Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Exclusive: Invasive Species Council demands audit of all defence sites after red imported fire ants detected at Swartz Barracks outside Queensland containment zone Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast Defence bases pose a “huge risk” when it comes to stopping the spread of invasive fire ants in Australia, with experts suggesting there has been “a massive surveillance failure” on the commonwealth-owned properties. Fire ants have been detected at eight defence sites in Queensland. Seven are within the state’s 700,000-hectare fire ants containment zone, which stretches from the Gold Coast to Caboolture. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Continue reading...

Court grants temporary halt to program designed to stop ‘upwind’ states from causing pollution that flows to ‘downwind’ neighbors Conservative bloc Alito – Majority Barrett – Minority Gorsuch – Majority Kavanaugh – Majority Roberts – Majority Thomas – Majority Jackson – Minority Kagan – Minority Sotomayor – Minority Continue reading...

Almost 15 years after federal law put free water on school menus, states still struggle with how to guarantee access Christina Hecht remembers how water made its way into school lunch law because the process was unusually easy. Back in the mid-2000s, a researcher toured school cafeterias in California and wondered, “What are these kids to do if they want a drink of water?” said Hecht, a policy adviser at the University of California’s Nutrition Policy Institute. At the time, 40% of the state’s schools failed to offer free water in their cafeterias. That fact eventually reached the then governor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, who moved to pass SB 1413 requiring schools to offer free, fresh water during mealtimes. Advocates then used California’s example to convince US senators working on 2010’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) – a federal package setting nutrition standards and food funding for public schools and childcare centers – to add drinking water to that legislation, too. Continue reading...

Walking a 100-mile stretch of coastline reveals how a pioneering project is transforming the seascape, rivers and land Read more in this series On a blustery morning in May on Shoreham-by-Sea’s west beach, Eric Smith and George Short are pointing out treasures the waves have left on the tideline. Cuttlefish bones and balls of whelk eggs, they say, are evidence of recovering marine habitats. “Just give nature a bit of space and it will come back,” says Smith, 76, a former lorry driver by trade, freediver by choice. He first started diving off the Sussex coast at the age of 11, and still recalls the underwater “garden of Eden” of his childhood, a kelp forest teeming with bream, lobsters and cuttlefish that stretched for 25 miles (40km) between Shoreham and Selsey Bill. It vanished after years of intensive trawling, a destructive form of fishing involving dragging heavy nets along the seabed. Whelk eggs and seaweed. Photograph: Urszula Sołtys/the Guardian Continue reading...