"A record wave of brown, smelly seaweed is washing up on beaches along ‌Mexico's Caribbean coast, forcing closures in top tourist destinations and inflicting mounting economic damage on hotels, restaurants and shops."

"California’s wildfires are destroying forests faster than the state can replant them, and federal cuts are making the gap worse. One expert says the crisis is barely known — even though it could reshape half the state’s forests by 2071."

"Maine’s fishing ports are doing well for now, but climate change is destabilizing the Gulf of Maine, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest “State of the Ecosystem” report for New England waters. Federal scientists presented the report to the New England Fishery Management Council in April, and published it online last week."

"The Okefenokee Swamp is regarded as one of the world’s largest freshwater ecosystems, encompassing a vast network of wetlands that supports exceptional biodiversity and serves as the source of two major rivers. Its largely undisturbed peat beds preserve a 5,000-year record of environmental change, making the swamp both a globally significant natural habitat and a valuable source of information on long-term environmental change, according to a UNESCO description."

"In San Francisco Bay, new AI-powered technology aims to help ships dodge whales whose long-haul migration is being disrupted by climate change."

"The Trump administration is moving closer to opening up U.S. waters for deep-sea mining—a contentious and largely untested industry focused on extracting mineral-rich deposits from the ocean floor containing cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese." "If the sale moves forward, mining activities could begin in federal waters near American Samoa. The proposed site is directly adjacent to a national wildlife refuge."

"At the request of the Trump administration, a federal judge in Texas has stripped endangered species protections from a small lizard whose habitat overlaps with the largest oil-producing region in the United States." "The dunes sagebrush lizard, found only in the oil-rich Permian Basin, was classified as endangered two years ago."

"Transmissible tumors have been reported in a handful of animal species, but never before among fish. Is it possible in humans?"

"Recent studies show that microplastics are already present in a variety of Amazonian environments: Major rivers such as the Amazon, urban streams, floodplain areas and mangroves in the Amazon’s Mouth."

"New protections for endangered right whales in the North Atlantic would be postponed for nearly a decade under a plan that cleared a key hurdle in Washington last week with the full-throated support of the fishing and lobster industries."