Extreme heat ‘the new normal’, says UN chief, as authorities across the continent issue health warnings
A vicious heatwave has engulfed southern Europe, with punishing temperatures that have reached highs of 46C (114.8F) in Spain and placed almost the entirety of mainland France under alert.
Extreme heat, made stronger by fossil fuel pollution, has for several days scorched Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece as southern Europe endures its first major heatwave of the summer.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
06/30/2025 - 07:39
06/30/2025 - 06:47
Spectators use fans and umbrellas and players offered ice packs on court to try to cool off
Tennis fans faced the hottest start to Wimbledon on record on Monday as temperatures soared to 32C.
Spectators used fans and umbrellas to cope with the heat as they queued from the early hours to watch players including Emma Raducanu, the British women’s No 1; and the defending men’s champion, Carlos Alcaraz, who rushed to the aid of a fan who collapsed.
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06/30/2025 - 06:15
Views on apex predator still polarised, says Natural England head, as activists apply for trial release in Northumberland
The head of the government’s wildlife regulator has said he remains enthusiastic about reintroducing lynx to Britain and would be “absolutely delighted” if it could be achieved during his two-year term.
But Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, said debates over the animal’s release were “still quite polarised” and more engagement was required to understand how communities would be affected.
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06/30/2025 - 05:31
Authorities issue extreme heat, health and wildfire warnings with highest temperatures forecast in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain
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06/30/2025 - 05:00
These supposedly serious cetaceans have been spotted massaging each other with kelp stalks. This is the sort of performative nonsense you’d expect from dolphins
I’ve thought for a while that it would be nice to be an orca. Not because I hate boats and they sink them (though I get it – the briny depths are none of our human business). What actually appeals is the idea of being charismatic megafauna – I love that phrase – and also important as a post-menopausal female. Orcas are one of very few species that go through menopause, living for decades after their reproductive years. These older matriarchs remain an integral part of the community, improving pod survival rates thanks to being “repositories of ecological knowledge”, caring for young and even, research suggests, keeping their giant adult sons safe from being attacked. The fact that they’re fashion-conscious is a bonus: the 80s orca trend for wearing jaunty salmon fascinators was revived, intriguingly, in some pods last December; other orcas have been observed draping themselves artistically in kelp.
But new research is giving me pause. Now orcas in the Salish Sea off the coast of Washington state have been filmed picking kelp stalks and “massaging” each other with them. In sightings of this behaviour, reported and dubbed “allokelping” by the Center for Whale Research, “the two whales then manoeuvre to keep the kelp between them while rolling it across their bodies … During contact, whales roll and twist their bodies, often adopting an exaggerated S-shaped posture.”
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06/30/2025 - 04:15
These starfish relatives have lots of remarkable features and are a keystone species. My hope is that we will recognise how vital these charismatic creatures are
Brittle stars have a lot of remarkable features as a species. Many of them are bioluminescent and can flash blue light; some will have patterns and do displays. These slender relatives of starfish can be very beautiful to look at and come in a range of colours – in the tropics, for example, they can be red, black or orange. And they’ve got spines all over them, so they can look quite ornate.
They can also regenerate. Fish and other creatures will often nip off bits of their arms – known as sublethal predation – so they are constantly regenerating themselves. You can even break off all their arms, and sometimes even half the disc, and the brittle star will still regenerate.
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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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