Scientists believe they may now have found the cause of Fair Isle’s pollution – and warn that it should be ringing alarm bells in other coastal areas
When the wind picks up on Fair Isle, Britain’s most remote inhabited island, puffs of seafoam start to drift across fields like tumbleweed. The pale yellow blobs are ubiquitous enough to hold their own place in the island’s mythology: known as the butter churned by a local troll, Lukki Minni.
“When the Atlantic gets going, foam covers the whole island,” says Tommy Hyndman, an artist who moved to the Fair Isle from upstate New York two decades ago. “Your windows get caked and your plants all die from the salt.”
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
06/02/2026 - 03:00
06/02/2026 - 02:00
UN agency predicts phenomenon that supercharges weather extremes has 80% chance of forming before September
The world must prepare for the imminent return of El Niño and the supercharged weather extremes it brings, the UN has warned.
The powerful natural weather pattern, which raises global temperatures and worsens some rainfall, has an 80% chance of forming before September and a 90% chance before November, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday.
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06/01/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 02 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00213-1
Empirical analysis of project–purchaser dynamics in Japan’s blue carbon dioxide removal credit scheme
06/01/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 02 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00209-x
Interdisciplinarity in marine sciences is key to addressing ocean challenges
06/01/2026 - 18:01
Net zero industry accounts for more than a million jobs and benefits whole country, according to CBI Economics
More than a million jobs, higher wages, nearly half a trillion pounds in investment in the pipeline – the UK’s green economy is powering ahead, according to research by the country’s leading business organisation.
The net zero economy, which is worth more than £100bn a year, benefits all of the UK, according to the CBI Economics analysis commissioned by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank, despite critics who want to abolish the UK’s net zero targets.
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06/01/2026 - 11:35
Our wildlife series Young Country Diary is looking for articles written by children, about their summer encounters with nature
Once again, the Young Country Diary series is open for submissions! Every three months we ask you to send us an article written by a child aged 8-14.
The article needs to be about a recent encounter they’ve had with nature – whether it’s a nesting bird, a beetle on the move, a field full of flowers.
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06/01/2026 - 07:55
Letting nature take over at a former dairy farm has resulted in a surge of species in just three years
Three years of rewilding on a former dairy farm in east Somerset have led to the number of recorded bird species soaring from 67 to 94, butterfly species rising from 11 to 24 and small mammals growing in number.
Heal Somerset, the first site acquired by the charity Heal Rewilding, has produced a state of nature report mirroring a national survey by environmental charities that has tracked the decline in nature.
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06/01/2026 - 04:00
Seasonal wardens and netted fences are helping protect the rare ground-nesting birds that arrive each spring on the UK’s shores
On Ross Sands in Northumberland, a little tern has caught sight of a group of people and is sprinting across the beach. “It wants us to follow it,” says Andrew Craggs, senior manager at Lindisfarne national nature reserve. “It’s a diversionary thing – it’s got a scrape and it wants to take us away because it thinks we’re predators.”
Craggs is no predator, and he’s not after the scrape – a small pit the ground-nesting bird has dug into the sand to lay its eggs. He is a guardian of these little birds, as well as more than 3,500 hectares (8,600 acres) of sand dunes, saltmarsh and mudflats that make up this tranquil nature reserve perched on the tip of England’s north-east coast.
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06/01/2026 - 02:55
A world-famous conservation program that helped save Sweden’s endangered wolverines is now struggling as funding stagnates and local trust erodes. Researchers say the decline offers a cautionary lesson: protecting wildlife requires long-term commitment, not just early success.
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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