Toxic mass chiselled out of Feltham pipes amid campaign to stop people tipping harmful substances down drains
A team of water engineers have spent a month blasting and chiselling a 100-tonne fatberg loose from under the streets of west London.
The blockage consisting mainly of wet wipes glued together by congealed fat, oil and grease, was the equivalent in mass of eight doubledecker buses, stuck 10 metres below street level.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/06/2025 - 12:00
Analysis of 25 years of evidence shows most schemes are poor quality and fail to lower emissions
The failure of carbon offsets to cut planet-heating pollution is “not due to a few bad apples”, a review paper has found, but down to deep-seated systemic problems that incremental change will not solve.
Research over two decades has found “intractable” problems that have made carbon credits in most big programmes poor quality, according to the study. While the industry and diplomats have made efforts to improve the system, it found much-awaited rules agreed at a UN climate summit last year “did not substantially address the quality problem”.
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10/06/2025 - 11:16
Marineland’s warning comes after Canadian official blocked the transfer of the beluga whales to a theme park in China
Marineland has threatened to euthanize 30 beluga whales if Canada’s federal government does not provide financial support for the embattled Niagara Falls amusement park. The warning comes after the country’s fisheries minister blocked the transfer of the captive whales to a theme park in China.
Marineland, an amusement park, zoo, aquarium and forest occupying nearly 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of land in Ontario, has endured mounting scrutiny over allegations the animals are living in poor conditions. The park, which once saw millions of visitors, did not open for the summer season and is winding down its operations in anticipation of a sale. In February, a lawyer for the park said it was planning to “expeditiously” remove the remaining animals still on the grounds.
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10/06/2025 - 09:00
‘The trajectory is only up, in terms of insured costs,’ professor of climate risk warns
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The costs of extreme weather events such as floods, bushfires and storms have nearly tripled in Australia since the 1990s, insurers have warned, with poorer communities disproportionately burdened.
The climate crisis, ageing infrastructure and growing populations in increasingly affected regions have left the country more vulnerable, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Insurance Council of Australia.
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10/06/2025 - 06:00
Critics say move to axe Bill Clinton’s ‘roadless rule’ that protected key old-growth forests will be devastating to environment
In 1999, Bill Clinton ascended one of the highest summits in Virginia to announce that “the last, best unprotected wild lands anywhere in our nation” would be shielded by a new rule that banned roads, drilling and other disturbances within America’s most prized forests.
But today, this site in George Washington national forest, along with other near-pristine forests across the US that amount to 58m acres, equivalent to the size of the UK, could soon see chainsaws whir and logging trucks rumble through them amid a push by Donald Trump to raze these ecosystems for timber.
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10/06/2025 - 04:00
The insects’ brilliant hues evolved in lush ecosystems to help them survive. Now they are becoming more muted to adapt to degraded landscapes – and they are not the only things dulling down
Photographs by Roberto García-Roa
The world is becoming less colourful. For butterflies, bold and bright wings once meant survival, helping them attract mates and hide from prey. But a new research project suggests that as humans replace rich tropical forests with monochrome, the colour of other creatures is leaching away.
“The colours on a butterfly’s wings are not trivial – they have been designed over millions of years,” says researcher and photographer Roberto García-Roa, who is part of a project in Brazil documenting how habitat loss is bleaching the natural world of colour.
Amiga arnaca found in a eucalyptus plantation, where scientists observed butterflies were less colourful than in native forests
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09/29/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 30 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00152-3
Restoration and management of an Indigenous aquaculture system helps mitigate climate change impacts to estuarine fisheries
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 | [email protected] +12077011069
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