Layoffs and funding cuts to Fema and Noaa will impact how they predict and respond to disasters, warns professor Samantha Montano
The Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to disaster management will cost lives in the US, with hollowed-out agencies unable to accurately predict, prepare for or respond to extreme weather events, earthquakes and pandemics, a leading expert has warned.
Samantha Montano, professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy and author of Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis, said the death toll from disasters including hurricanes, tornadoes and water pollution will rise in the US unless Trump backtracks on mass layoffs and funding cuts to key agencies. That includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), whose work relies heavily on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), which is also being dismantled.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
05/05/2025 - 06:09
05/05/2025 - 00:00
Exclusive: Surprise challenger Zack Polanski says party can learn from success of Nigel Farage and Reform UK
A leading Green has launched a surprise campaign to oust Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay as party leaders, saying the party needs to be less timid and transform itself into a radical, mass-membership “eco-populism” movement.
Zack Polanski, who has been deputy leader since 2022 and serves as a London assembly member, will challenge Denyer and Ramsay this summer despite them taking the party to its best-ever general election result last year, winning four seats.
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05/04/2025 - 21:11
Gen Z want the government to address the big structural problems: housing supply, inequality and climate
Australia news live: latest politics and federal election updates
Full federal election results: live Australian Senate seat count
I often write about how younger Australians are carving out a different political identity from older generations. But the election result has reminded us of what cuts across age and sits in our national core. That deep-seated Aussie reaction: “yeah-nah, that’s a bit much” when things go too far. We’re allergic to imported bravado, anything too loud, too messianic. And, when pushed, we don’t shout – we shrug.
This election was one long shrug. A rejection of chaos and division, not through fury but through an assertive, ballot-powered recoil.
Dr Intifar Chowdhury is a youth researcher and a lecturer in government at Flinders University
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05/04/2025 - 17:26
Seventh season of hit ‘slow TV’ show followed annual trek of moose (or elk) heading to summer pastures
For thousands of years, moose have crossed rivers, navigated thawing forests and quietly followed ancient trails toward their summer pastures in northern Sweden.
A 24-hour live stream gave millions of viewers front-row seats to watch every unhurried step of the journey.
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05/04/2025 - 10:00
US researchers link BHP, Rio Tinto, Santos, Whitehaven Coal and Woodside Energy to specific climate harms over three decades
Australian federal election results 2025 LIVE – latest Australia news and updates
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Five of Australia’s biggest fossil fuel producers could be on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars in damages after a US research team developed a method to link individual companies to specific climate harms and put a dollar figure to the impact.
This is the result of a new peer-review study published in the journal Nature that sought to establish a method that would allow courts to quantify the economic loss caused by fossil fuel producers for one kind of climate impact – extreme heat.
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05/02/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 03 May 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00111-y
Management approach matters: meeting seagrass recovery and carbon mitigation goals
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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