Reporting From the Blue — An Ocean of Opportunities
He has run out of air 80 feet down in Fiji, been held at gunpoint on a beach in El Salvador, and flown with the Coast Guard over a Gulf oil slick where dolphins were dying. Now David Helvarg is making a case to his fellow reporters in SEJournal: the ocean is the most under-covered beat on the planet, and he’d welcome the competition. He traces his path from war correspondent to full-time “blue beat” journalist, credits the reporters and nonprofits who have raised the quality of ocean journalism, and calls out the outlets cutting back their ocean and climate coverage. His advice to young ocean journalists is to follow their passion for at least five years, because there is no shortage of stories: salmon showing up in the Arctic, krill declining in the Antarctic, a global kelp forest crisis, marine heat waves, eDNA, deep-sea mining, and geopolitical flashpoints from the South China Sea to the Persian Gulf.
It’s Not Your Imagination. Seaweed Is Everywhere.
From Florida's sewage-stinking sands to Australia's dying reefs, the ocean is choking on its own overgrowth. Record marine heat waves and a flood of agricultural runoff are turning seaweed and algae—once the humble engines of life on Earth—into a global menace, smothering beaches, gutting fisheries, and carving out a dead zone in the Gulf the size of New Jersey. The good news: from kelp restoration to smarter farming, we already know how to turn the tide.
Heat Waves Show Climate Change Is Here
A marine scientist takes her daughter to Paris for a graduation trip and lands in the middle of a record-shattering heat wave—then comes home to a California coastline running its own quiet fever. From melting kelp forests to a Louvre with restricted hours, one family vacation becomes a firsthand tour of a warming world, and a reminder that the ocean, our best defense against climate change, is under threat just when we need it most.