Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Cheonggyecheon stream in the South Korean capital has become an attraction – and helps with flood management, fighting air pollution and cooling the city On a crisp December morning, office workers and tourists stroll along a tree-lined stream in central Seoul, pausing on stepping stones that cross its flowing waters. It’s difficult to imagine that just over 20 years ago, this was a vast elevated highway carrying 168,000 cars daily through the heart of South Korea’s capital. Cheonggyecheon, a stream that runs for about 3.5 miles (nearly 6km) through Seoul, was one of the earliest experiments in an increasing trend in cities globally: turning spaces where there was once car or rail infrastructure into spaces for pedestrians and cyclists. It’s a powerful example of the way that these spaces can become loved and popular, along with projects such as the High Line in New York, where an old railway track has been turned into a raised park, or the city moat in Utrecht, where a multi-lane road (nicknamed the “motorway from nothing to nowhere”) was converted back into a canal, in part of a huge continuing push to allow pedestrians and cyclists to dominate the city’s centre. Continue reading...

Report criticises ‘slow progress’ on industry regulation, amid record fish mortality and concerns over welfare and environmental pollution The Scottish government has been criticised for its “slow progress” on regulating the salmon farming industry by a parliamentary inquiry that took evidence for five months before reaching its conclusion. The report reveals that MSPs “seriously considered” calling for a moratorium on new farms and expansion of existing sites due to concerns over persistently high salmon mortality rates but did not do so due to uncertainties over the impact on jobs and communities. Continue reading...

Our society emphasises the value of conquering and overcoming your fears – but I can live with the idea of not climbing every mountain Earlier this year, I finally climbed Mount Anne. This has taken an unlikely amount of time – I’ve been climbing Tasmanian mountains for years, but had never been up one of the island’s signature summits. A “peak bagging” hobby is great fun, and takes you out to all sorts of interesting places. Some Tasmanians set themselves to climb the Abels, a list of 158 mountains that are at least 1100m high, but the list compiled by the Hobart Walking Club, the one I follow, is far more ridiculous – a total of 481 summits to find your way up. A list that huge seems bigger than most of them. Continue reading...

A mussel bed in Northern California is as healthy and biodiverse as it was about 80 years ago, when two young students surveyed it shortly before one was sent to fight in World War II. Resampling the site reveals a thriving mussel bed community that also shows the mark of climate change.