Breaking Waves: Ocean News

A regenerative scheme has shown early promise, with herders hopeful it can restore degraded pastures Ibrahima Ka, dressed in flowing indigo robes, gathers his herd with those of his neighbours before a stretch of lush, untouched pasture. The bellowing, heaving and trampling of 350 impatient zebu cows behind a wire perimeter marks a break with centuries of herding tradition in Senegal, west Africa. Rather than roaming freely across the country’s vast grasslands, shepherds tightly pack the herd together, confining them to graze in short, intensive bursts before being moved to a new plot. Ka, the village chief of Thignol, is spearheading the first pilot of “mob grazing” in Senegal, aiming to mimic, on a much smaller scale, how wildebeest flow across the Serengeti, moving to protect themselves against lions and cheetahs. The idea that intense grazing can regenerate grasslands rather than accelerate their decline has been controversial. Initially, proponents argued it could help to solve the climate crisis through storing carbon in regenerated grasslands – a claim with little scientific basis. But there is some evidence that the method can boost biodiversity and grassland health in dry areas such as Senegal. Continue reading...

How do you plan for an event whose timing is unknown? For residents of Tofino on Vancouver Island the threat is distant but signs of preparedness are everywhere Justin Goss was in the shower when he first heard the piercing wail of a nearby tsunami early-warning siren. Still dripping wet, he threw on clothes, grabbed his dog and rushed to the truck. The pair made it 3 metres and no further. “The whole parking lot across the street was jammed up. It was complete gridlock within three minutes,” he says. “I thought, ‘Oh shit, this is not good.’” Continue reading...

Environmentalists seeking to end logging, smuggling and pollution in DRC’s Mangrove Marine park faced threats, violence and rape People who have tried to expose unlawful ownership and profit-making from protected land in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have faced threats, violence and rape, an investigation has found. The DRC government hired the conservation worker Kim Rebholz in 2022 to safeguard the Mangrove Marine park, an internationally recognised nature reserve on the country’s tiny coastline. The Congo basin rainforest, to the east, is the largest rainforest after the Amazon. Continue reading...

npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 11 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00154-1 Climate-resilient fisheries are more resilient in general