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Climate crisis is driving key predators from their homes and threatening an already embattled ecosystem
Sharks are deserting their coral reef homes as the climate crisis continues to heat up the oceans, scientists have discovered.
This is likely to harm the sharks, which are already endangered, and their absence could have serious consequences for the reefs, which are also struggling. The reef sharks are a key part of the highly diverse and delicate ecosystem, which could become dangerously unbalanced without them.
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Moules frites are a staple, but the majority of the shellfish eaten in the country are imported. Previous attempts to farm them have foundered – but a bumper harvest this year suggests the ‘delicate’ Belgian mussel is here to stay
It is harvest day at the Westdiep sea farm and the crew are bringing their haul on to the boat: 12-metre long ropes laden with clusters of blue mussels. Bobbing on the water just three nautical miles off the Belgian coast,the four-man crew on the little red Smart Farmer use a crane to hoist the ropes on deck. The mussels go on to a steel conveyor belt, straight into the “declumper”, a machine that will break up bunches of molluscs into smaller groups.
It may look like a typical late summer scene on the Belgian North Sea coast, but the mussel harvest is a novelty. Although Belgium is renowned for its moules frites, it has long struggled to cultivate the shellfish for its national dish on a commercial scale. Of the estimated 20,000 tonnes of mussels Belgium consumes each year, most are imported from Zeeland in the Netherlands.
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Eels use tail-first technique to back up digestive tract of fish towards oesophagus before coming out of gills
It sounds like the plot of a horror movie – a predator swallows its prey only for the creature to burst out of its captor’s body. But it seems Japanese eels do just that.
Scientists in Japan have discovered that when swallowed by a dark sleeper fish, the eels can escape.
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Group praises nearly 70% of UK adults who bought Fairtrade products in past year despite cost of living crisis
Nearly 70% of UK adults have bought Fairtrade products such as bananas, tea or coffee in the past year despite pressure on personal finances, as concern that the climate crisis could push up the price of imported food drives “conscious consumerism”, the charity said.
Against the backdrop of this year’s big spikes in the price of coffee and cocoa, a YouGov poll, commissioned by the Fairtrade Foundation, revealed that 79% of Britons were concerned that climate breakdown could affect the price of food while 69% were worried it could disrupt supply to the UK.
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Jacob Rees-Mogg criticises plans for 2.6m members to decide on increasing share of vegan and vegetarian options
National Trust members are being invited to vote on a plan to make 50% of the food in its cafes vegan and vegetarian as part of the charity’s commitment to reach net zero by 2030.
Cafe menus at the trust’s 280 historic sites are already 40% plant-based. Now, the trust’s 2.6 million members will get to vote on whether the charity should gradually increase this figure to 50% over the next two years.
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Big River Watch scheme asks general public to help monitor state of rivers after years of deregulation
Rivers will be checked for sewage and other pollution by the general public this month in an attempt to assess the health of British waterways.
Cuts to the UK regulators and a change in the law to allow water company self-monitoring of pollution in England mean there is little independent monitoring of the state of rivers in the UK.
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Louisianans say a major accident at a sprawling Marathon refinery caused health issues. The company insists there were ‘no offsite impacts’
At 8.04am on 25 August last year, Darnell Alboudoor watched a plume of black smoke blanketing the sky and rolling in the direction of her family home.
A stench like burning oil filled the air on that piping hot summer morning, as Alboudoor, 54, looked in the direction of the sprawling petroleum refinery, which sat a few hundred feet from her back yard. She called 911.
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The NGV’s first landscape architecture exhibition has invited eight visionaries to picture the future of different sites along Birrarung – the Yarra River
In half a century, should Melbourne’s golf courses be flooded and transformed into wetlands? Could the city’s freeways be replaced with public parks? Will underwater robotic drones have a part to play in ridding our waterways of invasive species?
These are some of the questions explored at the National Gallery of Victoria’s Reimagining Birrarung: Design Concepts for 2070, a thought-provoking, optimistic and occasionally uncomfortable exhibition that presents speculative visions for the Birrarung (Yarra River) from eight of Australia’s leading landscape architecture studios. These practices were invited by the NGV’s curators, in association with the Birrarung Council and with guidance from Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung elders, to imagine what various sites along the Birrarung might look like in 46 years. And the results are varied.
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Kazakhstani man says he regrets coming to UK for seasonal work, but employer refutes account of his experience
It had been a sweltering morning picking cherries beneath plastic polytunnels in July when Ilyas finally lost his temper at the farm where he was working in Kent.
“We could hardly breathe in there,” he said. “It was very difficult to work because the weather was very hot.”
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Experts say the state’s approach could provide a template for what can be achieved elsewhere
Eight years ago, South Australia’s renewable energy future was in doubt as an extraordinary statewide blackout saw recriminations flow.
On 28 September 2016, a catastrophic weather event sent the entire state into system black. Around 4pm, some 850,000 homes and businesses lost power as supercell thunderstorms and destructive winds – some travelling up to 260km/h – crumpled transmission towers, causing three major power lines to trip.
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