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    This Elusive Antarctic Squid Was Seen for the First Time

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    An expedition in the Southern Ocean captured video of a rare species of deep-sea cephalopod. Until now, it had been found only in fishing nets and in the bellies of seabirds.The deep-sea environs of the Earth’s poles are home to mysterious ocean creatures: giant sea spiders, Antarctic sea pigs, phantom jellyfish. Finding and identifying these animals can be difficult, however; some are known only because researchers found their remains in fishing nets or in the bellies of seabirds. But on Christmas Day last year, the crew of the R/V Falkor (Too), the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel, caught sight of a creature never before seen alive.The team had planned to deploy its remotely operated vehicle, SuBastian, in a site known as the Powell Basin, but the movement of ice blocks forced the group to explore the region’s outer edges instead.When the submersible dropped 7,000 feet, the team unexpectedly spotted a shadow through the live feed, which turned out to be an Antarctic gonate squid, a rare species of cephalopod, three feet long and releasing a green cloud of ink.“It was a beautiful squid,” said Andrew Thurber, a deep-sea researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was aboard the vessel. “You see beauty all the time in the deep ocean, and this was just one classic example of it.”No Antarctic gonate squid had ever been seen alive before, as far as the team was aware. They followed it for a couple of minutes and made sure to record it on video, capturing the creature’s red coloration and white spots.“Videos like this get me really excited,” said Linsey Sala, a museum scientist who manages the pelagic invertebrate collection at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and was not involved in the expedition. Discoveries of species like this “can be really informative to how they live life at great depths,” Ms. Sala said. Unidentified specimens might be sitting in collections around the world, she added, in which case the video footage could be helpful in revealing what they are.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ancient Trees, Dwindling in the Wild, Thrive on Sacred Ground

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      The Putuo hornbeam, a hardy tree that thrives in the damp air by the East China Sea, could be easily overlooked by visitors to the Huiji Temple on an island in the Zhejiang Province.The tree has an unremarkable appearance: spotty bark, small stature and serrated leaves with veins as neatly spaced as notebook lines. But its status is singular. As far as conservationists can tell, no other mature specimen of its species is alive in the wild.The holdout on the island, Mount Putuo, has been there for about two centuries. And according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Current Biology, its setting may have been its salvation.The study found that religious sites in eastern China have become refuges for old, ancient and endangered trees. Since the early years of the Common Era, Buddhist and Taoist temples have sheltered plants that otherwise struggled to find a foothold, including at least eight species that now exist nowhere else on earth.“This form of biodiversity conservation, rooted in cultural and traditional practices, has proven to be remarkably resilient, persisting even in the face of modern civilization and rapid economic development,” said Zhiyao Tang, a professor of ecology at Peking University and one of the study’s authors.The trees survived at religious sites in part because they were planted and cultivated there. The report noted that Buddhism and Taoism emphasize spiritual association with plants and the temples tended to be left undisturbed, shielding the areas from deforestation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Interior Department Weighs Less Conservation, More Extraction

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      A leaked version of the department’s five-year strategic planning document favors privatization and economic returns from the nation’s public lands.The Trump administration is proposing a drastic reimagining of how public lands across the United States are used and managed, according to an Interior Department document leaked to the public in late April. The document, a draft of the department’s strategic plan for the next five years, downplays conservation in favor of an approach that seeks to maximize economic returns, namely through the extraction of oil, gas and other natural resources.“That’s a blueprint for industrializing the public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon, who works on preservation of Southwestern lands for the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit organization. “A separate question is whether they’re able to achieve that,” Mr. McKinnon said, vowing lawsuits from his group and others.Sweeping proposals are a species native to Washington, D.C., and many of them stand little chance of being realized. However, Donald J. Trump has begun his second term as president at a blistering pace, remaking or shuttering entire federal agencies with such speed that opponents have only recently found their footing.“I would take it every bit as seriously as I would take what is laid out in Project 2025,” said Jacob Malcom, who until recently headed the Interior Department’s office of policy analysis. Project 2025, a 900-page document issued in 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, has served as a blueprint for the Trump administration on a host of policy fronts — including in its approach to public lands. The section of Project 2025 dealing with the Interior Department was primarily written by William Perry Pendley, a conservative activist.Of the several goals laid out in the draft strategic plan — which was pointedly made public on April 22, when Earth Day is marked — “Restore American Prosperity” earns top billing. To achieve that aim, the Interior Department proposes to “open Alaska and other federal lands for mineral extraction,” “increase revenue from grazing, timber, critical minerals, gravel and other nonenergy sources” and “increase clean coal, oil and gas production through faster and easier permitting.”South Lake Tahoe, Calif.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Opens Marine National Monument to Commercial Fisheries

