Made up of blobby tissue and living deep in the ocean, the distinctive species beat the longfin eel and pygmy pipehorse in the annual contest
It was once crowned the “world’s ugliest animal” and now the disgruntled-looking gelatinous blobfish has a new gong to its name: New Zealand’s fish of the year.
The winning species of blobfish, Psychrolutes marcidus, lives in the highly pressurised depths off the coasts of New Zealand and Australia and has developed a unique anatomy to exist. Blobfish do not have a swim bladder, a full skeleton, muscles or scales. Instead, their bodies are made up of blobby tissue with a lower density than water that allows them to float above the seafloor.
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03/18/2025 - 00:22
03/18/2025 - 00:00
Before billionaires dreamed of setting up communities on Mars, the ocean was seen as the next frontier in human habitation. Reviving this dream is Deep, a project backed by an anonymous millionaire to the tune of more than £100m that aims to establish a ‘permanent human presence’ under the sea from 2027. Guardian Seascape editor Lisa Bachelor visited the project just outside Chepstow on the Welsh border, and tells Madeleine Finlay what scientists hope to learn about the ocean by spending extended periods living underwater
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03/17/2025 - 22:51
BYD reveals new platform with charging speeds of 1,000 kW, which would be twice as fast as Tesla’s superchargers
Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker BYD has unveiled a new charging system that it said could make it possible for EVs to charge as quickly as it takes to refill with petrol and announced for the first time that it would build a charging network across China.
The so-called “super e-platform” will be capable of peak charging speeds of 1,000 kilowatts (kW), enabling cars that use it to travel 400km (249 miles) on a five-minute charge, founder Wang Chuanfu said at an event livestreamed from the company’s Shenzhen headquarters on Monday.
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03/17/2025 - 19:34
Liberals Against Nuclear say the policy would increase bureaucracy and impose ‘massive taxpayer-backed risk’
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A group of Liberal supporters has launched an advertising campaign against the party’s plan to build taxpayer-funded nuclear power plants, arguing it “betrays Liberal values”, divides the party and “hands government back to Labor”.
The new advocacy group Liberals Against Nuclear says it rejects the Coalition’s policy as it would require the government to borrow tens of billions of dollars, swell the bureaucracy and impose “massive taxpayer-backed risk”.
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03/17/2025 - 19:15
Leafy seadragons, fish, and octopuses among creatures to have washed up dead on both Waitpinga beach and Parsons beach
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A mysterious foam on a South Australian beach is being blamed for more than 100 surfers becoming ill, and for the deaths of leafy seadragons, fish, and octopuses.
Health authorities have closed Waitpinga and Parsons Beach, about 80km south of Adelaide, and say the foam could be due to a microalgal bloom driven by hot temperatures, still water, and an ongoing marine heatwave.
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03/17/2025 - 17:30
Break in cross-party consensus on issue to be announced on Tuesday
Kemi Badenoch is dropping her party’s commitment to reaching net zero by 2050, as she launches the Conservatives’ widest policy review in a generation.
The Tory leader will give a speech on Tuesday in which she will argue that hitting Britain’s legally binding climate target is “impossible”, abandoning one of the most significant policies enacted by her recent predecessor Theresa May.
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03/17/2025 - 14:00
Fossils retain microscopic structural features including stomach contents and provide first detailed evidence in Australia for fish called Osmeriformes
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Fossil fish so exquisitely preserved that scientists have been able to reconstruct their final days from up to 16m years ago have been discovered in central New South Wales.
Several fossils of small freshwater fish, embedded in an iron-rich mineral called goethite at the McGraths Flat fossil site, have retained microscopic structural features including their stomach contents and the outlines of cells that determine colour.
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03/17/2025 - 11:00
Revealed: Edelman worked for Brazilian trade group accused of pushing for environmental rollbacks in Amazon
Edelman, the world’s largest public relations agency, is in talks to work with the Cop30 team organising the UN climate summit in the Amazon later this year despite its prior connections to a major trade group accused of lobbying to roll back measures to protect the area from deforestation, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.
The summit is set to take place in November in the city of Belém on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, which has been ravaged by deforestation linked to Brazil’s powerful agriculture industry. For the first time, the talks will be “at the epicenter of the climate crisis”, the summit’s president wrote last week. “As the Cop comes to the Amazon, forests will naturally be a central topic,” he added.
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03/17/2025 - 10:19
Village joins continental network alongside nearby Knepp estate, as birds previously extinct in Britain flourish
The Saxons knew the West Sussex village of Storrington as Estorchestone, the “abode of the storks”.
But the graceful white birds disappeared from its skies more than 600 years ago, when they became extinct in Britain.
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03/17/2025 - 06:52
Judges dismiss appeal from campaigners who argued ‘eye-watering’ cost of loan was not in public interest
The court of appeal has upheld Thames Water’s £3bn emergency bailout loan, in a decision published on Monday.
Appeal court judges dismissed an appeal from environmental campaigners and a small group of Thames creditors after a three-day hearing last week.
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