"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday it is launching an investigation into the high number of gray whale deaths reported on the West Coast this year to determine whether environmental, human or disease-related causes are to blame."

"Out-of-sight septic systems — more than 100,000 of them in Volusia County and an estimated 2.7 million in Florida — add to growing concerns about the rising tide of nitrogen and other pollution feeding algae blooms and killing fish and sea grasses."

"Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Wednesday she will move in June to shut a Great Lakes oil pipeline if the governor cannot reach a resolution with operator Enbridge, saying the state is in “great peril” the longer the oil continues to flow under a sensitive waterway."

"The story of the seabirds’ deaths likely starts at the bottom of the food chain, where warming water and climate change are changing the menu."

"Fishermen like Jose da Cruz have made their living for decades hunting for crabs among Brazil’s vast coastal mangrove forests, dense thickets of twisted plants in deep black mud that grow where fresh-water rivers meet the brackish Atlantic Ocean."

"New Hampshire has sued eight companies including 3M and the DuPont Co. for damage it says has been caused by a class of potentially toxic chemicals found in pizza boxes, fast-food wrappers and drinking water."

"A nonprofit that tracks pollution in the Chesapeake Bay lambasted Pennsylvania on Tuesday, saying that the state is failing to protect the nation’s largest estuary from farm manure and dirty stormwater."

"COPANO BAY, Tex. — The orange buoys placed along the perimeter of an underwater construction site here keep disappearing, leaving behind a rust-stained barge with a massive pile of broken limestone. The barge carried it down the Mississippi River, to be dumped a mile off the Texas coast."