The current study aimed at characterizing the marine news in a Portuguese quality newspaper between October 2002 and December 2010. The search for keywords related to the marine environment resulted in the collection of 1309 news items, with a mean number of 13.22 news per month. These modest values seem to be related to the low public interest and knowledge on environmental and science themes shown in several national surveys. Nevertheless, there were two peaks in the number of news corresponding to the oil spills of the tanker Prestige in Spain and the rig Deepwater Horizon in the USA. The most common themes on the studied news were pollution, marine species/habitats and fisheries, while others such as coastal planning or marine science research were less relevant. Additionally, it was found that news about marine sciences frequently used only a neutral tone (78%), with the occasional use of a positive (12%) and or a negative tone (10%). © 2019 Elsevier Ltd