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      President Trump on Thursday said he was allowing commercial fishing in one of the world’s largest ocean reserves, introducing industrial operations for the first time in more than a decade to a vast area of the Pacific dotted with coral atolls and populated by endangered sea turtles and whales.Mr. Trump issued an executive order opening up the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, which lies some 750 miles west of Hawaii. President George W. Bush established the monument in 2009 and President Barack Obama expanded it in 2014 to its current area of nearly 500,000 square miles.A second executive order directed the Commerce Department to loosen regulations that “overly burden America’s commercial fishing, aquaculture, and fish processing industries.” It also asks the Interior Department to conduct a review of all marine monuments and issue recommendations about any that should be opened to commercial fishing.“The United States should be the world’s dominant seafood leader,” Mr. Trump wrote.The marine monument, a chain of islands and atolls amid more than 160 seamounts, is a trove of marine biodiversity. Environmentalists said opening the area to commercial fishing would pose a serious threat to the area’s fragile ecosystems.Mr. Trump, accompanied in the Oval Office by a fisherman from American Samoa and Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, the territory’s delegate to the House of Representatives, said his predecessors had deprived Pacific island communities of “fertile grounds.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      An Endangered Galápagos Tortoise Is a First-Time Mother at 100

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      Mommy, a Western Santa Cruz tortoise, recently welcomed four hatchlings at the Philadelphia Zoo, where she has lived since 1932.Four endangered Western Santa Cruz Galápagos tortoises hatched at the Philadelphia Zoo.Philadelphia ZooCongratulations are in order for Mommy, a Galápagos tortoise and a longtime resident of the Philadelphia Zoo, who recently became a first-time mother at the estimated age of 100.Mommy, who has lived at the zoo since 1932, laid 16 eggs in November. Four of them have since hatched — the first successful hatching for her species at the zoo, which opened in 1874.She had help, of course — from Abrazzo, a male tortoise who is also estimated to be about a century old.Mommy and Abrazzo, both members of the Western Santa Cruz subspecies, are the oldest animals at the Philadelphia Zoo. But Galápagos tortoises can live as long as 200 years, the zoo said, putting them squarely in middle age.The first hatchling emerged on Feb. 27, the zoo announced on Thursday. The others followed within days, with the last one hatching on March 6.The hatchlings, none of which have been named, are expected to be on view to the public starting on April 23, the zoo said. They are doing “fantastic,” according to the zoo’s director of herpetology, Lauren Augustine. (Herpetology refers to the study of reptiles and amphibians.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Maine Lobster Industry Can Sue Seafood Watchdog for Defamation, Judge Rules

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      A group of fishermen says that it lost business after Seafood Watch, a program run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, advised consumers not to buy lobster from the state.Maine’s lobster industry can proceed with a defamation lawsuit that it brought against a seafood watchdog group, which had placed a do-not-buy designation on the crustaceans because of the dangers it said that the industry’s fishing nets posed to an endangered whale species.A federal judge last month denied a motion to have the case dismissed, drawing an appeal on Thursday from the group Seafood Watch, a nonprofit run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium that publishes seafood sustainability ratings.It has been nearly two years since the Maine Lobstermen’s Association and several other plaintiffs sued the nonprofit after it downgraded the sustainability rating for American lobsters caught off Maine from yellow to red in 2022. The nonprofit advised consumers to avoid those lobsters, saying that endangered North Atlantic right whales were at significant risk of becoming entangled in fishing gear.The fishermen blamed Seafood Watch in the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Maine, for damaging the reputation of the billion-dollar industry and prompting some of their customers to cancel contracts.“Reputation and goodwill cannot be adequately replaced through awarding damages and this injury lingers as long as the ‘red listing’ does,” Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. wrote in the 137-page order denying the motion to dismiss the case.The fishermen applauded the judge’s ruling in a statement, having argued in the lawsuit that the average price per pound of lobster dropped by 40 percent after Seafood Watch changed its sustainability rating.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fin Whale Carcass Washes Ashore in Anchorage, Alaska

