Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Discovery of H5N9 came alongside detection of the more common H5N1 on the farm, leading to 119,000 birds’ deaths The first outbreak of a rare bird flu in poultry has been detected on a duck farm in California, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) said on Monday. Authorities said the discovery of H5N9 bird flu in poultry came alongside the detection of the more common H5N1 strain on the same farm in Merced county, California, and that almost 119,000 birds on the farm had been killed since early December. Continue reading...

Marathon Petroleum said a massive fire at its Louisiana refinery caused ‘no offsite impacts’. Reporting by the Guardian and Forensic Architecture raised doubts about this claim The huge US toxic fire shrouded in secrecy: ‘I taste oil in my mouth’ Oil giant Marathon Petroleum is fighting an expanded class action lawsuit fueled by an investigation by the Guardian and Forensic Architecture, which examined a massive toxic blaze at the company’s sprawling refinery in south-west Louisiana in 2023. Parts of the oil refinery, the third largest in America, caught fire for over three days in August 2023 after a large storage tank containing the toxic and flammable hydrocarbon naphtha leaked for more than 13 hours unbeknownst to the predominantly Black low-income communities that surround the facility. Continue reading...

Project providing subsidies to install solar batteries and electric appliances part of Labor deal with crossbenchers Suburb-wide electrification trials are set to be rolled out across the country under an intervention designed to help spark the household transition from gas. The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, has formally directed the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) to consider funding more pilots like Electrify 2515, a community-led initiative to electrify 500 homes in one postcode in Wollongong, NSW. Continue reading...

This week the EU will argue the UK’s ban on catching the tiny fish, celebrated by conservationists, amounts to discrimination against Danish fishers “We did it!” These were the words uttered by the RSPB last year when, after 25 years of campaigning, the UK government banned fishing for sandeels in the North Sea and Scotland. The small eel-like fish might not seem a likely species to inspire a decades-long fight – but they are the treasured food of one of Britain’s rarest and most threatened seabirds, the puffin, as well as many other UK seabirds and marine species. The celebrations, however, were short-lived. The EU threw its weight behind Denmark – the country with by far the biggest sandeel fishing fleet – and challenged the ban, meaning that this week, the humble sandeel will become the focus of the first courtroom trade battle between the UK and the EU since Brexit. Continue reading...