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Documentary films have the power to shape how we understand nature. They offer a deeper look into the planet’s challenges, bringing people together through shared experiences and inspiring action. As a media partner for the 2025 Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital (DCEFF), Mongabay is featuring exclusive interviews with the makers of this year’s […]
A massive iceberg broke off from the George VI Ice Shelf in Antarctica in January, giving researchers a rare opportunity to observe a part of the planet never before seen by humans.
Coincidentally, a team of researchers from the Schmidt Ocean Institute in California, U.S., happened to be nearby when the ice spanning 510 square kilometers (197 square miles) calved, so the team quickly shifted gears and seized the opportunity to explore the newly exposed seafloor.
"Serendipitous moments are part of the excitement of research at sea – they offer the chance to be the first to witness the untouched beauty of our world," Jyotika Virmani, executive director of Schmidt Ocean Institute, said in a press release.
With the ice gone, the team used remotely operated vehicles to explore the seafloor over eight days, reaching depths of up to 1,300 meters (4,265 feet), Patricia Esquete, a deep-sea ecologist with the University of Aveiro, Portugal, told Mongabay in a phone call.
The newly exposed area previously sat beneath a sheet of ice 150 m (492 ft) thick, so "we were expecting quite an impoverished ecosystem because it’s not receiving food from the surface, like in a normal deep-sea setting in which you have photosynthesis happening in the surface," Esquete said.
What they found instead was a rich community of fish, coral, octopus, sea spiders, anemones and sponges, perhaps hundreds of years old. They suspect deep ocean currents are delivering the nutrients that sustain life beneath the ice shelf.
"We found a really well-established ecosystem," Esquete said. The team recovered many samples for further study, particularly those they suspect are new to science. "We have several new species, that’s for sure — of fish, of crustaceans [and] polychaete worms," she said.
Esquete suspects that the potentially new-to-science species aren’t unique to seafloors beneath ice shelves. It’s more likely they are found across the region but scientists haven’t extensively explored the harsh, frigid, Antarctic seafloor before now. "It’s just very little-explored in general," she said.
The team also collected data on topography that revealed sharp, sometimes vertical, cliffs near steep depressions, 1,300 meters deep. "So, if you imagine, say, Yosemite National Park [in California], put it underwater," Sasha Montelli, co-chief scientist on the expedition and a geophysicist with University College London, told Mongabay.
As climate change accelerates the melting of Antarctica’s ice sheets, calving events like this one are expected to become more frequent. Montelli said the researchers plan to return to the site to track changes in ocean currents and seafloor ecosystems, so they can develop models that can project "how ice loss from Antarctica is going to evolve under different climate change scenarios."
Banner image: An octopus rests on the seafloor 1,150 meters (3,773 feet) deep, in the Bellingshausen Sea off Antarctica. Image courtesy of the Schmidt Ocean Institute. / Schmidt Ocean Institute
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay’s founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives, and story summaries.
Elisabeth Vrba did not set out to overturn the way scientists understood evolution. But her relentless inquiry, guided by a keen mathematical mind and a sharp eye for patterns in the fossil record, challenged some of Darwin’s most sacrosanct ideas. In a field where slow, incremental change had long been the reigning orthodoxy, she made the case that evolution moved in bursts — abrupt waves of extinction and speciation triggered by climatic upheaval. Her "Turnover Pulse" hypothesis became one of the most influential, and contentious, contributions to evolutionary biology in the past half-century.
Born in Hamburg, she moved to what is now Namibia as a child. The stark landscapes of her new home seemed an apt setting for the questions that would later define her career. She studied zoology and mathematical statistics before turning her focus to fossil antelopes, which provided the raw material for her boldest ideas.
Vrba’s great insight was that extinctions and originations of species were not random, nor the result of gradual competition between individuals, as Darwin had proposed. Rather, they were shaped by environmental changes, particularly shifts in climate. She noticed that some lineages remained remarkably stable, while others proliferated in fits and starts. The difference, she argued, was in their ecological flexibility. Generalists, with broad diets and adaptable habits, could ride out environmental changes. Specialists, attuned to narrow ecological niches, were more vulnerable — flourishing in one era, vanishing in the next.
Her ideas were met with skepticism. Punctuated equilibrium, proposed in 1972 by paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould, had already shaken up evolutionary biology by suggesting that species changed little for long periods before rapidly branching into new forms. But Vrba’s work went further. She suggested that external forces, rather than internal biological pressures, were the primary drivers of these bursts of change.
Vrba’s work also shaped thinking on exaptation — the process by which traits evolve for one function but are later co-opted for another. She pointed out that many features in organisms, from feathers to mammalian ear bones, were repurposed from ancestral structures rather than designed from scratch by evolution.
Though not as widely known as some of her contemporaries, her impact was profound. She infused paleontology with a rigor that brought it closer to the predictive precision of other sciences, demanding that hypotheses be tested with quantitative methods rather than merely asserted from anecdotal evidence.
