Breaking Waves: Ocean News

06/26/2025 - 01:00
Freighters emit more greenhouse gases than jets, but a tech startup believes a simple and effective technique can help the industry change course An industrial park alongside the River Lea in the London suburb of Chingford might not be the most obvious place for a quiet revolution to be taking place. But there, a team of entrepreneurs is tinkering with a modest looking steel container that could hold a solution to one of the world’s dirtiest industries. Inside it are thousands of cherry-sized pellets made from quicklime. At one end, a diesel generator pipes fumes through the lime, which soaks up the carbon, triggering a chemical reaction that transforms it into limestone. Continue reading...
06/25/2025 - 13:00
Evolutionary change driven by intensive fishing led cod to ‘shrink’ from average 40cm length in 1996 to 20cm in 2019 Overfishing has led to a collapse in the eastern Baltic cod population, but over the past three decades the size of the fish themselves has also been dramatically and mysteriously shrinking. Now scientists have uncovered genomic evidence that intensive fishing has driven rapid evolutionary changes that have contributed to these fish roughly halving in average body length since the 1990s. Continue reading...
06/25/2025 - 12:22
Company’s Starbase launch site in Texas near the Mexican border has seen test failures resulting in large explosions Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has threatened legal action over falling debris and contamination from billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket launches across the border in the United States. Mexico’s government was studying which international laws were being violated in order to file “the necessary lawsuits” because “there is indeed contamination”, Sheinbaum told her morning news conference on Wednesday. Continue reading...
06/25/2025 - 09:00
Millions seek relief from a severe heat dome that’s led to lake drownings, leaking methane gas and affected farmers At a splash pad on the banks of the Great Miami River in downtown Dayton, Michelle Winston, her partner and their daughter have come to cool off from the brutal heat. “It’s our first time down here this year, but because it’s so hot, we’ll be coming back for sure,” she says as she helps her daughter clear water from her eyes. Continue reading...
06/25/2025 - 08:00
A conference in Cambridge this week will explore a raft of geoengineering ideas to cool the region down – and attempt to address the fears of those who argue the risks outweigh the benefits When the glaciologist John Moore began studying the Arctic in the 1980s there was an abundance of suitable sites for him to carry out his climate research. The region’s relentless warming means many of those no longer exist. With the Arctic heating up four times faster than the global average, they have simply melted away. Forty years on, Moore’s research network, the University of the Arctic, has identified 61 potential interventions to slow, stop and reverse the effects of the changing climate in the region. These concepts are constantly being updated and some will be assessed at a conference in Cambridge this week, where scientists and engineers will meet to consider if radical, technological solutions can buy time and stem the loss of polar ice caps. Continue reading...
06/25/2025 - 03:05
Amid abnormally high tides this week, councils report a rising frequency of inundation and erosion events due to climate change Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here Abnormally high tides, strong winds and large waves have lashed Australia’s south-eastern coastlines this week, damaging jetties and infrastructure in communities facing “no end of problems” from an increase in severe conditions. Prolonged winds whipped up large waves in the Southern Ocean, which have hammered south and west facing coastlines across South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania, said the senior meteorologist Angus Hines from the Bureau of Meteorology. Continue reading...
06/25/2025 - 01:00
People are disgusted by the idea of eating bugs despite their lighter planetary cost compared to traditional livestock Recent efforts to encourage people to eat insects are doomed to fail because of widespread public disgust at the idea, making it unlikely insects will help people switch from the environmentally ruinous habit of meat consumption, a new study has found. Farming and eating insects has been touted in recent years as a greener alternative to eating traditional meat due to the heavy environmental toll of raising livestock, which is a leading driver of deforestation, responsible for more than half of global water pollution, and may cause more than a third of all greenhouse gases that can be allowed if the world is to avoid disastrous climate change, the new research finds. Continue reading...
06/25/2025 - 01:00
From peat bogs containing centuries of history to the fascinating world of sea creatures’ senses, the theme for this year’s annual event is ‘Biosphere’ Continue reading...
06/20/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 21 June 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00134-5 Improving detectability of illegal fishing activities across supply chains
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023 Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program. World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html. Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs. World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world. World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org. media contact Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory   |   [email protected] +12077011069
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