13 Apr 2021

Spanning six years and seven seagrass meadows along the California coast, a paper published from the University of California, is the most extensive study yet of how seagrasses can buffer ocean acidification. The study reports on how seagrass meadows along the California coast  can alleviate low pH, or more acidic  conditions for extended periods of […]

13 Apr 2021

One way to remove microplastics from water is to encourage them to clump together into compounds that can be filtered – or, in the context of the 20-year-old Irish inventor Fionn Ferreira’s work, magnetized – out. Ferreira created a homemade ferrofluid – a magnetic mixture of oil and powdered rust – and successfully used it […]

13 Apr 2021

Crowds gathering to watch the ‘Wally’ the walrus as well as people on paddleboards, canoes and jet skis trying to get a close-up of view of him is certainly not following the advice of either the old or updated Countryside Code (launched last week) to “give wild animals plenty of space”. Seals are a much […]

06 Apr 2021

The environment secretary, George Eustice is facing a threat of legal action from shellfish farmers over claims that the government has misled the industry over its post-Brexit arrangements with the EU. Live mussels, cockles, oysters and other shellfish caught in most of the UK’s waters are no longer allowed to enter the EU following Britain […]

06 Apr 2021

Of the 15 National Parks in Britain today, only a few include the coast and none include the sea. Over the past few decades, scientists have understood much more about the value of the ocean and the importance of the marine environment to the health of the planet. Britain has designated fragile places with an […]

06 Apr 2021

Animals and Wildlife (Scotland) Act, included a ban on licensed shooting of seals to protect farmed salmon within aquaculture facilities. Also included within the Act (Section 15) was a requirement on the Scottish Parliament to report on the aquaculture sectors use of Acoustic Deterrent Devices (ADDs). ADDs emit sound with the intention of scaring away […]

06 Apr 2021

Dozens of ventures, most of them government-backed, have been exploring vast areas of the Pacific and Indian Oceans to assess their viability for mining and several companies have developed prototypes of “nodule collectors”, giant robotic machines that would drive over the seabed, gathering the rocks and piping them up to ships at the surface. Claudia […]

06 Apr 2021

Over the last 18 months there has been a rapid increase in interest in seaweed cultivation in Scotland’s inshore waters. Licence applications have been submitted for seaweed farms from Moray Firth to Argyll. To some observers this is the dawn of a sustainable form of aquaculture which could provide much-needed diversification of coastal employment, end […]