For Vrba, the fossil record was not a static archive of long-dead creatures, but a dynamic record of nature’s upheavals — a story written in deep time, waiting to be read by those who knew where to look. She never claimed that her hypotheses provided all the answers, only that they asked better questions. In doing so, she changed the course of evolutionary science.
Banner image: Elisabeth Vrba. Photo by J Play.
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.
For months on end, he would maroon himself on remote islands — no phone, no company, no fanfare. Just a transistor radio, a hammock, and the possibility of seeing a turtle. It was enough. For Satish Bhaskar, the joy lay not in discovery as much as in the quiet act of observing: measuring tracks in the sand, recording the dimensions of nests, counting eggs in painstaking detail. "I am glad I did the things I did," he once said, without drama.
India’s coastline — stretching thousands of kilometers, wild and fragmentary — was largely unmapped in terms of sea turtle activity when Bhaskar began his work in the late 1970s. He resolved to walk it. All of it. By foot. Over 19 years, he did just that, surveying more than 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) and producing reports that would become foundational to marine conservation in the country. His work was not part of any grand institutional plan. It was solitary, intuitive and, above all, sustained.
He was shy, almost evasive, when asked about himself. Science was easier. So was silence. When filmmaker Taira Malaney sought to document his life, she found a man willing to share data but reluctant to share emotion. Over time, he opened up — not out of vanity, but perhaps out of recognition that his story, quietly told, might serve a purpose greater than himself. Turtle Walker, the resulting film, took seven years to make. Bhaskar never saw the final cut.
His legacy, though, is visible in the work of others. In the Andamans, researchers still consult his notes. The turtles he once tracked continue to return to the same beaches. The film, now earning accolades abroad, does not eulogize him. It does something better: it shows how his quiet conviction helped build a bridge between science and care, between a man and a species. "It’s not the end of the story," Bhaskar once said of his work. Indeed, it isn’t.
Editor’s note: Satish Bhaskar is the subject of the 75-minute documentary Turtle Walker, directed by Taira Malaney. It was screened at the DC Environmental Film Festival 2025 (DCEFF 2025) on March 26. Mongabay is a media partner for DCEFF 2025 and has interviewed some filmmakers as part of this collaboration.
Mongabay India’s Priyanka Shankar spoke with Taira Malaney about Satish Bhaskar and the making of the documentary in "How one researcher walked thousands of miles along India’s shores to conserve sea turtles ." Bhaskar passed away in March 2023.
Banner image: An archival image of Satish Bhaskar holding a hawksbill turtle. Image courtesy of Satish Bhaskar.
In India, superstitions and myths have fueled a rampant illegal trade in the red sand boa, a docile, nonvenomous snake, reports Shatabdi Chakrabarti in a video for Mongabay India.
The red sand boa (Eryx johnii), as its name suggests, is a thick reddish snake that burrows in loose mud and sand. It’s found in dry, sandy and rocky landscapes, often near farms, and it mostly eats rats, mice and lizards. Despite protection under the highest Indian wildlife laws, it’s one of the most trafficked species in the country.
The red sand boa is known in Hindi as do muha, meaning "double-headed," because its tail resembles its head. The snake uses this deception as both a defense strategy and to hunt prey: coiled in a ball, it places its tail on top, which tricks a predator into attacking its tail instead of the head, or fools a mouse trying to escape its "head."
But the name do muha has spawned various "bizarre" stories, Chakrabarti says.
"One of the important ones is that this snake can lead people to hidden treasures, or the fact that if you keep this snake in your house, you will actually certainly become rich," reptile expert Nirmal Kulkarni tells Chakrabarti.
Another common superstition is that the snake attracts wealth based on its weight: the heavier the snake, the more treasure it supposedly will attract, Kulkarni says. That leads some people to try to increase a snake’s weight by making it swallow large tubes or balls of lead, which harms the snake and can be fatal, he adds.
Rajesh Chahal, a wildlife inspector with the forest department in the northern state of Haryana, says there’s no truth to any of these stories. "This is an organized crime," he says.
Kulkarni co-authored a 2023 report that documented 172 media reports of illegal red sand boa trades across 18 states in India from 2016-2021.
Much of the red sand boa’s trade is conducted online, through YouTube and chat platforms including WhatsApp. When Chakrabarti anonymously contacts a seller advertising these snakes on YouTube, she’s told she can easily carry the snake from the western state of Maharashtra to India’s capital, Delhi, by car or train. "You can take it without any worry. And you are a woman, so no one will anyway stop your vehicle," the seller adds.
Chahal tells Mongabay India the illegal trade in these snakes isn’t isolated to people from any one region or just among uneducated people who believe the superstitions. "We find more educated people and well-established folk who have decent amount of money, involved in this," he adds.
Between the illegal trade and habitat loss, the snake’s population is dropping in areas where it used to be common, local wildlife experts warn.
Watch the full video: "Why is this snake one of the most trafficked species in the world? "
Banner image of a red sand boa by Sagar khunte via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0 ).
