Latest Oceans News

An unusual hurricane season goes from ultra quiet to record busy and spawns Helene and Milton

Oct. 08, 2024 11:21 AM EDT

Explosively intensifying Hurricane Milton is the latest freaky system to come out of what veteran hurricane scientists call the weirdest storm season of their lives. Before this Atlantic hurricane season started, forecasters said everything lined up to be a monster busy year, and it...

UK agrees to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius

Oct. 03, 2024 06:40 AM EDT
LONDON (AP) — UK agrees to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius.

Thousands of shipping containers have been lost at sea. What happens when they burst open?

Oct. 03, 2024 06:35 AM EDT

LONG BEACH, Wash. (AP) — Russ Lewis has picked up some strange things along the coast of Long Beach Peninsula in Washington state over the years: Hot Wheels bicycle helmets with feather tufts, life-size plastic turkey decoys made for hunters, colorful squirt guns. And Crocs — so...

Hurricane Isaac and Tropical Storm Joyce get stronger in the Atlantic, far from land

Sep. 27, 2024 17:30 PM EDT

MIAMI (AP) — Hurricane Isaac was intensifying and Tropical Storm Joyce was getting better organized in the Atlantic Ocean on Friday, forecasters said. Both systems were far out at sea, and no coastal watches or warnings were in effect. But the Miami-based National Hurricane Center...

10 homes have collapsed into the Carolina surf. Their destruction was decades in the making

Sep. 25, 2024 18:59 PM EDT

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — A slow-motion catastrophe has been playing out in the coastal North Carolina village of Rodanthe, where 10 houses have fallen into the Atlantic since 2020. Three have been lost since Friday. The most recent collapse was Tuesday afternoon, when the wooden...

Climate solutions: 2 kinds of ocean energy inch forward off the Oregon coast

Sep. 24, 2024 02:00 AM EDT

NEWPORT, Ore. (AP) — On a cloudy late August morning, Burke Hales was on a boat a mile off the central Oregon coast, pointing to a sandy beach along the forested shoreline. It was there, the Oregon State University oceanography professor said, that the subsea cables from the first large wave...

Officials ban swimming after medical waste washes ashore in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware

Sep. 16, 2024 20:57 PM EDT

OCEAN CITY, Md. (AP) — Officials warned people to stay out of the ocean at several beaches in Maryland, Delaware and Virginia after they said medical waste, including hypodermic needles, washed ashore. The source of the waste was under investigation. Officials banned swimming,...

Warm oceans strengthened Hurricane Francine and could power more Fall storms

Sep. 11, 2024 18:34 PM EDT

Warm water in the Gulf of Mexico helped quickly strengthen Hurricane Francine, creating danger for Louisiana residents rushing to buy supplies and secure their homes ahead of the storm's landfall Wednesday. Warm ocean water is essential for forming and strengthening hurricanes. Heat...

Russia begins massive naval drills together with China

Sep. 10, 2024 11:03 AM EDT

The Russian military on Tuesday launched massive naval and air drills spanning across both hemispheres and including China in joint maneuvers. The “Ocean-24” exercise spans the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, the Mediterranean, Caspian and Baltic Seas and involves over 400 warships,...

The worldwide catastrophe of rising seas especially imperils Pacific paradises, Guterres says

Aug. 26, 2024 21:21 PM EDT

NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga (AP) — Highlighting seas that are rising at an accelerating rate, especially in the far more vulnerable Pacific island nations, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued yet another climate SOS to the world. This time he said those initials stand for “save our seas.” ...