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      Crowds in Anchorage have braved freezing temperatures and slippery ice to see the hulking carcass of a rare fin whale, which washed ashore a few miles from downtown.Sue Heverling wrapped herself in a winter coat, clutched a pair of hiking poles and set out across a frozen mud flat near Anchorage, braving five-degree temperatures and treacherous ice to see the Alaskan city’s newest, and largest, spectacle.She took her first tentative steps on the ice, slipped and fell, then got up and pushed on. As she drew closer, what had appeared modest from a distance now loomed before her.“That is big,” Ms. Heverling, 62, recalled saying to herself.The object of her fascination was the carcass of a 47-foot-long fin whale, which has drawn crowds in Anchorage for days.The young female member of the second largest mammal species had probably washed ashore on the high tide on Saturday, according to Barbara Mahoney, a biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who examined the carcass.Fin whales, considered endangered, regularly swim in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Strait. Every so often, minke whales, gray whales and humpbacks wash ashore in Alaska. But it’s unusual for a fin whale to be found on a beach so close to Alaska’s biggest city, Ms. Mahoney said.So people are captivated. A nearby public trail, the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail, is usually busy with joggers, bikers and cross-country skiers. This week, hundreds of pairs of eyes turned toward the mud flat and the dark-gray mound the size of a school bus. Residents have posted pictures of the mountain of flesh on social media, where it has inevitably spawned memes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rare ‘Doomsday Fish’ Found on California Beach by Woman Going for a Walk

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      In Japanese mythology, the deep-sea-dwelling oarfish is a harbinger of impending disaster. For scientists in California, where three oarfish have washed up in recent months, it’s an exciting find.Everything seemed picture-perfect on a recent day at Grandview Beach in Encinitas, Calif. — the waves shimmered under the California sun, and locals sunbathed and swam.Everything, except for one thing: the mysterious deep-sea creature that had washed up on the shore.“What is that?” Alison Laferriere recalled thinking. She saw something long and skinny on the beach while walking her dog: “It looked like it could be some garbage or something.”But when she got closer, Ms. Laferriere, a doctorate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, recognized the find immediately. She had a rare close-up view of the oarfish, a striking creature from the depths of the ocean that has eluded researchers over the decades.With its long eel-like body, gaping mouth and bright red dorsal fins, it’s no surprise that the oarfish calls to mind a sea monster. Japanese mythology suggests that the appearance of the fish can signify impending earthquakes: Many have even wondered if reports of a dozen oarfish washing up on various parts of Japan’s coast were perhaps a harbinger of the catastrophic 2011 earthquake that devastated northern Japan. The superstition was so popular that researchers in Japan addressed it, publishing a paper in 2019 that debunked any significant link.Still, the eerie mythology returns with every sighting of the oarfish — hence its nickname as the “doomsday fish.”More superstitious Californians might be spooked, but researchers are thrilled at the rare opportunity. At least three have washed up on Californian shores in recent months, including a 12-foot-long specimen in August, according to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In all, only 22 have been documented by scientists since the 20th century.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Man Hiding Tarantulas, Centipedes and Ants Is Stopped From Boarding Flight

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      Officials in Lima, Peru, said the endangered spiders had been taken from the Amazon basin. The man was flying to South Korea.Something about a man who was trying to board a plane last week in Lima, Peru, caused customs officers at the international airport outside the capital to do a double take: He had an extraordinarily swollen belly.They asked him to lift his shirt.When he did, they found he was carrying 320 tarantulas, 110 centipedes and nine bullet ants. Each of the bugs was crawling around inside its own small plastic bag, where they were obscured by filter paper, according to the National Forest and Wildlife Service of Peru. The bags were reinforced with strong adhesive tape and attached to two girdles that were wrapped around the man’s body.In all, the man was carrying 35 adult tarantulas, each about the size of an average hand, and 285 juvenile tarantulas, the wildlife service said.All of the critters found were native to the Amazon region of Peru, said Walter Silva, a wildlife specialist for the government. The tarantulas are on the country’s list of endangered species, he added.“All were extracted illegally and are part of the illegal wildlife trafficking that moves millions of dollars in the world,” Mr. Silva said in a news release from the forest and wildlife service.The Peruvian authorities arrested the man, a 28-year-old citizen of South Korea who was traveling back to his country last Friday, with a planned stopover in France, they said. The National Forest and Wildlife Service said it had opened an investigation but did not specify any charges and did not release the name of the man they had detained.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More