90 days left of being a fiancée 💍
📸: Samantha Salamon
📍my beautiful home island of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands 🇲🇵
"As the world watches the oil markets, a silent ecological collapse threatens livelihoods and the biodiversity of one of the world's most vital maritime corridors." Uprooter @rachelreports.bsky.social in her newsletter, The Confluence theconfluence.news/p/how-confli...
Caught in the crossfire? Coastal communities who rely on fishing the Strait of Hormuz as their primary source of income.
They are already living with economic uncertainty, blistering climate change-fueled heat, and limited job opportunities outside the ocean. theconfluence.news/p/how-confli...
By subscribing to The Confluence, you get original reporting by yours truly.
With this latest piece, I talked to researchers from Gaza and Iran about how the war is devastating local fisheries, coastal communities, and vital marine ecosystems.
Subscribe now 📩 theconfluence.news
For coastal communities along the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, the greater concern spans far beyond oil and gas prices. It’s their safety, livelihoods, food security, and the decades-long ecological fallout that follows.
My latest newsletter issue:
theconfluence.news/p/how-confli...
The ISA Council elects India's Shri Mayank Joshi as the new ISA Council President for the 31st session. He will play a critical role in steering the ISA through complex negotiations, such as the ongoing development of deep sea mining regulations.
Uganda's Duncan Muhumuza Laki is outgoing president.
Both China and Russia raised concerns and called out U.S. unilateral action on deep sea mining (Trump's April 2025 executive order).
China said, "unilateralism erodes" international rules.
Russia said, "unilateral measures are not acceptable," calling on the US to be a member state under UNCLOS.
The International Seabed Authority council meeting to discuss international deep sea mining regulations begins today in Jamaica. I’ll be monitoring any updates.
ICE has arrested and detained a Nashville journalist who reported stories critical of ICE. She’s married to a U.S. citizen and has been seeking asylum here after fleeing death threats in Colombia because of her journalism there.
They’ve already sent her to Louisiana.
Israel has razed Gaza, target bombed hospitals and schools in Iran, and is now leveling Southern Lebanon all in "self defence".
It's #WorldWildlifeDay! Not just human lives are affected by climate change - animals are, too, including migratory birds. MONA alum @rachelreports.bsky.social covers the importance of forest conservation in Central America for @audubon.org.
🐦➡️ ow.ly/zQtF50YozuZ
Anyway, subscribe to my newsletter The Confluence: theconfluence.news/p/introducin...
Here’s me speaking to students at the Northern Marianas College about my career path & the consequences of the lack of Pacific Islander representation in the media, in hopes they follow the same path I did.
We need more of our stories told. 5/
News about U.S. territories in the Pacific are frequently framed through the lens of U.S. national security or "Chinese aggression" rather than the lived experiences of the people — Indigenous CHamoru people (all of whom are U.S. citizens), immigrant Filipino workers, etc — residing there. 4/
The only thing still booming across the Marianas archipelago? the U.S. military.
Just south of the CNMI, on Guam, I drove my fiancé around the island and he was shocked to see the gargantuan military complex presence there. I explained to him how normal this all was to us growing up. 3/
I know the CNMI has been struggling economically since Super Typhoon Yutu hit in 2018, then it exacerbated during the pandemic.
Walking around our “downtown” area feels like a ghost town. Shops closed. Our only theater and mall closed. Some schools still using FEMA tents. It feels surreal. 2/
About a year ago, CNN laid me off, the only climate reporter in the network born & raised in the Pacific Islands, along with 100s of others.
I haven’t had the chance to go back to my home island since I started working there.
Nearly a year later, here I am back home in the Northern Marianas 🇲🇵 1/
thank you!
Go to the Uproot Resource Library to see three new reporting guides by 2025 MONA Fellows and Uprooters @rachelreports.bsky.social, @mjoel17.bsky.social, and Eva Tesfaye
uprootproject.org/initiatives/...
Oooh, we're excited for The Confluence!
📩📩🌊🌊
Meanwhile, China is set to have more solar power capacity than coal for the first time this year, marking a “historic” milestone in the country’s energy transition. By the end of the year, wind & solar are projected to account for ~half of total installed power. www.independent.co.uk/climate-chan...
Some news in the clean energy sector: A surge in wind power generation, fueled by storms, broke records and cut gas costs in the UK last month. www.independent.co.uk/climate-chan...
"Japan is spending five weeks mining the seafloor. It is a technological milestone — and a stress test for how nations balance geopolitics, clean energy demand, and environmental risk." Uprooter @rachelreports.bsky.social for @grist.org
grist.org/internationa...
Last December, I went to Japan to learn more about the country’s deep-sea mining research. In January, a crew embarked on a five-week experiment off a remote Pacific island.
I wrote a deep dive about Japan’s move to ultimately cut reliance on China for critical minerals. grist.org/internationa...
fine, maybe we’ll make a Bluesky too 💙
👀🌊📩
First, it was American Samoa; then my home, the Northern Mariana Islands; now the Trump administration is looking at Alaskan waters for deep sea mining.
… another home to Indigenous peoples, fisheries and some of the world’s most fragile ecosystems. www.eenews.net/articles/fed...
