The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/07/2025 - 03:00
11/07/2025 - 02:00
From night walks with children to switching off streetlights and rewilding areas, naturalists are working to save Europe’s dwindling populations
An hour or so after sunset, green twinkles of possibility gleam beneath the hedgerows of Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset. Under an orange August moon, the last female glow-worms of the season are making one final push at finding a mate.
For almost 20 years, Peter Bright and other volunteers have combed the village’s shrubberies and grasslands, searching for the bioluminescent beetles as part of the UK glow-worm survey. Most years, they have counted between 100 and 150, rising to 248 in 2017.
Ben Cooke, a National Trust ranger, places a glow-worm trap near Winspit Quarry in Dorset. Photograph: P Flude/Guardian
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11/06/2025 - 18:01
History tells us that polite incrementalism and political kowtowing will prevail at Cop30 – even as catastrophe unfolds around us
As world leaders gather in Brazil this year for Cop30 – the first Amazonian Cop – it’s worth doing a quick reality check on how we are collectively tracking to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite 30 years of UN climate summits, about half of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution has been emitted since 1990. Incidentally, 1990 was the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the global authority on climate change science – released its First Assessment Report confirming the threat of human-caused global warming. As scientists all over the world prepare the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report, we do so knowing that our work is still being overshadowed by politics. Despite all the well-intentioned half-measures, the truth is that the world is still disastrously off track to limit dangerous climate change.
Dr Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer from the University of Melbourne. She served as a lead author on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on the Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report
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Amazon lakes hit ‘unbearable’ hot-tub temperatures amid mass die-offs of pink river dolphins – study
11/06/2025 - 14:00
Droughts and heatwaves causing water in some areas to reach 41C, killing fish and endangered dolphins, say researchers
Amazonian lakes are being transformed into simmering basins hotter than spa baths as severe heatwaves and drought grip the region, research shows.
The temperature of one lake exceeded 40C (104F) as water levels plummeted under intense sunlight and cloudless skies. The extreme heat triggered mass die-offs among endangered Amazon river dolphins and fish, which cannot survive in such high temperatures.
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11/06/2025 - 09:32
UN secretary general António Guterres urges opening session in Brazil to bring about a ‘paradigm shift’
Triple-whammy of hottest ever years risks ‘irreversible damage’, says UN
The failure to limit global heating to 1.5C is a “moral failure and deadly negligence”, the UN secretary general has said at the opening session of the Cop30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.
António Guterres said even a temporary overshoot would have “dramatic consequences. It could push ecosystems past catastrophic tipping points, expose billions to unliveable conditions and amplify threats to peace and security.”
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10/31/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 01 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00160-3
Human activities in coastal and marine regions increasingly generate inter-sectoral conflicts, emphasizing the need of effective spatial planning. India’s marine ecosystems, which sustain millions of livelihoods, are under mounting pressure from overexploitation, climate change and competing human uses. To address these challenges, developing a robust marine spatial planning framework is essential for both conservation and sustainable ocean use. Puducherry, with high recreational potential, serves as a pilot site for such an initiative, aiming to balancing stakeholder interests and needs, strengthening coastal resilience, and promoting a sustainable blue economy.
10/30/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 31 October 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00153-2
Distant-water fleets, local consequences: lessons from a case study in Liberia
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 | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
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