Jenny Staletovich

Florida has an underappreciated secret weapon to help heal its ailing reefs: prickly sea urchins.

The 2019 Atlantic hurricane season officially wraps up Saturday, ending another above-average season that packed lethal power.

A lethal Gulf Coast red tide that littered beaches with dead wildlife in 2018 is back and this time around, it's claiming one of North America's rarest bird species.

In his new book, "The Geography of Risk: Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Cost of America's Coast," Pulitzer-prize winning author Gilbert Gaul takes a look at the U.S. history of coastal development since World War II - and finds a recipe for disaster.

Floridians have until Friday to weigh in on whether the state should set limits for toxic algae in water.

Florida is required to conduct reviews of water quality standards every three years under the federal Clean Water Act. This year, the state’s blue green algae task force and environmentalists have been lobbying for standards to address regular toxic outbreaks in the St. Lucie, Caloosahatchee and other Florida waterways.

On a steamy August day, Frank Ridgely stands inside a chilly surgical suite at Zoo Miami, preparing to slice into a seven-and-a-half foot-long Burmese python.

The snake was captured at the Big Cypress National Preserve, one of an estimated thousands roaming South Florida, devouring small mammals and helping wreck the balance of the ecosystem.

Some of the most dramatic sea rise around South Florida has occurred in the last two decades: at least five inches near Virginia Key since 1992.

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced plans to propose sweeping legislation meant to address Florida's water woes in a press conference Wednesday outside a Jupiter sewage plant.

The proposals largely follow the recommendations of a panel of scientists DeSantis appointed in April - a sharp departure from his predecessor Rick Scott, who refused to meet with scientists. DeSantis said the broad measures will be aimed at the state’s biggest sources of pollution: farms, aging wastewater treatment plants, stormwater and treated human waste used as fertilizer.

If the past is any indication, worsening threats from climate change, like rising seas in South Florida, could take a larger toll on the poor as people are forced to abandon their homes.

A state task force examining ways to fix Florida’s dirty water narrowed its recommendations on Monday by suggesting tighter rules for septic tanks and aging stormwater systems.

Scientists on Florida’s blue green algae task force began the daunting task this week of trying to craft recommendations for how to fix the state’s complex water problems.

A new United Nations climate report released in Monaco this week paints another grim picture for the planet and Florida.

Seas are not only rising, but accelerating and worsening flood threats.

Miami-Dade County’s morgue sits on a gritty corner opposite the Ryder Trauma Center, in the shadow of a boxy parking garage.

It’s not an unsurprising setting for cataloguing the worst of South Florida. What’s unexpected is inside: a skylight bathes the lobby in sunshine and makes the green carpet look like a forest floor. Loveseats and chairs are arranged for hushed conversations and hugs. A painting of a heron perched in a cypress swamp hangs on a wall outside the records room.

Four thousand years ago, rising seas decimated huge swaths of mangroves in Florida Bay.

Today, seas rising at a far greater rate, combined with increasing storms and drought, could lead to another catastrophic loss of mangroves that help keep the state from sliding into the sea, according to a new study published by the U.S. Geological Survey in the journal Nature Communications.

Randall Dasher is a fourth-generation Florida farmer and until last year, he never had a crop of iron-clay cowpeas fail.

"Something has changed and somewhere, someway, that has affected our yields," he said Monday during a panel at the University of Florida, where farmers met with U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor of Tampa, scientists and agriculture officials.

As the planet heats up, polar ice melts, seas rise and Biblical-size rains become more frequent, hurricanes are expected to get wetter and more intense.

But less certain is how much climate change is making these fierce storms, which target Florida more than any other U.S. state, more punishing now.

The Florida Everglades can be a contentious place. Politicians, conservationists and farmers never seem to agree on much.

Debate among scientists tends to be collegial. But a new study on coral and the Florida Keys that gained national headlines last week has reignited a decades-old dispute over pollution and the Everglades.

In a gravel parking lot on Virginia Key crowded with shade tanks used for raising fish, coral researchers have a new project underway: a Noah's Ark for disappearing coral.

Across South Florida, 2019 is shaping up to be the year of the big lizard.

At their yearly gathering to talk about invasive species this week, more than 200 scientists from universities, state and federal agencies and national parks said the spike in big lizard sightings has caught them by surprise. In addition to green iguanas and tegus, nile monitor lizards, water monitors, spiny-tailed iguanas and rhinoceros iguana appear to be spreading.

A pair of Miami architects who infuriated neighbors and drew the scrutiny of county environmental regulators when they chopped down mangroves at their waterfront property in the wake of Hurricane Irma have sold the lot for more than double what they paid.

A summertime Gulf of Mexico dead zone fueled by pollution flowing out of the Mississippi River watershed could be among the largest on record this year.

Mosquitoes, it turns out, might be their own worst enemy.

In a six-month field trial launched in South Miami last year, Miami-Dade County teamed up with a Kentucky-based pest control company to release male mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia. The bacteria is common in other insects, but when introduced in male Aedes aegypti, it makes them sterile.

Carnival Cruise Line agreed to cut its disposable plastic use in half across its entire fleet by 2021 under a plea agreement entered in Miami federal court Monday.

Hurricane forecasting has come a long way since Ken Graham worked the night shift on the Gulf Coast, when warnings about killer storms like Hurricane Andrew came only three days in advance.

New federal limits for dangerous toxins linked to blue green algae in water where people swim, boat and fish could help Florida fight the dangerous blooms.

The recommended criteria is the first ever set by the Environmental Protection Agency for two common toxins found in algae caused by cyanobacteria and would need to be adopted by Florida. But environmentalists say there's a problem: the limits are double what was originally proposed in 2016.

As Michael churned toward the coast last October, forecasters feared the compact hurricane would blossom into a fierce storm far worse than their projections.

But what they weren't able to predict were Michael's three rapid explosions of power that ultimately made it the first Cat 5 hurricane to make landfall since 1992's lethal Hurricane Andrew and one of only four to ever hit the U.S. While track forecasts have vastly improved, predicting intensity remains a challenge.

Burmese pythons, the voracious invader of the Everglades blamed for wiping out small mammals, may now be feasting another marsh resident: wading birds.