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Conservationists also warned that the vast majority caught were juveniles and had never reproduced

The bluefin tuna, which has been endangered for several years and has the misfortune to be prized by Japanese sushi lovers, has suffered a catastrophic decline in stocks in the Northern Pacific Ocean, of more than 96%, according to research published on Wednesday.

Equally concerning is the fact that about 90% of specimens currently fished are young fish that have not yet reproduced.

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It was 1975, Greenpeace's first campaign, and the bodies of six Soviet-slaughtered whales were lying lifeless in the swell. I thought to myself, is humanity really this insane?

The greatest gift that I have ever received is also my great and enduring curse.

It was June 1975 and I was a crew member on the first Greenpeace campaign to protect the whales. It was off the coast of northern California, 60 miles offshore. Before us, spread across the waters like some invading foreign armada, was the Soviet whaling fleet.

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Forecast temperatures are so extreme that the Bureau of Meteorology has had to add a new colour to its scale. It is a sign of things to come

• Australian project simulates effects of runaway climate change
• Deadly heatwaves will be more frequent in coming decades

Global warming is turning the volume of extreme weather up, Spinal-Tap-style, to 11. The temperature forecast for next Monday by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology is so unprecedented - over 52C - that it has had to add a new colour to the top of its scale, a suitably incandescent purple.

Australia's highest recorded temperature is 50.7C, set in January 1960 in South Australia. The record for the hottest average day across the nation was set on Monday, at 40.3C, exceeding a 40-year-old record. "What makes this event quite exceptional is how widespread and intense it's been," said Aaron Coutts-Smith, the weather bureau's climate services manager. "We have been breaking records across all states and territories in Australia over the course of the event so far." Wildfires are raging across New South Wales and Tasmania.

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It's like watching 'Manhattan breaking apart in front of your eyes', says one of the researchers for filmmaker James Balog. He's describing the largest iceberg calving ever filmed, as featured in his movie, Chasing Ice. After weeks of waiting, the filmakers witnessed 7.4 cubic km of ice crashing off the Ilulissat glacier in Greenland. Chasing Ice, released in the UK on Friday, follows Balog's mission to document Arctic ice being melted by climate change. Watch our second clip from the documentary to see the filmmakers abseil down Survey Canyon on the Greenland ice sheet to capture some startling images of meltwater rushing down a moulin Continue reading...

On Wednesday we marked the 60th anniversary of London's 'great smog' with dramatic photographs. Here, we've rounded up your memories of the smog, and others in the years after

I remember as a nine year old in 1959 living in South Ealing barely being able to see to catch the bus to school and my dad having to be guided home by a policeman with a torch – he was on our road at the time but had become completely disorientated. The policeman had a torch and used that to read the road name and house number.

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Brighten up your living room with a Christmas tree without creating a huge environmental footprint

Leo Hickman writes:

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On Friday 5 December 1952, a thick yellow smog brought the capital to a standstill for four days and is estimated to have killed more than 4,000 people. London's air may appear much cleaner today, but is still dangerously polluted. The coal pollution that caused the infamous 'pea soupers' has been replaced by invisible pollution – mainly from traffic fumes – resulting in 13,000 early deaths each year in the UK and 4,300 in London

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The Pew Environment Group and National Geographic have uncovered a spectacular underwater habitat around the Pitcairn Islands, a British Overseas Territory that is home to the Bounty mutineers and their descendents. The two groups, along with the islanders, are calling on the UK government to make Pitcairn into the world's largest no-take marine reserve Continue reading...

A proposed cull is indicative of the brutal treatment predators receive in Scandinavian countries

One of the biggest political shocks of the past decade has been the transformation of Canada. Under the influence of the tar barons of Alberta, it has mutated from a country dominated by liberal, pacific, outward-looking values to a thuggish petro-state, ripping up both international treaties and the fabric of its own nation.

Prepare to be shocked again. Another country, whose green and humanitarian principles were just as well-established as Canada's, is undergoing a similar transformation. Again, it is not the people of the nation who have changed – in both cases they remain, as far as I can tell, as delightful as ever – but the dominant political class and its destruction of both national values and international image.

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Asian palm civets are force-fed a debilitating diet of coffee berries to create Kopi Luwak, say animal welfare groups

It's the world's most expensive coffee and is made from faeces, but connoisseur drinkers should feel most squeamish about the "horrific" abuse that mars its production process, animal welfare groups have claimed.

Kopi Luwak, or civet coffee, is created mainly in Indonesia from beans of coffee berries that are fed to Asian palm civets – small, cat-like creatures found in south-east Asia.

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Sensitive crocodiles, playing elephants and a Brazilian armadillo feature in this week's pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

Dan Watson has devised a system based on a series of escape rings for fish, which can be fitted to a fisherman's trawler net

A young British designer has won a prestigious international award for creating a "humane" net to make fishing more sustainable by preventing small fish from being trapped.

Dan Watson devised a system based on a series of escape rings for fish – which can be fitted to a fisherman's trawler net – in response to the problem of overfishing and the controversial and wasteful practice of throwing away healthy and edible fish or other creatures as so-called bycatch.

