Water & Oceans

"The Gulf of Maine’s location at the meeting point of two major currents, as well as its shallow depth and shape, makes it especially susceptible to warming."

"Valuable species of shellfish have become harder to find on the East Coast because of degraded habitat caused by a warming environment, according to a pair of scientists that sought to find out whether environmental factors or overfishing was the source of the decline."

"A federal judge barred the Trump administration Friday from approving oil companies’ requests to use the high-pressure drilling technique known as fracking in offshore wells along the Southern California coast until a review of the possible effects on endangered species and state coastal resources."

"City testing of Chicago homes with water meters found nearly 1 in 5 sampled had brain-damaging lead in their tap water, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel's water commissioner acknowledged Thursday that the city continued installing new meters after learning about the alarming results in June."

"Just before Hurricane Michael made landfall last month, a ferocious red tide that had scoured Florida’s Gulf Coast for a year, depositing countless dead sea turtles, dolphin and other marine life on beaches before spreading to the Atlantic coast, had finally started to wane."

"A new study says that many large-scale hydropower projects in Europe and the US have been disastrous for the environment."

"The Pacific archipelago of Palau has become the first nation to ban sunscreens that some researchers believe are killing off coral reefs and damaging marine environments."

"Minnesota regulators on Thursday granted key permits to the long-planned PolyMet copper-mining project that’s opposed by environmentalists who fear it could someday foul waters, including Lake Superior."

"A small, brownish weasel that spends much of its life in the water, hunting for fish and frogs, the American mink is a signal for the ecological health of where it lives. Right now, the mink is not doing very well along the Hudson River, largely due to decades of PCB pollution ... ."