VIS 2026VIS 2026 — Virtual Island Summit|Also: GSIS 2027GSIS 2027
Island Innovation Logo
About
Services
The Network
Events
Content Library
Contact Us

Subscribe to our newsletter. By submitting, you agree to our Privacy Policy.

Island Innovation

Island Innovation works with governments, institutions, and partners worldwide to support island-led sustainable economic development.

We Support The UN Development Goals

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and InfrastructureSDG 11: Sustainable Cities and CommunitiesSDG 12: Responsible Consumption and ProductionSDG 13: Climate ActionSDG 14: Life Below WaterSDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

Explore

AboutServicesNetworkEvents

Content

ArticlesNewsCareers

Ready to Connect?

Join the island innovation community

Get in Touch

About

  • About us
  • Case Studies
  • FAQs
  • Press
  • Careers
  • Contact

Services

  • Services Overview
  • Public & Media Relations
  • Strategic Communications

Network

  • The Island Network
  • Academic Council
  • Newsletter

Events

  • Our Events
  • Watch Past Events

Content

  • All Content Library
  • Videos
  • Articles
  • News
Privacy PolicyTerms of ServiceContact

© 2025 Island Innovation. All rights reserved.

    News

    Curated stories and analysis from islands and sustainability leaders worldwide.

    Filter by Core Theme

    All ThemesCircular EconomyClimate ActionConnectivity & DigitizationCulture & CommunityEnergy & TransportGreen Finance & EconomyOcean & BiodiversityPolicy & GovernanceTourism & Remote WorkWater & Food
    Showing 9 of 237 news items in Ocean & Biodiversity
    Voyage Into the Art of Finding One’s Way at Sea
    Ocean & BiodiversityNovember 27, 2025

    Voyage Into the Art of Finding One’s Way at Sea

    Photo credit: Chewy C. Lin via nytimes.com Excerpt from nytimes.com When leaving an atoll of the Marshall Islands, in the Pacific, Alson Kelen prefers to sail after sunset. It’s like navigating with his eyes closed — allowing him to feel the up, down and sideways movement of every swell. “That’s how the Marshallese navigate,” he said. “They navigate with their stomach.” For thousands of years, Marshallese navigators used traditional wave-piloting techniques to travel vast expanses of ocean. Wave piloting is the art of feeling and reading the swells and waves that hit and emanate from the region’s atolls. After a lifetime of studying these and other patterns, navigators pass a test devised by their chiefs to become a ri meto, or person of the sea.

    Read more
    12345678910
    Island Homes Welcoming Back Over 7,000 ‘Glow-in-the-Dark’ Snails
    Ocean & BiodiversityNovember 24, 2025

    Island Homes Welcoming Back Over 7,000 ‘Glow-in-the-Dark’ Snails

    Excerpt from businessmole.com On Tuesday 18 November, 2025, the team behind a decades-long zoo project celebrated a major milestone in the recovery of ‘extinct’ snails. The team has successfully reintroduced thousands of ‘glow-in-the-dark’ snails to French Polynesia as part of a global conservation program to save the species from extinction. This annual reintroduction of zoo-bred Extinct in the Wild and Critically Endangered Partula snails marked the largest release of these finger-nail sized snails to date, with over 7,000 snails being returned to four islands. Before their release, each snail was marked with a small dab of white UV reflective paint, which glows blue under UV light. This marking method helps the team locate and monitor the snails, as they are most active at night.

    Read more
    Main driver of Sargassum blooms in the Atlantic Ocean revealed
    Ocean & BiodiversityNovember 13, 2025

    Main driver of Sargassum blooms in the Atlantic Ocean revealed

    Photo credit: Arkadij Schell via Phys.org Excerpt from phys.org By the beginning of June this year, approximately 38 million tons of Sargassum drifted towards the coasts of the Caribbean islands, the Gulf of Mexico, and northern South America, marking a negative record. Especially during the summer months, the brown algae accumulate on beaches, decomposing and emitting a foul odor. This not only repels tourists but also threatens coastal ecosystems. In the open ocean, Sargassum seaweed floating on the surface serves as nourishment and habitat for numerous marine species.

    Read more
    Documentary gives voice to the women of the sea in the Azores to protect the ocean.
    Ocean & BiodiversityNovember 10, 2025

    Documentary gives voice to the women of the sea in the Azores to protect the ocean.

