Breaking Waves: Ocean News

06/30/2025 - 09:00
For years, Puerto Ricans have faced high electricity costs and regular blackouts. The town of Adjuntas, in the central mountains, boasts the island’s first community-owned solar microgrid Continue reading...
06/30/2025 - 08:59
More than 170 EPA employees signed letter, with about 100 more signing anonymously out of fear of retaliation US politics live – latest updates A group of Environmental Protection Agency employees on Monday published a declaration of dissent from the agency’s policies under the Trump administration, saying they “undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment”. More than 170 EPA employees put their names to the document, with about 100 more signing anonymously out of fear of retaliation, according to Jeremy Berg, a former editor-in-chief of Science magazine who is not an EPA employee but was among non-EPA scientists or academics to also sign. The latter figure includes 20 Nobel laureates. Continue reading...
06/30/2025 - 07:39
Extreme heat ‘the new normal’, says UN chief, as authorities across the continent issue health warnings Europe live – latest updates A vicious heatwave has engulfed southern Europe, with punishing temperatures that have reached highs of 46C (114.8F) in Spain and placed almost the entirety of mainland France under alert. Extreme heat, made stronger by fossil fuel pollution, has for several days scorched Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece as southern Europe endures its first major heatwave of the summer. Continue reading...
06/30/2025 - 06:47
Temperatures set to climb to 34C across much of England in one of hottest June days ever This year’s Wimbledon tennis championships have begun with the hottest opening day on record, according to the Met Office. Temperatures reached a provisional high of 29.7C (85.5F) at Kew Gardens in west London on Monday afternoon, surpassing the previous record of 29.3C set in June 2001. Continue reading...
06/30/2025 - 06:15
Views on apex predator still polarised, says Natural England head, as activists apply for trial release in Northumberland The head of the government’s wildlife regulator has said he remains enthusiastic about reintroducing lynx to Britain and would be “absolutely delighted” if it could be achieved during his two-year term. But Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, said debates over the animal’s release were “still quite polarised” and more engagement was required to understand how communities would be affected. Continue reading...
06/30/2025 - 05:31
Authorities issue extreme heat, health and wildfire warnings with highest temperatures forecast in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain Continue reading...
06/30/2025 - 05:00
These supposedly serious cetaceans have been spotted massaging each other with kelp stalks. This is the sort of performative nonsense you’d expect from dolphins I’ve thought for a while that it would be nice to be an orca. Not because I hate boats and they sink them (though I get it – the briny depths are none of our human business). What actually appeals is the idea of being charismatic megafauna – I love that phrase – and also important as a post-menopausal female. Orcas are one of very few species that go through menopause, living for decades after their reproductive years. These older matriarchs remain an integral part of the community, improving pod survival rates thanks to being “repositories of ecological knowledge”, caring for young and even, research suggests, keeping their giant adult sons safe from being attacked. The fact that they’re fashion-conscious is a bonus: the 80s orca trend for wearing jaunty salmon fascinators was revived, intriguingly, in some pods last December; other orcas have been observed draping themselves artistically in kelp. But new research is giving me pause. Now orcas in the Salish Sea off the coast of Washington state have been filmed picking kelp stalks and “massaging” each other with them. In sightings of this behaviour, reported and dubbed “allokelping” by the Center for Whale Research, “the two whales then manoeuvre to keep the kelp between them while rolling it across their bodies … During contact, whales roll and twist their bodies, often adopting an exaggerated S-shaped posture.” Continue reading...
06/30/2025 - 04:15
These starfish relatives have lots of remarkable features and are a keystone species. My hope is that we will recognise how vital these charismatic creatures are Brittle stars have a lot of remarkable features as a species. Many of them are bioluminescent and can flash blue light; some will have patterns and do displays. These slender relatives of starfish can be very beautiful to look at and come in a range of colours – in the tropics, for example, they can be red, black or orange. And they’ve got spines all over them, so they can look quite ornate. They can also regenerate. Fish and other creatures will often nip off bits of their arms – known as sublethal predation – so they are constantly regenerating themselves. You can even break off all their arms, and sometimes even half the disc, and the brittle star will still regenerate. Continue reading...
06/30/2025 - 03:03
We simply don’t know even a fraction of what is in them Sign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are published Get all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and prints Continue reading...
06/30/2025 - 01:00
Rapporteur calls for defossilization of economies and urgent reparations to avert ‘catastrophic’ rights and climate harms A leading UN expert is calling for criminal penalties against those peddling disinformation about the climate crisis and a total ban on fossil fuel industry lobbying and advertising, as part of a radical shake-up to safeguard human rights and curtail planetary catastrophe. Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change who presents her damning new report to the general assembly in Geneva on Monday, argues that the US, UK, Canada, Australia and other wealthy fossil fuel nations are legally obliged under international law to fully phase out oil, gas and coal by 2030 – and compensate communities for harms caused. Continue reading...