Breaking Waves: Ocean News

North Atlantic populations are at a historic low, and this year 33 of the country’s rivers were closed during the fishing season as salmon farming and the climate crisis threaten the fish’s future “What is Norway without the fjords and the mountains?” asks Ann-Britt Bogen from her candlelit kitchen, the wild Gaula River flowing by outside the window, the hillside covered by low-lying cloud. For centuries, the river, which runs 153km (95 miles) from the mountains near the Swedish border to Trondheim fjord, has attracted salmon – and fishers – year after year. But this spring the salmon, particularly the medium and larger-sized fish, did not come back from the ocean, raising such alarm over the collapse of the salmon population that the river, along with dozens of others in central and southern Norway, was abruptly closed for the first time. Continue reading...

Greek authorities have started collecting hundreds of thousands of dead fish that poured into a tourist port in the central coastal city of Volos this week after being displaced from their usual freshwater habitats during flooding last year. 'It spans kilometres,' a city council member, Stelios Limnios, told Reuters. 'It’s not just along the coast, but also in the centre of the Pagasetic Gulf,' he said, referring to the waters off Volos, where the coast is lined with holiday homes. There have been warnings that the rotting fish could create an environmental disaster for other species in the area Greece tourist port flooded with hundreds of thousands of dead fish Continue reading...

As multinationals and researchers harvest rare organisms around the world, anger is rising in the global south over the unpaid use of lucrative genetic codes found on their land Even in the warm summer sun, the stagnant puddles and harsh rock faces of Ribblehead quarry in North Yorkshire feel like an unlikely frontier of the AI industrial revolution. Standing next to a waterfall that bursts out from the fractured rock, Bupe Mwambingu reaches into the green sludge behind the cascade and emerges with fistful of algae. Balancing precariously on the rocks, the researcher passes the dripping mass to her colleague Emma Bolton, who notes their GPS coordinates and the acidity, temperature and light exposure on a phone app. Continue reading...

Research for South Western Railway finds passengers who listened to natural soundscapes reported 35% reduction in stress levels At the end of summer even adults suffer that “back to school” feeling as they resume stressful commutes on packed trains. But instead of listening to a podcast or music, opting for a nature soundtrack of birdsong or waterfalls could be the key to a “zen” commute, according to a study. The research, undertaken by South Western Railway (SWR) on one of its trains and analysed by Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford, measured the impact of listening to nature soundscapes on passengers’ stress levels and relaxation. Continue reading...