Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Hybrids outsold pure electrics in the past three quarters, according to new figures, while petrol and diesel sales fell 8% Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast Australians are choosing hybrid over electric vehicles, but sales of both continue to climb while internal combustion engines record a decline. Hybrids outsold EVs in three consecutive quarters with 95,129 sales – overtaking 69,593 EVs sold, according to the Australian Automobile Association’s quarterly EV Index released on Tuesday night. Continue reading...

As the soundscape of the natural world began to disappear over 30 years, one man was listening and recording it all Read more: World faces ‘deathly silence’ of nature as wildlife disappears, warn experts The tale starts 30 years ago, when Bernie Krause made his first audio clip in Sugarloaf Ridge state park, 20 minutes’ drive from his house near San Francisco. He chose a spot near an old bigleaf maple. Many people loved this place: there was a creek and a scattering of picnic benches nearby. As a soundscape recordist, Krause had travelled around the world listening to the planet. But in 1993 he turned his attention to what was happening on his doorstep. In his first recording, a stream of chortles, peeps and squeaks erupt from the animals that lived in the rich, scrubby habitat. His sensitive microphones captured the sounds of the creek, creatures rustling through undergrowth, and the songs of the spotted towhee, orange-crowned warbler, house wren and mourning dove. Continue reading...

The 2013 documentary Blackfish turned orca trainers into pariahs in the US. Now some are hitting it big in China Some people spend a long time deciding what they want to do in life. Hazel McBride feels lucky that she’s always known. As a child in Scotland, she watched a VHS tape of Free Willy on repeat. That was the first time she felt a connection with killer whales. The second time was at age eight, on a trip to SeaWorld Orlando in 2000. Shamu was the animal world’s greatest celebrity, and in the US, SeaWorld ads were ubiquitous. Kids wanted to see the killer whales, and after they saw them, they told their parents they wanted to become killer whale trainers. McBride actually did it. It wasn’t easy. Scotland didn’t have a SeaWorld, or warm water, or anywhere, really, where McBride could get experience with marine mammals. She had horses she cared for, and she was on the national swim team – a modest start. She sent out volunteer applications to local zoos and worked with California sea lions at a safari park. She reached out to trainers online and one told her a psychology degree would help, so she got one. Continue reading...

Many products consumed by Britons could be hit by floods and droughts driven by climate crisis UK facing food shortages and price rises after extreme weather From floods to droughts, extreme weather driven by human-caused global heating has become the new normal, causing havoc with the global food supply system.Many products bought and consumed in the UK are at risk of low supply and increased prices. Continue reading...