Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Problem at water treatment centre left 24,000 Tunbridge Wells homes without drinking water for two weeks A failure at a water treatment centre that left tens of thousands of Kent households without water was foreseen weeks before it happened and could have been stopped, the regulator has said. Twenty-four thousand homes in the Tunbridge Wells area were without drinking water for two weeks from 30 November last year due to a failure at the Pembury water treatment centre. Continue reading...

Reflecting a small fraction of incoming sunlight to reduce global heating is not a new idea. It is time to safely experiment The world is warming fast – and our options to avoid catastrophic harm are narrowing. 2024 was the first full year more than 1.5C hotter than the 19th-century average. Emissions are still rising, with fossil fuel use expected to hit a new high in 2025. Permanent carbon removal technologies – often cited as a fix – are removing just tens of thousands of tonnes annually, almost nothing relative to the 5-10bn tonnes needed. Cutting emissions and scaling carbon removal remain essential. But they may not be enough. As suffering grows and ecosystems unravel, more people will ask: is there anything we can do to prevent these harms? The idea of reflecting a small fraction of incoming sunlight to reduce warming is not a new idea. In 1965, Lyndon B Johnson’s science advisers proposed it as the only way to cool the planet. Earth already reflects about 30% of incoming sunlight; raising that fraction slightly – say, to 31% – could strengthen the planet’s natural heat shield. But how? Continue reading...

Behind the west’s huge appetite for the fruit lies the dark reality of environmental destruction and Indigenous exploitation in Mexico I grew up in San Andrés Tziróndaro, a Purépecha community on the shores of Lake Pátzcuaro in the Mexican state of Michoacán. My childhood was shaped by water, forests and music. The lake fed us. The forest protected us. In the afternoons, people gathered in the local square while bands passed through playing pirekua, our traditional music. That way of life is now under threat as our land is extracted for profit. Continue reading...

npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 06 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00175-w Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) management usually involves bringing multiple stakeholders together, to construct policy-relevant research programs and science-based tools for adaptive management. Here, we present the conclusions of a transdisciplinary workshop that aimed at reviewing experiences in the co-design of EBM research in MPAs. We find that MPAs represent powerful instruments for conducting real-world experiments, de facto acting as living labs in support of ocean governance.