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Salmon farming in crisis: 'We are seeing a chemical arms race in the seas'
Rare only 40 years ago, farmed salmon is now taken for granted in our kitchens. But the growth of the industry has come at great cost
Every day, salmon farmers across the world walk into steel cages – in the seas off Scotland or Norway or Iceland – and throw in food. Lots of food; they must feed tens of thousands of fish before the day is over. They must also check if there are problems, and there is one particular problem they are coming across more and more often. Six months ago, I met one of these salmon farmers, on the Isle of Skye. He looked at me and held out a palm – in it was a small, ugly-looking creature, all articulated shell and tentacles: a sea louse. He could crush it between his fingers, but said he was impressed that this parasite, which lives by attaching itself to a fish and eating its blood and skin, was threatening not just his own job, but could potentially wipe out a global multibillion-dollar industry that feeds millions of people.
“For a wee creature, it is impressive. But what can we do?” he asks. “Sometimes it seems nature is against us and we are fighting a losing battle. They are everywhere now, and just a few can kill a fish. When I started in fish farming 30 years ago, there were barely any. Now they are causing great problems.”
Continue reading...A glorious presence suddenly surfaces – a drake goosander
Llanfairfechan, Gwynedd In their usual river habitat, these magnificent, large, hole-nesting ducks are shy and rightly so
Traeth Lafan’s wide expanse of sand is a landscape that draws you in, like the Elenydd moors or the high Arctic, through its abstraction. Nothing’s solid here; all’s sketched and coloured in shifting tones of water and light. Even history has become ambiguous, uncertain. These are drowned lands, their legends tide-steeped, wind-honed.
I come here for the birds, to which the fluid landscape accords a peculiar gift. Its bas-relief undulations, its distances, absorb and hide. What on first glance appears empty, on closer scrutiny teems with life. Though on this grey and turbulent day, with a flooding tide, little stirs. A couple of oystercatchers, heavy-billed, speed past. A little egret lifts out of a filling channel and braves the buffets as it heads back towards the old heronry at Penrhyn Point. In the stand of Scots Pine at the furthermost end of the promenade ravens discourse, shear down to the water’s edge, soar aloft with shellfish in their bills, to drop them from a height on the concrete sea-wall before folding their wings and swooping down to pick out the morsel of flesh.
Continue reading...Need for transparency as 'slush fund' allegations get bandied about | Lenore Taylor
If the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility hasn’t got a risk policy yet, how can it be considering a $1bn loan for the Adani project?
We don’t yet know whether the $5bn Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) will be – as was alleged in parliament this week – a “slush fund” used to pursue the government’s “pro-coal agenda”.
But we do know some government ministers are absolutely determined to promote coal mining and generation – in particular the Indian conglomerate Adani’s $21bn Carmichael coalmine in Queensland – without a thought for how it will contribute to the global warming that is bleaching the Great Barrier Reef up and down the Queensland coastline and increasing the intensity of cyclones.
Continue reading...New AEMO boss Audrey Zibelman to transform energy market
‘The river is life’ - a photographer among the Arawete in Brazil
Alice Kohler shares photos and thoughts on her time in the Xingu river basin in the Brazilian Amazon
Alice Kohler is a Brazilian photographer who has visited over 20 countries during her career. In Brazil in particular she has travelled into some of the remotest parts of the Amazon basin and spent time with many of the country’s indigenous peoples, including the Araweté, Asurini, Guarani, Kamaiura, Karajá, Kayapo, Kuikuro, Parakanã, Pareci, Xavante and Yawalapiti.
An exhibition of Kohler’s photographs of the Araweté opens in Cusco in neighbouring Peru today, held at a newly-opened Amazon-themed gallery run by Peruvian company Xapiri. Kohler and Xapiri are holding the exhibition out of concern for the impacts on the Araweté and many others of the Belo Monte dam complex - arguably the world’s most well-known hydroelectric power project because of the opposition it has generated - as well as plans by a Canadian-headquartered company, Belo Sun Mining, to develop what would reportedly be Brazil’s biggest open sky gold mine.