    Photo credit: Ricardo Nogueira via SAPO.pt Excerpt from sapo.pt The documentary 'Women of the Sea - Azores' brings together the voices of 49 Azorean women with a "deep emotional connection" to the ocean, aiming to highlight the role of women and raise awareness about the protection of marine biodiversity. "We are seeing more and more women working at sea, developing businesses, providing training, and involved in technological and scientific development. The project ultimately gives women a voice. Women are naturally caregivers, and we need to take care of our ocean," filmmaker Raquel Clemente Martins explained to the Lusa news agency. The documentary, which features the voices of 49 women and involved a total of 71 women from the Azores, will be screened on November 7th at the Pavilhão do Conhecimento (Knowledge Pavilion) in Lisbon, during the National Ocean Literacy Conference, after having premiered on Faial Island in July.

    Read more
    Has climate change brought mosquitoes to Iceland?
    Ocean & BiodiversityNovember 10, 2025

    Has climate change brought mosquitoes to Iceland?

    Excerpt from aljazeera.com Mosquitoes were detected in Iceland for the first time this month, resulting in the country losing its status as one of the only places in the world without them. The findings were confirmed by the country’s national science institute on Monday.

    Read more
    Pacific protesters against deep sea mining challenge US exploration ship
    Ocean & BiodiversityNovember 2, 2025

    Pacific protesters against deep sea mining challenge US exploration ship

    Photo credit: Robin Hammond / Greenpeace via AsiaPacificReport.nz Excerpt from asiapacificreport.nz Cook Islanders holding a banner reading “Don’t Mine the Moana” have confronted an exploration vessel as it returned to Rarotonga port today, protesting the emerging threat of seabed mining. Four activists in kayaks paddled alongside the Nautilus, which has spent the last three weeks on a US-funded research expedition surveying mineral nodule fields around the Cook Islands in partnership with the Cook Islands government. The Nautilus expedition comes just six months after President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to expedite deep sea mining, tasking the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to fast track the licensing process.

    Read more
    American Samoa says no to deep-sea mining. The Trump administration might do it anyway.
    Ocean & BiodiversityNovember 2, 2025

    American Samoa says no to deep-sea mining. The Trump administration might do it anyway.

    Photo credit: David Briscoe / Associated Press via ICTNews.org Excerpt from ictnews.org In early August, in the village of Utulei on the eastern shore of Tatuila, the largest of seven islands that make up American Samoa, more than two dozen local residents gathered in an auditorium. They were there to learn about a proposal to allow deep-sea mining across more than 18 million acres of their surrounding waters in the Pacific Ocean. President Donald Trump had issued an executive order to jump-start the nascent deep-sea mining industry three months earlier. Within weeks, the U.S. Department of the Interior began asking for public input on leasing the seabed surrounding American Samoa, and the territorial government organized a series of meetings to help educate the public on what to expect.

    Read more
    Scientists hope underwater fiber-optic cables can help save endangered orcas
    Ocean & BiodiversityOctober 27, 2025

    Scientists hope underwater fiber-optic cables can help save endangered orcas

    Excerpt from pressdemocrat.com SAN JUAN ISLAND, Wash. (AP) — As dawn broke over San Juan Island, a team of scientists stood on the deck of a barge and unspooled over a mile of fiber-optic cable into the frigid waters of the Salish Sea. Working by headlamp, they fed the line from the rocky shore down to the seafloor — home to the region’s orcas. The bet is that the same hair-thin strands that carry internet signals can be transformed into a continuous underwater microphone to capture the clicks, calls and whistles of passing whales — information that could reveal how they respond to ship traffic, food scarcity and climate change. If the experiment works, the thousands of miles of fiber-optic cables that already crisscross the ocean floor could be turned into a vast listening network that could inform conservation efforts worldwide. The technology, called Distributed Acoustic Sensing, or DAS, was developed to monitor pipelines and detect infrastructure problems. Now University of Washington scientists are adapting it to listen to the ocean. Unlike traditional hydrophones that listen from a single spot, DAS turns the entire cable into a sensor, allowing it to pinpoint the exact location of an animal and determine the direction it’s heading.

    Read more
    First 'climate tipping point' being crossed: Coral reefs in crisis, is there still a way back?
    Ocean & BiodiversityOctober 27, 2025

    First 'climate tipping point' being crossed: Coral reefs in crisis, is there still a way back?

    Excerpt from aa.com.tr What scientists once warned as a possibility has now become a reality. Warm-water coral reefs, among the planet’s most vital ecosystems, are crossing a "climate tipping point," according to the Global Tipping Points Report 2025. Authored by 160 scientists from 23 countries and 87 institutions, the report, released last week, serves as a stark wake-up call to a world distracted by daily crises and forgetting the tangible reality of global warming. It warned that “the world has entered a new reality,” with ecosystems nearing dangerous thresholds as global heating is set to soon surpass the 1.5C limit. The prospect of interconnected tipping points pushing humanity toward an irreversible climate crisis has immediately sparked questions about what these thresholds mean for the planet and whether they could mark the beginning of the end.

    Read more