When the birds started nesting on her land at Useless Bay, Chile, Cecilia Durán Gafo decided she would protect them from people and predators
Five pairs of rubbery feet carry velvet-sheathed black-and-white bodies towards the rope line separating the king penguins from the dozen or so visitors, who look on in awe. As these emissaries shuffle over, a hundred of their cohorts parade on a nearby bank, splashing around in the water and regurgitating food into their chicks’ open beaks.
The king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) makes its home almost exclusively on islands in the Southern Ocean. But it has been coming to this wind-battered bay in southern Chile’s Tierra del Fuego region for hundreds of years, probably because its shallow shores offer protection from marine predators and humans.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
05/14/2026 - 06:00
05/14/2026 - 05:29
Environmentalists hail decline but warn weakened laws could reverse gains
Brazil’s Atlantic forest, the country’s most threatened biome, last year recorded its lowest level of deforestation since monitoring began 40 years ago, a new report shows.
The forest is Brazil’s most populous biome, and home to 80% of the population and major cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In 2025 it recorded 8,658 hectares of deforestation, marking the first time it has fallen below 10,000 hectares since 1985.
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05/14/2026 - 02:00
If resolution is passed, governments will recognise their legal responsibility to cut greenhouse gas emissions
The UN’s willingness to tackle the climate crisis in a fair and legal way will be tested next week during a critical vote of the UN general assembly in New York.
Every member state is being asked to back a series of landmark findings on climate justice from the international court of justice (ICJ) as part of a new political resolution. If passed, it will mean governments recognise they have a legal responsibility to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, including tackling fossil fuels.
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05/14/2026 - 00:55
Researchers in Japan traced a hidden medieval solar storm using ancient tree rings and centuries-old sky observations. The team linked reports of eerie red auroras with spikes of carbon-14 trapped in buried wood, revealing a powerful solar radiation event around 1200 CE. The findings suggest the Sun was far more active at the time, with unusually short solar cycles.
05/14/2026 - 00:00
Woodland Trust also finds significant north-south divide in tree cover, leaving many people at risk of poor health
Nigel Farage’s constituency of Clacton-on-Sea is a “tree desert”, leaving people more exposed to air pollution, poorer health, lower life expectancy and the impact of rising temperatures, according to a new report.
The Essex town is rated the worst-performing for equal access to trees in England, with the highest proportion of urban residents – 98.2% – living in neighbourhoods with critically low access to trees.
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05/13/2026 - 23:00
King Arthur is said to have transformed into a chough when he died, its red feet and beak representing his bloody end
Decades after disappearing from the jagged cliffs around Tintagel Castle on the coast of north Cornwall, a bird with legendary connections to the area has returned.
The custodian of Tintagel, English Heritage, and local ornithologists have declared that choughs – charismatic corvids with red beaks and feet – are back.
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05/13/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 14 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00201-5
From little things, big things grow: using applied nucleation to restore marine forests
05/13/2026 - 18:01
Greenpeace finds cocktail of pesticides including seven banned in EU may have been used on seven categories of vegetables and soft fruit
It is a beautiful early summer Sunday afternoon and you have stopped for a pub lunch. A waiter sets down a roast served with carrots, peas, parsnips, potatoes and onion gravy, and then for pudding, strawberries and cream. It feels like the perfect rustic meal to accompany a day in the country.
However, a report by Greenpeace, published on Thursday, has found that the ingredients of the traditional Sunday roast have potentially been treated with a cocktail of more than 100 pesticides. Data from the Fera pesticide usage survey for 2024, showed 102 – including seven banned in the EU – were used on seven vegetable and soft fruit categories.
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05/13/2026 - 12:00
Scientists are focusing on improving apples’ resilience after stressors like wild temperature swings and drought
Terence Robinson still remembers the Valentine’s Day Massacre – of 2015, not 1929.
For the Cornell University horticulture professor, the term doesn’t conjure up Tommy guns and Al Capone’s Chicago. Instead of a gangster, the culprit in Robinson’s massacre was the weather. And its victims were the apple orchards of the north-eastern United States.
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05/13/2026 - 10:00
Premier Roger Cook has the prime minister’s implicit support but he’s making it harder for federal Labor to meet its much-vaunted climate targets
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Western Australia has blazing sun, stunning Indian Ocean beaches, wide open roads and, for the first time in a while, a potentially successful AFL team. It also has an occasional separatist urge. That tendency may partly explain why its government thinks it shouldn’t be expected to act on the climate crisis in the same way as the population on the east coast.
Anthony Albanese and members of his cabinet have given implicit support to its climate position. The prime minister has fallen in behind the WA Labor government as the premier, Roger Cook, has backed fossil fuel expansions and argued that an increase in the state’s emissions would be good for the climate because its gas exports reduce coal burning in Asia.
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