Continue reading...Most of Mars' air was 'lost to space'
American badger singlehandedly buries cow – timelapse video
Researchers at Utah University have captured video of an American badger burying a calf carcass in Utah’s Grassy Mountains. The images show the badger digging around the cow’s body, which then sinks into the tunnels below, before covering it with earth. It then returned to feed on it over the coming weeks. This behaviour has never before been caught on camera
Continue reading...Can you dig it? Badger captured on camera burying cow
In an astonishing display of digging prowess, an American badger has been seen completely burying a calf carcass several times bigger than itself
An American badger has been captured burying the carcass of a cow – a previously unrecorded behaviour – in an astonishing display of the creature’s digging prowess.
The images were taken by camera traps set up by researchers who had left seven calf carcasses in Utah’s Grassy Mountains in January last year in an attempt to study which scavengers descended on the animals.
Continue reading...Birth of Britain’s first crowned sifaka lemur caught on camera – video report
The birth of Britain’s first crowned sifaka, a type of rare lemur, has been filmed by staff at the Cotswold Wildlife Park. Yousstwo, a male pup, was born to parents Bafana and Tahina in December. The sifaka lemur is critically endangered in Madagascar, so the birth has extra significance
The week in wildlife – in pictures
Orcas on the attack, bioluminescent mushrooms and a giant Australian cuttlefish are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...Meet the fish with the heroin-like bite
Rare tigers, US policy, and cephalopods – green news roundup
The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
Continue reading...'Footballing' tortoise Bubba is online hit
Is it socially acceptable to challenge climate denial? | Adam Corner
A new study found people were less likely to want to become friends with those who confronted climate sceptics. How can we overcome these attitudes?
When does a social attitude become morally unacceptable enough that it is OK to challenge and confront it?
That is the question that motivated a new study conducted at the University of Exeter in which participants were given descriptions of people being confronted after expressing certain views. When the views expressed a disregard for racial equality, the confrontations were approved of. But challenging – even politely – a disregard for climate change was seen as carrying a social cost by the students taking part in the experiment.
Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today | John Abraham
Scott Pruitt denies basic science that we’ve understood for over a century
The current head of the US Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt does not believe or understand long-known principles of climate science and basic physics. Recently he claimed on CNBC that carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to global warming:
I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So, no, I would not agree that’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. But we don’t know that yet. We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.
Continue reading...Striking drone footage shows Hinkley Point C under construction – video
Seen from a drone’s eye view, the enormous earthmoving trucks, buses and tractors criss-crossing this corner of Somerset look like toy town models. The vehicles are dwarfed by their surroundings at Hinkley Point, where new footage has revealed the full scale of the site being prepared for Britain’s first new nuclear power station in a generation.
Continue reading...Coalition commits to $110m for Port Augusta solar towers
Japan kills more than 300 whales in annual Antarctic hunt
Whaling fleet returns to port after slaughtering hundreds of minke whales, in defiance of moratorium on hunting and global criticism
A Japanese whaling fleet returned to port on Friday after an annual Antarctic hunt that killed more than 300 of the mammals, as Tokyo pursues the programme in defiance of global criticism.
The fleet set sail for the Southern Ocean in November, with plans to slaughter 333 minke whales, flouting a worldwide moratorium and opposition led by Australia and New Zealand.
Continue reading...Funding boost to help save England's rarest species from extinction
Shrill carder bee and chequered skipper butterfly are among 20 endangered bugs, bees, butterflies and plants to benefit from £4.6m in lottery funding
Efforts to save some of England’s rarest species, including the shrill carder bee and the chequered skipper butterfly, from extinction are being backed by £4.6m in lottery funding.
Continue reading...Hedgehog-like critters arrive at Chester Zoo
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