Millions of children could lose free school meals as food costs rise, warns School Nutrition Association president
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has slashed two programs that provided more than $1bn for schools and food banks to purchase food from local farms and ranchers.
About $660m of those funds were contained in the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program, which provided funds to schools and child care facilities but is now being eliminated.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
03/11/2025 - 08:13
03/11/2025 - 07:00
Tiny bits of plastic can end up in water and soil at alarming levels, said lead author of University of Missouri paper
Fertilizers that shed microplastics are increasingly spreading on America’s cropland, research shows, raising new worry about the soil contamination and safety of the US food supply.
A peer-reviewed University of Missouri paper found common types of controlled-release fertilizers are often encapsulated with plastic and can be so small that they could be considered microplastics. Those are designed to break down into even smaller pieces of plastic once spread in fields.
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03/11/2025 - 06:00
Staff crisis at Environment Agency, which helps monitor 950 sites, means it is hearing about incidents later than normal, insider says
The team responsible for preventing environmental risks at England’s most hazardous industrial sites is facing a recruitment crisis and one insider has warned environmental incidents are going unchecked.
The control of major accident hazards (Comah) regulations cover 950 of England’s most hazardous industrial sites – from nuclear power plants to chemical manufacturers – in locations such as Buncefield oil depot near Hemel Hempstead, where, in 2005, the largest explosion in peacetime took place in the UK.
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03/11/2025 - 06:00
The Guardianas del Conchalito ignored chants of ‘get back to your kitchens’, determined to protect the environment and create a sustainable shellfish operation
Ahead of the small boat, as it bobs on the waters near La Paz in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, is a long line of old plastic bottles strung together on top of the waves. Underneath them are as many as 100,000 oysters, waiting to be sold to the upmarket hotels down the coast.
Cheli Mendez, who oversees the project, pulls a shell up from below, cuts it open with a knife, and gives me the contents to try: a plump, tasty oyster. Mendez is one of a group known as Guardianas del Conchalito, or guardians of the shells, and theirs is the first oyster-growing business in the region run entirely by women, she says.
The women dug a channel with shovels and pickaxes to allow seawater to reach the mangroves
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03/11/2025 - 05:48
Highly toxic jet fuel leaking from oil tanker threatens local ecosystems as investigations begin into collision’s cause
Leaking fuel from the collision between a cargo ship and oil tanker in the North Sea would have a “devastating” impact on marine life, experts have said, as investigations began into the cause of the incident.
Fires continued to burn onboard both vessels 24 hours after the Stena Immaculate tanker and cargo ship Solong collided off the coast of Yorkshire on Monday morning. A search for a missing crew member was called off overnight.
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Navigating trade-offs on conservation: the use of participatory mapping in maritime spatial planning
03/06/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 06 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00109-6
Navigating trade-offs on conservation: the use of participatory mapping in maritime spatial planning
03/05/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 05 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00110-z
As climate change and biodiversity loss intensify, the deep seabed beckons as a source of metals for batteries. Initiating this new exploitation conflicts with international agreements to decelerate biodiversity loss through wider protections of ecosystem integrity. The poor record of terrestrial mining must not be an excuse to mine the ocean floor. Improved oversight and biodiversity protection as miners increase production on land will produce a better global biodiversity outcome.
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 | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
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