In January 2025, large fin and baleen whales stranded along the eastern and western coastlines of Hainan Island. The head of the Nature Department of the South China Sea Museum (Hainan) and her team acted quickly to make specimens of the stranded whales. These specimens will become an important resource for popularization of science education,…

Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) — France’s Antibes Marine Park has closed permanently after its last orca show on Jan. 5, amid controversy over the fate of the park’s animals due to a law banning cetacean performances that will come into effect in France in December 2026, as well as the deaths of orcas in the 2015…

A young humpback whale tragically stranded at Roosevelt Beach in Long Beach, Long Island, NY.Such incidents have been frequent on Long Island in recent years. Experts speculate that water pollution, habitat changes, and channel disturbances are the main causes. Polluted water affects the environment and food, disrupting the whales’ sensory systems; habitat changes force them…

Marine plastics are good surfaces for Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) to attach to, and when ingested, these pollutants enter the bodies of whales and are sometimes stored in their blubber. Through bioaccumulation, species at the top of the food chain are most likely to accumulate the highest amounts of these chemicals, and POPs have been…

On January 8, 2025, Chile denied environmental permits for Andes Iron’s controversial $2.5 billion Dominga iron and copper mining project, citing impacts on biodiversity and potential spills of fuel or iron ore concentrate in an area that is home to species such as the Humboldt penguin and cetaceans.

January 5, 2025 – A Russian dolphin rescue group says a fuel oil spill from two Russian oil tankers in distress near the Kerch Strait on December 15, 2024, may have killed 32 cetaceans, the vast majority of which were endangered Azov dolphins.

As reported by the National Geographic Society on January 4, 2025, famed orca mother tahlequah gave birth to her fourth child in late December 2024 and passed away just before the New Year in 2025. tahlequah had sparked global attention for orca conservation in 2018 by swimming on her back for 17 days with her…

According to a January 3, 2025 news release, Japan’s major whaling company, Mutual Ship, plans to increase its whale meat supply by 30% in 2025, expected to reach more than 2,000 tons, and has issued a new fishing quota for large, resource-rich fin whales for the first time in half a century.

In 2024, a 13-meter-long adult male sperm whale stranded tragically on a beach in Nova Scotia, Canada, with 300 pounds of fishing gear stuffed in its stomach, which severely interfered with its ability to eat, causing it to lose weight and ultimately strand itself.

On December 16, 2024, a 3-year-old North Atlantic right whale was found trapped in fishing gear and wandering in the waters off the Outer Banks Islands in North Carolina, USA. With its head and mouth tightly entangled in several fishing lines and two buoys in tow, its fate was not promising. In the same week,…