05 May 2026
Photo by Todd Cravens A humpback whale that spent more than five weeks stranded in the shallow waters of Germany’s Baltic Sea coast has been released into the North Sea, after a privately funded rescue team loaded it onto a specially adapted barge and towed it hundreds of kilometres to deeper water. The whale, […]
21 Apr 2026
Photo by Michael Ziegler The North Sea is at a critical inflection point. A vast number of ageing oil and gas structures are reaching the end of their operational life and will require decommissioning, while hundreds of new offshore wind turbines are being deployed. As the basin becomes increasingly geopolitically contested, and with future considerations […]
14 Apr 2026
Image description: A puffin with fish in its beak. Photo by Tim Morgan Defra published its updated UK Marine Strategy Part One on 7 April 2026 – the first full update since 2019 and the opening of the strategy’s third six-year implementation cycle. The headline finding is stark: the UK is failing to meet Good Environmental Status in […]
07 Apr 2026
Photo by Rogue Li New research into the acoustic impact of offshore wind farms on marine life has produced a series of counterintuitive findings — and raised questions about how well the industry understands its effects on the underwater environment. PhD candidate and marine biologist Fien Demuynck, of Leiden University, spent years conducting fieldwork along the […]
31 Mar 2026
Photo by Galen Crout Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has launched a “Get Britain Drilling” campaign, calling on the government to lift its moratorium on new North Sea oil and gas licences as rising global energy prices – triggered by Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz – intensify the political debate over domestic fossil […]
31 Mar 2026
Photo by Rogue Li The Crown Estate has announced plans for a new offshore wind seabed leasing round targeting around 6GW or more of capacity, predominantly off the north-east coast of England. Offshore Wind Leasing Round 6 is scheduled to launch in the first half of 2027, with sites expected to be in water depths suitable […]
31 Mar 2026
Photo by Sander Weeteling Existing offshore wind farms in the North Sea are already redistributing up to 1.5 million tonnes of mud and associated organic carbon each year, according to new research published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment by scientists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon in Germany. The study, the first to model the combined effects of […]
17 Mar 2026
Photo by Soren Funk A year after millions of plastic pellets washed ashore on the coasts of Norfolk and Lincolnshire, clean-up teams are still working – and the full environmental impact on one of Britain’s most protected coastal ecosystems remains unclear. On 10 March 2025, the cargo ship Solong ploughed into the anchored oil tanker […]
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