Oceans

Credit: The University of Queensland Protecting the world's oceans against accelerating damage from human activities could be cheaper and take up less space than previously thought, new research has found. The University of Queensland's Professor Anthony Richardson collaborated on the study, which looks to halt the rapid decline of marine biodiversity…

The fillet of flounder sitting on your plate comes with a severe environmental cost. To catch it, a ship running on fossil fuels spewed greenhouse gases as it dragged a trawl net across the seafloor, devastating the ecosystems in its path. Obvious enough. But new research shows that the consequences extend even further: Trawl nets are hauling up both food and a huge amount of carbon that’s supposed to be sequestered in the murky depths.In a paper publishing in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, researchers have…

After the partial failure of a plan to simultaneously steal an NFT and a Van Gogh painting, a team of art thieves led by mastermind Cyrus (Kevin Hart) must work with Interpol to lift $500m worth of gold bullion from a passenger plane at 40,000ft in this brash, hollow heist movie. It’s a picture that desperately wants to emulate the easy, freewheeling charm of the Oceans series but lacks the wit, charisma and pleasing ingenuity to do so. Perhaps aware of the limitations of the screenplay, director F Gary Gray deploys an…

An orca matriarch known as "one of the most prolific female killer whales" on record is presumed dead after nearly a year without a sighting on the West Coast, according to B.C. researchers.T46, also known as Wake, was a transient or Bigg's killer whale thought to have been born in 1966.Jared Towers, a research technician with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and executive director of Bay Cetology, said Wake birthed eight calves during her reproductive years. Her daughters gave birth to 15 grandchildren, and her granddaughters…

The average litre of bottled water has nearly a quarter million pieces of ever-so-tiny nanoplastics, detected and categorized for the first time by a microscope using dual lasers.Scientists long figured there were lots of these microscopic plastic pieces, but until researchers at Columbia and Rutgers universities did their calculations they never knew how many or what kind.Looking at five samples each of three common bottled water brands, researchers found particle levels ranged from 110,000 to 400,000 per litre,…

In an effort to reduce the spread of marine invasive species, Canada ordered lobster pounds to euthanize all egg-bearing female lobsters. But two years after the measure was introduced, some in the business are still unaware of the requirement.The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has banned the long-held practice of releasing egg-bearing or "berried" female lobsters when they are discovered in holding facilities.Instead pounds "must immediately euthanize the lobster," according to licence conditions quietly introduced…

In this graph, the orange line shows the global sea surface temperature throughout 2023. The other squiggles are previous years, with the uppermost dashed black line being the average between 1982 and 2011. The dark black line at upper left is where we’re starting out 2024. Notice it’s already at a sky-high level several months before temperatures typically peak. Even the record-breaking year of 2023 didn’t see these kinds of temperatures until late March and early April.The 2023 climate reports also note that Antarctic…

But deep-sea mining is considered a risky business not just because of environmental concerns. Norway’s startups are betting on an industry that doesn’t yet exist. “It could end up not becoming an industry at all because the resources are not there or the technology’s not good enough,” says Håkon Knudsen Toven, spokesperson for the industry group Offshore Norway. “I think that’s one of the main reasons why for now you only have some small startups.”Loke might be focused on the Norwegian seabed’s manganese crust, but…

In a memo published in November 2023, Norwegian law firm Wilkborg Rein said that passing the bill with an inadequate environmental assessment could violate not only the country’s own laws on environmental protection, but also European and international laws. Local communities or NGOs could therefore sue, says Elise Johansen, a partner at the firm who led the memo.Yet with parliament having made its decision, the time for a comprehensive study of environmental impacts has likely now passed, says Johansen. With the…

Margot Robbie is one of the busiest people in Hollywood these days, from acting in high-profile 2023 titles like the billion-dollar blockbuster Barbie and Wes Anderson's unsurprisingly whimsical Asteroid City, to producing buzzy flicks like Saltburn through her LuckyChap production company. With such a packed schedule, something's gotta give and, sadly, it looks like that planned Ocean's Eleven prequel might just be it. In addition to producing, Robbie was set to star in the new entry in the Ocean’s franchise, alongside…