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Two skeletons now known to be spade-toothed beaked whales were misidentified by conservationists in 2010

The spade-toothed beaked whale is so rare that nobody has seen one alive, but scientists have proof the species still exists.

Two skeletons were identified as belonging to the species after a 17-foot whale and her calf beached themselves in New Zealand in 2010. Scientists hope the discovery will provide insights into the species and into ocean ecosystems.

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Mothballs, lavender bags, cedar wood… what weaponry can help you win the war against moths?

When you look at the size of a clothes moth – and sometimes I look at the size of a clothes moth five times a day prior to mashing it violently against a wall/carpet/treasured coat – it seems extraordinary how useless the human race is at killing this most destructive of pests. Without difficulty, people wipe out badgers, cats, other human beings. How hard can it be to kill a scrap of animated dust that lives on old sweat and cardigans?

True, weaponry has advanced, a little, since I was first infested. Two decades ago, when a soft Nicole Farhi cardigan emerged for its first outing with ragged holes already dotting the moth-favoured breast region, the best on offer was mothballs and those bits of amusingly-shaped cedar that are as effective at combating moths as, say, snowballs would be at wiping out the Taliban.

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Increasingly fussy bathroom habits are directly to blame for clogged pipes and human waste bubbling up into our streets and homes. Plus 10 things you should never flush down your toilet

Time was when British bottoms were built to withstand the crinkliest, shiniest toilet paper available, and in some cases even to enjoy it. But there has been a fundamental softening in recent years, seen in a growing preference not only for quilted loo roll, but now for wet wipes. The musician Will.i.Am is one leading exponent of damp bottom-wiping. The consequences for our drains, though, are disastrous.

"If you swill a piece of toilet roll around in some water, it takes seconds for it to disintegrate," explains Simon Evans from Thames Water. "Wet wipes should never be put down drains, because they don't break down – even if the packaging says they are 'biodegradable' or 'flushable'. Only human waste and loo roll should go down our sewers."

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Beluga whale kept at US research foundation learned how to make human sounds that fooled divers, according to study

A Beluga whale named Noc learned to warble in a human voice that was so convincing it fooled a diver into thinking someone was shouting at him to get out of the water, US researchers have revealed.

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This Q&A is part of the Guardian's ultimate climate change FAQ

• See all questions and answers
• Read about the project

Food is one of society's key sensitivities to climate. A year of not enough or too much rainfall, a hot spell or cold snap at the wrong time, or extremes, like flooding and storms, can have a significant effect on local crop yields and livestock production. While modern farming technologies and techniques have helped to reduce this vulnerability and boost production, the impact of recent droughts in the USA, China and Russia on global cereal production highlight a glaring potential future vulnerability.

There is some evidence that climate change is already having a measurable affect on the quality and quantity of food produced globally. But this is small when compared with the significant increase in global food production that has been achieved over the past few decades. Isolating the influence of climatic change from all the other trends is difficult, but one recent Stanford University study found that increases in global production of maize and wheat since 1980 would have been about 5% higher were it not for climate change.

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The unprecedented loss of polar sea ice may lead to 'wild extremes' in the UK and northern Europe, say researchers

The record loss of Arctic sea ice this summer may mean a cold winter for the UK and northern Europe. The region has been prone to bad winters after summers with very low sea ice, such as 2011 and 2007, said Jennifer Francis, a researcher at Rutgers University.

"We can't make predictions yet … [but] I wouldn't be surprised to see wild extremes this winter," Francis told the Guardian.

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Farmers have been forced to increase amount of chemicals as the sea lice parasite becomes resistant to treatment

Scottish fish farmers have been forced to use record amounts of highly toxic pesticides to combat underwater parasites that prey on salmon, raising fears of significant damage to the marine environment.

Data released by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) shows a 110% increase in the use of chemicals to treat sea lice in the past four years, mainly because the parasite is becoming resistant to treatment. During that same period, however, salmon production has increased only by 22%, to 158,000 tonnes.

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At their current rate of decline, these ancient creatures are set to follow the baiji dolphin into extinction in 10-15 years

It's been an hour and the group of volunteers aboard the rickety fishing boat are still yet to spot a Yangtze finless porpoise, known as jiangzhu or "river pig". Thirty years ago, when they numbered 2,000, the mammals could be seen from the shore here dancing on Dongting Lake in the sludge-coloured waves. Now there are about 85 jiangzhu here. As Xu Yaping, the patrol's chief, peers through the haze, and coal barges and dredgers churn the lake, the chance of encountering this ancient creature seems remote.

The jiangzhu's survival is not guaranteed. Since the official extinction of the baiji, a river dolphin, in 2007, the porpoise is the only cetacean inhabiting the Yangtze River and two connecting freshwater lakes, Dongting and Poyang, China's largest. It's estimated there are around 1,200 jiangzhu living in the wild – two-thirds less than a decade earlier. The species is decreasing at a rate of 6.4% a year, making it rarer than China's national treasure, the giant panda.

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