The Reuters series 'Ocean Shock' has been named a winner of a Society of Environmental Journalists' Award for Environmental Reporting. The series, by Mo Tamman, Matthew Green, Mari Saito, Sarah Slobin and Maryanne Murray, won in the Outstanding Explanatory Reporting category. In the "Ocean Shock" series, Reuters last year documented how, from the waters off the Carolinas to the coasts of West Africa and Japan, marine creatures are fleeing for their lives, and the communities that depend on them are experiencing disruption as a result. As waters warm, it showed, fish and other sea life are migrating poleward, seeking to maintain the even temperatures they need to thrive. The number of creatures involved in this massive diaspora may well dwarf any climate impacts yet seen on land. Reuters journalists spent more than a year collecting their stories and little-reported data to produce the series, revealing the natural disaster unfolding beneath the whitecaps. Judges called the series "a breathtakingly comprehensive look at the many factors that are harming our seas, particularly climate change, aquaculture and overfishing....Closely linked yet unique, Reuters' stories are exhaustively reported, lucidly written and unfailingly gripping. Together, they vividly depict an ocean under cumulative stress from a multitude of sources, and follow the money to those stressors' roots." [Reuters Press Blog] Media Contact: Heather.Carpenter @ tr.com
