National Marine Fisheries Service

Sea lion pups have been washing up on Southern California beaches at an alarming rate and the situation has become serious enough for officials to declare an "unusual mortality event." The severely underweight pups, some clinging to life, have been...

For months, the sea lion pups — not even a year old — have been washing up on Southern California beaches at an alarming rate. They were stranded, severely underweight, bones poking through their slick dark fur. They were clinging to life,...

The California fishing industry appears to be on the upswing. After overfishing and conservation efforts limited the catch for fishermen in recent years, those who ply the seas are now enjoying bigger hauls and raking in more profits, according to the...

A federal agency has rejected a petition seeking to list 44 cold-water corals off Alaska as threatened or endangered. An environmental group says the corals are threatened by commercial fishing, ocean warming, acidification and oil spills. But the...

This week's column should be titled "Eelgrass for Dummies" — because the topic has been a sticking point around the harbor for years, and we all have to understand it better if we ever want to obtain dredging permits for our docks. In my column...

The National Marine Fisheries Service is again seeking nominees for two seats on the International Pacific Halibut Commission. The agency, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says commissioners represent U.S. interests in the...

Federal marine mammal authorities have proposed a recovery plan for a rare large whale, the North Pacific right whale. The National Marine Fisheries Service on Wednesday published the proposal for the marine mammal that has been listed as endangered...

Genetically modified salmon moved closer to the market last week with release of draft documents from the Food and Drug Administration that assessed the environmental risks posed by AquAdvantage salmon, which grow faster than regular Atlantic salmon....

Alaska's congressional delegation wants changes in federal plans to put observers on more commercial halibut fishing boats. The observer program has been around since 1990 for large catcher and catcher-processor vessels in Bering Sea and Gulf of...

After three years of analysis, a team of federal scientists has come up with a list of the greatest threats to the survival of reef-building corals. And it has ranked the proximate threats, weighing into decades of scientific debate over the biggest...

The main prey of polar bears has been declared a threatened species because of diminishing sea ice due to climate warming, with Gov. Sean Parnell's office announcing that it was considering a challenge to the federal decision. The National Marine...

If a little green might help restore Baltimore's ailing harbor, how can a lot be bad? That's the question city, state and federal officials are pondering as they weigh a local marina magnate's plan to fill an unused corner of the Inner Harbor with a large...