Dutch student Boyan Slat is only 19 years old, but he already has 100 people working on his revolutionary plan to scoop thousands of tons of damaging plastics from the oceans. The world's "plastic soup," much of it swirling around in five main gyres or rotating oceanic currents, costs billions of dollars to the fishing and tourism sectors every year.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday will announce his intent to make a broad swath of the central Pacific Ocean off limits to fishing, energy exploration and other activities, according to senior White House officials. The proposal, slated to go into effect later this year after a comment period, could create the world's largest marine sanctuary and double the area of ocean globally that is fully protected.
Sporting a park ranger outfit and hiking boots, Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla tromped through the jungles of the country's most distant territory this weekend, in what she referred to as the most important trip of her presidency.
Some of the world’s largest concentrations of blue whales, dolphins and sea turtles sit just off of Costa Rica’s shores. For years, this biological hot spot, known as the Central American Dome, has been an unregulated haven for fishermen. Now a group of ocean conservationists and National Geographic filmmakers hope to change that.
