory approach to the Global Biodiversity Framework.

The Hektoria Glacier on the Antarctic Peninsula retreated by at least 8 km in two months, a rate nearly 10 times faster than previously measured for a grounded glacier, according to a study in Nature Geoscience. go.nature.com/4nETBYJ ⚒️ 🧪

Our 2025 State of the Climate Report was just published in BioScience by scientists from around the world including @michaelemann.bsky.social @petergleick.bsky.social This video (2 minutes) shows the key highlights: doi.org/10.1093/bios...

Scientists point to a long list of findings that emerged out of fundamental research, the type of studies the US government is cutting, and went on to change the world. Nature lists a few of their examples. 🧪

Sharks absolutely get cancer, and people claiming otherwise are pseudoscientific grifters preying on the desperate. Even if sharks did not get cancer, eating shark would not cure your cancer any more than eating LeBron James would make you better at basketball.

🐬 Want to be part of a most excellent research team? See @stephanielking.bsky.social post 👇🏻 for a ⭐️ post-doc

For those following global surface temperature anomalies, October 2025 is going to finish 1.50C above the pre-industrial baseline and 3rd hottest on record since 1940. Which also means that October, 2025, is likely the 3rd hottest October in the last 120,000 years.

🎶 Who’s carnivorous and lives in the sea? Death ball Roundpants!

The remarkably long lifespan of bowhead whales could be due to an increased ability to repair DNA mutations, according to research in Nature. go.nature.com/4hzvDN7 🌏 🧪

Important Marine Mammal Areas (IMMAs) and the CSG go hand-in-hand, using robust science to identify areas where research, monitoring, management and threat mitigation are key. As of 2025, 323 IMMAs have been identified to protect cetacean populations. Learn more at our news item: shorturl.at/1UO5w

As I was told, Western conservation focuses on preservation, while here they focus on coexistence. www.franciscoblaha.info/blog/2025/10...

📢 OUT TODAY! 🚨 CMS published the most comprehensive global dugong assessment in 20+ years. Dugongs are vulnerable to extinction worldwide, some populations critically endangered. 🌊 We must map & protect seagrass, cut bycatch, restore habitats, and roll out action plans: www.cms.int/news/global-...

🚨 BREAKING: All oceanic devil rays are now Critically Endangered. 🤝 Be part of our #SaveTheMantas campaign: ✔️ Sign the petition: only.one/act/cites-2025 ✔️ Grab a campaign T-shirt, snap a photo, and share it on our campaign page: mantatrust.org/save-the-mantas