To restore coastal marine areas, we need to work across multiple habitats simultaneously – PNAS
Restoration of coastal marine habitats—often conducted under the umbrella of “nature-based solutions”—is one of the key actions underpinning global intergovernmental agreements, including the Paris Agreement and the 2021–2030 United Nations (UN) Decade of Restoration. To achieve global biodiversity and restoration targets…we need methods that accelerate and scale up restoration activities in size and impact. Part of the solution is cross-habitat facilitation—positive interactions that occur when processes generated in one habitat benefit another…
Hurricanes push heat deeper into the ocean than scientists realized, boosting long-term ocean warming, new research shows – the Conversation
Seven years ago an exceptionally strong El Niño took hold in the Pacific Ocean, triggering a cascade of damaging changes to the world’s weather. Indonesia was plunged into a deep drought that fueled exceptional wildfires, while heavy rains inundated villages and farmers’ fields in parts of the Horn of Africa. The event also helped make 2016 the planet’s hottest year on record. Now El Niño is back…
Is Fukushima wastewater release safe? What the science says – Nature
Despite concerns from several nations and international groups, Japan is pressing ahead with plans to release water contaminated by the 2011 meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean. Starting sometime this year and continuing for the next 30 years, Japan will slowly release treated water stored in tanks at the site into the ocean through a pipeline extending one kilometre from the coast. But just how safe is the water to the marine environment and humans across the Pacific region?
My art uses plastic recovered from beaches around the world to understand how our consumer society is transforming the ocean – the Conversation
“I am obsessed with plastic objects. I harvest them from the ocean for the stories they hold…Each object has the potential to be a message from the sea – a poem, a cipher, a metaphor, a warning. My work collecting and photographing ocean plastic and turning it into art began with an epiphany in 2005, on a far-flung beach at the southern tip of the Big Island of Hawaii…
Curious Kids: If plastic comes from oil and gas, which come originally from plants, why isn’t it biodegradable? – the Conversation
Question from Neerupama, age 11, Delhi, India..
To better understand why plastics don’t biodegrade, let’s start with how plastics are made and how biodegradation works…
How Plastics Are Poisoning Us – the New Yorker
They both release and attract toxic chemicals, and appear everywhere from human placentas to chasms thirty-six thousand feet beneath the sea…How worried should we be about what’s become known as “the plastic pollution crisis”? And what can be done about it? These questions lie at the heart of several recent books that take up what one author calls “the plastic trap…”
AP Photos In Sri Lanka, Fishers Suffer as Sea Erosion Destroys Homes and Beaches – AP
Ranjith Sunimal Fernando now has a shell of a home at the edge of Sri Lanka’s coast, lost to the sea. Waves lap past the broken walls into damaged, empty rooms.
“One night last month, my son went to the bathroom and I suddenly heard him screaming, ‘our house has gone into the sea!’,” said Fernando, a 58-year-old fisher born and raised in Iranawila, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the capital, Colombo…
St. Johns County receives $59 million for coastal protection, ‘managed retreat’ – First Coast News
Other funded projects include a railroad overpass in Nocatee and erosion control in North Ponte Vedra Beach.
With Gov. Ron DeSantis putting pen to paper in signing the state’s budget for the fiscal year Thursday, St. Johns County received $59 million — the largest amount of state appropriations the county has ever received and far more than the $12.4 million it got last year…
The Disappearing Beach – NJ.com
More than $2.6 billion has been spent dumping sand onto the Jersey Shore. Was it worth it?
Waves lap up against the narrow shore of North Wildwood as Patrick Rosenello straightens his sunglasses, and leans against the steel seawall, the soft sand crumbling beneath his tan dress shoes.
Quiet as he is, the mayor doesn’t have to utter a word about how important the tiny specks of sediment are to the resort town. His navy sweater vest says it all.
The municipality’s seal features two dolphins flanking the phrase “Sun and Sand.”