"A federal judge ruled Monday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must update nearly three-decade-old regulations about the chemicals that can be used to disperse offshore oil spills, which some environmental groups contend cause serious health problems."

"The Paraná River, one of the main commercial waterways in South America, has reached its lowest level in nearly 80 years due to a prolonged drought in Brazil that scientists attribute to climate change. At peril is a vast ecosystem that includes potable water for 40 million people, the livelihood of fishing communities and farmers, and the navigability of a major grain export hub."

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"Maine’s long-shuttered shrimp fishing business has a chance to reopen in the coming winter, but the warming of the ocean threatens to keep the industry shut down."

"This summer's low-oxygen dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico along the Louisiana coast covered 6,334 square miles - 10 times the size of Lake Pontchartrain and well above the average size for the past five years, researchers said Tuesday."

"Nauru, which sponsors a company to mine the seabed for minerals in ungoverned waters, has triggered a rule with the International Seabed Authority that requires it to allow seabed mining in two years, regardless of whether regulations have been written."

"With the era of building big dams over in the U.S., a growing number of existing dams are being modified to produce hydropower. These projects, advocates say, avoid the damaging impacts of new dams and could generate enough renewable electricity for several million homes."

"The Dawn Marie is rising and falling in the gray swells, one of a hundred boats crowded together in search of striped bass — sometimes called America’s fish — on the Chesapeake Bay."

"Baby salmon are dying by the thousands in one California river, and an entire run of endangered salmon could be wiped out in another. Fishermen who make their living off adult salmon, once they enter the Pacific Ocean, are sounding the alarm as blistering heat waves and extended drought in the U.S. West raise water temperatures and imperil fish from Idaho to California."

"After decades of lobbying and legal action from environmental groups, the federal government has proposed protecting more than 500 miles of river habitat for the Pearl River’s namesake fish, the Pearl darter."