Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Heroic firefighting and a lucky turn in weather helped avert disaster once, but ‘a perfect storm of conditions’ remains During a 2024 wildfire season described as “unprecedented”, the tiny central Idaho town of Stanley and nearby Redfish Lake Lodge narrowly missed incineration by two fires: the Bench Lake and then the Wapiti blazes. It took heroic firefighting efforts and favorable turns in weather conditions for the town – a mountain mecca for tourists from around the world – to survive without the loss of a single life or home. Continue reading...

Signs tout a natural paradise, but pollution from over-farming has left Northern Ireland’s Lough Neagh choked by toxic algae The bright, cheery signs dot the shoreline like epistles from another era, a time before the calamity. “Ballyronan marina is a picturesque boating and tourist facility on the shores of Lough Neagh,” says one. “Contours of its historical past embrace the virginal shoreline.” Continue reading...

As Swiss glaciers melt at an ever-faster rate, new species move in and flourish, but entire ecosystems and an alpine culture can be lost • Photographs by Nicholas JR White From the slopes behind the village of Ernen, it is possible to see the gouge where the Fiesch glacier once tumbled towards the valley in the Bernese Alps. The curved finger of ice, rumpled like tissue, cuts between high buttresses of granite and gneiss. Now it has melted out of sight. People here once feared the monstrous ice streams, describing them as devils, but now they dread their disappearance. Like other glaciers in the Alps and globally, the Fiesch is melting at ever-increasing rates. More than ice is lost when the giants disappear: cultures, societies and entire ecosystems are braided around the glaciers. The Aletsch glacier viewed from Moosfluh, looking towards the Olmenhorn and Eggishorn peaks Continue reading...

Sea life needs protection, and the UK’s current system of marine management isn’t up to it Up to 90% of the ocean floor around Britain is covered with sand and gravel, derived from the erosion of shell and rocks. Other, more unusual habitats include maerl beds, seagrass meadows and kelp forests. These biodiverse landscapes are home to 330 species of fish, as well as seals, seahorses and thousands of lesser‑known species – which share them with the offshore energy, fishing and shipping industries. Heightened awareness of pollution from sewage and plastics means that the public knows more about marine conservation than it used to. For his 99th birthday this year, the broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough made a film, Ocean, in which he described the seas as the planet’s “greatest life support system”, and urged people to get behind efforts to protect and renew marine nature. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...