Breaking Waves: Ocean News

03/09/2025 - 16:23
This blog is now closed Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast There is a rescue under way in Newmarket Road, Windsor, where cars have tried to drive through flood waters. The Queensland government has stressed to use common sense, adjust speeds and not drive through flood waters. There has been some heavy rainfall overnight and the roads are dangerous. We’ve been working on a budget now, in the normal course, and budget submissions have been presented to the expenditure review committee. I sit on that. And so we’ve been very busy in over the last few months, really, and particularly over the last few weeks, in the lead-up to the budget. Continue reading...
03/09/2025 - 07:00
Damage to trees in western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene was ‘extraordinary and humbling’ but urban areas face particular problems The city of Asheville and its surrounding areas have been left vulnerable to floods, fires and extreme heat after Hurricane Helene uprooted thousands of trees that provided shade and protection from storms. Helene was catastrophic for the region’s trees – in part due to the heavy precursor rainstorm that pounded southern Appalachia for two days straight, drenching the soil before Helene hit, bringing yet more heavy rain and 60-100mph winds. Continue reading...
03/09/2025 - 01:24
Millions of people in northern NSW and south-east Queensland are bunkering down for dangerous conditions including flash flooding, heavy rain and intense winds after the storm now downgraded to a tropical low crossed the coast Ex-Cyclone Alfred LIVE: latest news and updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Continue reading...
03/08/2025 - 19:48
South-east Queensland and northern NSW face further heavy downpours and flash flooding Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred LIVE: latest news and updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast More than 230,000 households and businesses are without power and flash flooding alerts have been issued for coastal areas in the aftermath of ex-tropical cyclone Alfred. The warnings follow heavy rain across southeast Queensland overnight and are clustered around the Brisbane, Gold Coast, Logan and Ipswich council areas. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...
03/08/2025 - 12:00
In the Zuleta community in Ecuador, farming is about more than just sustenance: it is about cultivating a deep relationship with the land based on ancestral knowledge. In her travels in the region, Colombo-Ecuadorian photographer Yinna Higuera collaborates with rural women, who in exchange share their understanding of medicinal plants and give her leaves from their gardens. In her Traces series, which has been shortlisted for a Sony world photography award, Higuera uses chlorophyll printing to superimpose the women’s portraits on banana leaves, vegetables and herbs. “Each of these women has a unique story,” she says, “yet they all share a profound bond with the land. Through these portraits, my goal is to make their strength and wisdom visible, honouring their role as stewards of the earth.” Traces is shortlisted in the creative category, professional competition, Sony world photography awards 2025. Exhibition at Somerset House, London, 17 April to 5 May, worldphoto.org Continue reading...
03/07/2025 - 13:00
Biden-era suit sought to curb emissions of the carcinogen chloroprene at Denka plant formerly owned by DuPont The Donald Trump administration has formally agreed to drop a landmark environmental justice case in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” region, marking a blow to clean air advocates in the region and a win for the Japanese petrochemical giant at the centre of the litigation. Legal filings made public on Friday morning reveal that Trump’s Department of Justice agreed to dismiss a long-running lawsuit against the operators of a synthetic rubber plant in Reserve, Louisiana, which is allegedly largely responsible for some of the highest cancer risk rates in the US for the surrounding majority-Black neighborhoods. Continue reading...
03/07/2025 - 09:00
Bob Brown Foundation’s drone footage appears to show farm workers pumping live salmon into a tub carrying dead fish and then sealing it Tropical Cyclone Alfred LIVE: latest news and updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast At least 1 million salmon died at Tasmanian fish farms and were dumped at landfill sites and rendering plants in February in what authorities and the industry described as an “unprecedented” mass death triggered by a bacterium outbreak. The revelation that waste facilities in Tasmania’s south received more than 5,500 tonnes of dead salmon last month – equivalent to about 1.07 million full-grown Atlantic salmon, or 8% of total annual production in the state – followed weeks of reports of fatty chunks of fish washing up on beaches in the Huon Valley and on Bruny Island. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...
03/06/2025 - 14:33
BoM path tracker shows ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred reaching mainland between Maroochydore and Brisbane Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred: what we know so far Send us your photographs and videos of ex-Cyclone Alfred Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Welfare recipients told to perform mutual obligations as cyclone bears down We have a news story this morning about the impact the cyclone is already having on life in Queensland. Fallen trees and giant stands of bamboo blocked the single road to our farm until the army and council brought heavy machinery to clear a path some time after. We were without running water or power for days, maybe weeks, the packing shed a makeshift kitchen where we ate meals cooked off a gas barbecue and drank instant coffee made with rainwater and UHT milk to the hum of a generator. Continue reading...
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.