Bar none,” Savoca says, referring to straws, water bottles, and plastic bags. Some 700 species of marine animals have been reported—so far—to have eaten or become entangled in plastic.

In order to give you context for this ongoing challenge, this Spotlight guides you through both the basics of marine mammals and the fundamental sources of acoustic pollution in their habitat.

Our oceans are vast, open environments teeming with an amazing variety of plant and animal ... development, pollution, coastal development, and ocean noise and collisions from increased ship traffic ...

As plastic waste infiltrates every corner of the planet, scientists have discovered that some animals are evolving to survive — and even thrive — in plastic-polluted environments. Certain species are ...

Air pollution causes some 8.8 million deaths ... Plastic in the ocean threatens marine life — animals sometimes confuse the items for food and consume them. This can cause them to change their ...

Pollution by marine litter of anthropogenic origin—that comes from human activity—is currently one of the biggest ...

Animals that hunt in the dark with sonar may not be able ... compared with that of whale prey items," the authors report in a paper appearing online in Marine Pollution Bulletin. To find food in the ...

An environmental group in the U.K. says the North Sea tanker collision could become a "disaster in really important protected ...

The ocean covers nearly three-quarters of our planet but scientists say we have barely scratched the surface of what lives in ...