Breaking Waves: Ocean News

After being introduced to the state in the 1970s, there are now more attacks by moose than by puma and bears combined. Has the species become too successful? One morning in the winter of 1978, a handful of state wildlife staff huddled together in the Uinta Mountains in north-eastern Utah. Deep snows coated the peaks and filled the valleys. A pair of helicopters cruised over the frozen landscape, helping those on the ground search for their prize: a cow moose in a snowy meadow. Crouched in one of the aircraft, a man aimed his rifle: there was a sharp report, and the cow took off at a run. Within minutes her legs went wobbly as the tranquilliser in the dart took effect, and the crew landed and got to work. 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...

State not acting fast enough to build desalination stations to deal with dwindling rainfall and resulting drought, say critics On 8 June, anger over months of water rationing spilled over in the drought-stricken central Algerian town of Tiaret, where balaclava-wearing demonstrators barricaded roads and burned tyres. Rationing had been introduced to deal with a drought in parts of Algeria and neighbouring Morocco where the amount of rainfall that had historically replenished critical reservoirs was much reduced. Taps had been running dry for months, forcing people in the region – a semi-arid, high-desert plateau increasingly plagued by extreme heat – to queue to access water. Continue reading...

Days of flooding have submerged homes and farmland across South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota At least two people have died as a result of devastating floods in the US midwest. Flood warnings remain in place across South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota as more rainfall and storms are expected to hit the region this week. More than 3 million people have been affected by days of flooding that washed away homes and submerged vast swaths of farmland. On Sunday, a railroad bridge connecting Iowa and South Dakota collapsed from flooding. Continue reading...