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay’s founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.
The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo isn’t just killing people — it’s tearing down forests, silencing activists, and fueling an illicit trade worth millions of dollars.
The resurgence of the M23 rebel group in the eastern DRC since 2021 has triggered a humanitarian crisis, forcing hundreds of thousands of people throughout the province of North Kivu to flee.
Yet another casualty has received less attention: the environment. The conflict is exacerbating deforestation, undermining conservation efforts, and fueling the illicit exploitation of natural resources.
The Albertine Rift, home to the critically endangered eastern lowland and mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei graueri and G. b. beringei), is under severe pressure. Virunga and Kahuzi-Biega National Parks, both UNESCO World Heritage Sites, have become battlegrounds. Since late 2021, M23 has taken control of towns surrounding Virunga, including Rutshuru, Rwindi and Masisi; in February 2025, the group pushed into Kahuzi-Biega, seizing areas adjacent to the park’s highland sector.
Deforestation in Virunga has accelerated: In 2023, some 1,222 hectares (3,020 acres) of tree cover were lost in a charcoal production zone, more than double the annual average of 571 hectares (1,411 acres) from 2019-2022.
Charcoal demand is a key driver. With 800,000 displaced people arriving in Goma, the North Kivu capital, the demand for charcoal has surged. With access to Virunga restricted, supply chains have shifted to Kahuzi-Biega.
In 2023, deforestation in Kahuzi-Biega’s charcoal production zone increased to 1,171 hectares (2,894 acres), up from 521 hectares (1,287 acres) annually over the previous four years. Illegal logging is surging in the park, facilitated by newly constructed ports on Lake Kivu.
Armed groups have long profited from the region’s natural wealth. The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) previously controlled much of Virunga’s charcoal trade, but M23’s territorial gains have disrupted this balance. The group now levies taxes on charcoal and timber transport.
While M23 touts itself as a pro-conservation force, its environmental record is contradictory. It has banned charcoal production in some areas while profiting from the timber trade elsewhere.
Meanwhile, since 1996, more than 200 park rangers have died in the line of duty.
Caught in the crossfire are Indigenous groups such as the Batwa, forcibly displaced by the conflict and unable to access their forests for sustenance. Activists attempting to expose illicit extraction have been silenced, some fleeing, others disappearing.
The future of the DRC’s forests, and those who depend on them, hangs in the balance.
Further reading:
Banner image: A mountain gorilla in Virunga National Park. Image by John Cannon/Mongabay.
Kanzi, the world’s most celebrated bonobo who learned to communicate and play Minecraft with humans, died last week in Iowa, U.S., at the age of 44.
Ape Initiative, a research organization in the city of Des Moines dedicated to the study and conservation of endangered bonobos (Pan paniscus) and where Kanzi lived since 2004, said he died unexpectedly on March 18 at its facility surrounded by his bonobo family.
As of March 21, the group said it had yet to receive the necropsy results. It added that Kanzi was being treated for heart disease, although on the day he died, he "was his normal, happy self" and did not show signs of illness.
"Born on October 28, 1980, Kanzi lived a full and remarkable life, captivating the hearts of everyone he met. He inspired people to learn about and help protect bonobos for more than four decades," the organization said in its news release.
Kanzi first learned to communicate with humans at Georgia State University. Researchers there had failed to teach his adoptive mother, Matata, the human language, but they soon learned that Kanzi, who would accompany his mother and observe the interactions, was able to understand spoken English and communicate through a lexigram, a board with symbols conveying specific messages.
Kanzi was not the first ape to learn to communicate with humans; he was unique for developing an interest in the symbols on his own. He also grasped abstract concepts and combined symbols to create new meaning, Scientific American wrote. When Kanzi was 8 years old, he outperformed a 2-year-old human child when given 660 spoken instructions, a study found.
Upon hearing the news of Kanzi’s death, primatologist Jill Pruetz wrote on social media: "The first time I met Kanzi, I was Fangirl nervous and asked how I should greet him – with a pant grunt like in chimps? No, I was told. Just speak English."
Pruetz added that her favorite story about Kanzi was one where he described a "scary" beaver in his outdoor habitat with the symbols "water" and "gorilla."
"Rest in peace dear Kanzi. You have enriched many a human’s mind," Pruetz wrote.
Kanzi has been described online as the world’s smartest ape. A number of YouTube videos showcase his intelligence, with content creators interacting with him in intelligence tests and video games from Pac-Man to Minecraft. While humans first taught him to use stone tools, he also developed his own method of sharpening stones. This earned him the title of "bonobo genius."
"Kanzi’s eagerness to interact with humans, enthusiasm for problem-solving, and love of food made for the fun-loving, motivated, and impactful ape that Kanzi was," Ape Initiative said. "Kanzi gifted us with a window into the minds of our closest living relatives, and his lessons about the bonobo species, as well as our own, will continue to live on."
Banner image of Kanzi by William H. Calvin via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0 ).
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