Oscar-winning director displays a pragmatic approach to numerous thorny environmental issues after touring Canada’s oil sands, which green groups likened to the fictional planet in his epic film.

A trip into the Louisiana’s fouled marshlands reveals unfamiliar sights and smells

U.S. and Russian scientists exploring the Arctic ocean finally cruise far enough north to hit the ice edge during a year in which Arctic sea ice receded to its third-smallest on record.

Scientists aboard the Russian research vessel Professor Khromov spent the weekend collecting samples at a spot in the western Arctic Ocean that in most years would be covered with sea ice. This year, there is open water as far as the eye can see.

Scientists aboard the Russian research vessel Professor Khromov spent the weekend collecting samples at a spot in the western Arctic Ocean that in most years would be covered with sea ice. This year, there is open water as far as the eye can see.

Scientists aboard the Russian research vessel Professor Khromov spent the weekend collecting samples at a spot in the western Arctic Ocean that in most years would be covered with sea ice. This year, there is open water as far as the eye can see.

Rodney Russ lives for the times he is at the rudder of a Zodiac. For the owner of Heritage Expeditions, the more challenging the conditions the better.

Meet Marshall Swartz. A one-time door-to-door cemetery plot salesman and stage crew member for Grateful Dead and Velvet Underground concerts, he is the go-to guy for oceanographers who rely on the high-tech gear needed to gather and analyze water from the sea.

Once GPS pinpointed the location of data-gathering moorings to be plucked from the Bering Sea, the tech team in charge of retrieving the moorings sent the electronic signal that releases the chain of instruments and floats from the anchor on the ocean floor and waited. And waited.

A main task of a joint-U.S.-Russian scientific effort in the Bering Strait is to retrieve data-gathering moorings that were dropped 50 meters to the bottom during stormy weather last October. It takes technological and navigational know how and, it soon becomes clear, the lassoing skills of a cowboy.

It’s a mushroom mother lode for Russian scientists waiting in Alaska for bad weather to break so they can begin their Bering Sea expedition.

Scientists from the United States, Russia and elsewhere launch the latest in a series of environmental studies in the Bering Sea against a backdrop of hightened concern about Arctic sovereignty.