Farmed kelp could produce plastic substitutes, beauty products and food supplements. Just steer clear of seaweed chocolate
Photographs by Christian Sinibaldi, words by Joanna Moorhead
Think sun, sea, Skye – and seaweed. It’s early summer off the west coast of Scotland, and Alex Glasgow is landing a long string of orangey-black seaweed on to the barge of his water farm. It emerges on what looks like a washing line heavy with dirty rags, hoicked up from the depths. And yet, this slippery, shiny, salty substance might, just might, be going to save the planet.
When it comes to sustainability, seaweed is about as shipshape as it gets. Minimal damage to the environment, check. No use of pesticides, check. Diversifies ocean life, check. Uses no land, check. And, in the case of Skye’s seaweed farm, spoils no one’s view, check.
Kyla Orr and Martin Welch of KelpCrofters check the crop from their boat
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
06/13/2024 - 07:00
06/13/2024 - 05:00
Pennsylvania families worry about rising cases of rare cancer with well pads near homes and stalled House bills
One evening in 2019, Janice Blanock was scrolling through Facebook when she heard a stranger mention her son in a video on her feed. Luke, an outgoing high school athlete, had died three years earlier at age 19 from Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare bone cancer.
Blanock had come across a live stream of a community meeting to discuss rare cancers that were occurring with alarming frequency in south-western Pennsylvania, where she lives.
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06/13/2024 - 05:00
Porto Alegre’s poorest neighborhoods, often closest to rivers and with the worst infrastructure, bore brunt of crisis
It had been raining for nearly a week when the floodwaters first reached Marcelo Moreira Ferreira’s home in Porto Alegre, the capital of Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul.
His wife and their four children left to seek shelter with relatives, but Ferreira, 51, wanted to stay: his father had built the modest one-story structure and he had lived there his entire life.
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06/13/2024 - 02:00
Diving with marine life such as blue sharks is growing in popularity in the UK, spurred by footage of encounters on social media
We have only been waiting in the grey Atlantic swell a few moments when the first flash of metallic blue appears in the water. A blue shark, a few miles from the coast of Penzance in Cornwall, emerges from the depths. It is time to get in the water – but part of my brain rebels.
“It’s not what you think it will be like … not that ingrained fear that everyone has about sharks. But until you get in the water with them, that fear will remain,” the guide says to the group.
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06/13/2024 - 00:04
Members of the public and wildlife organisations spot a whale entangled in two buoys and a rope off the coast of NSW. A rescue team locates the humpback in the water off Fingal Heads with help from a helicopter, before successfully removing the rope that is lodged in its fin
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06/12/2024 - 23:00
Most comprehensive analysis ever of conflict-driven climate impacts shows emissions greater than those generated by 175 countries in a year
The climate cost of the first two years of Russia’s war on Ukraine was greater than the annual greenhouse gas emissions generated individually by 175 countries, exacerbating the global climate emergency in addition to the mounting death toll and widespread destruction, research reveals.
Russia’s invasion has generated at least 175m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e), amid a surge in emissions from direct warfare, landscape fires, rerouted flights, forced migration and leaks caused by military attacks on fossil fuel infrastructure – as well as the future carbon cost of reconstruction, according to the most comprehensive analysis ever of conflict-driven climate impacts.
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06/12/2024 - 23:00
Captive breeding in Norway has built up numbers endangered by the climate crisis and golden eagles but only a more diverse population will survive in the long term
Deep in the Norwegian mountains, amid a vast expanse of bright snow and howling winds, Toralf Mjøen throws a piece of meat into a fenced enclosure and waits for a pair of dark eyes to appear from the snowy den.
These curious and playful arctic foxes know Mjøen well. He has been the caretaker at this breeding facility for 17 years, going up the mountain daily to feed them at their enclosures near the small village of Oppdal, about 250 miles north of Oslo.
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06/12/2024 - 12:08
As the temperatures keep rising, how would the environment be affected by a second term under Biden or Trump? Plus: sharks, primaries and Jesus
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More than a dozen Donald Trump supporters collapsed at his rallies amid record high temperatures in the south-west in recent days – presumably missing Trump’s promise at the gatherings to gut Biden’s environmental policies and “drill, baby, drill”. So what would a Trump administration mean for those who hope the world can limit global heating and the climate crisis? We’ll take a look after the headlines.
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06/12/2024 - 12:03
Co-president of the KlimaSeniorinnen says declaration is betrayal of older women
Swiss politicians have rejected a landmark climate ruling from the European court of human rights, raising fears that other polluting countries may follow suit.
A panel of Strasbourg judges ruled in April that Switzerland had violated the human rights of older women through weak climate policies that leave them more vulnerable to heatwaves. Activists hailed the judgment as a breakthrough because it leaves all members of the Council of Europe exposed to legal challenges for sluggish efforts to clean up carbon-intensive economies.
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06/12/2024 - 10:56
California Forever hopes to build sustainable city in Solano county but company’s tactics have been controversial
Voters in northern California will get to weigh in on whether a contentious plan backed by Silicon Valley billionaires to build a new city north of San Francisco can go ahead.
California Forever, the company behind the initiative to build a green city for up to 400,000 people in California farmland, submitted well over the 13,000 valid signatures required to put it on the 5 November ballot, elections officials said on Tuesday.
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