Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Streams of soil turn sand and surrounding water red, creating sharp contrast with blue waters of Persian Gulf Rainfall on Iran’s Hormuz Island briefly transformed the coastline of its Red Beach into a striking natural scene this week, as red soil flowed into the sea and turned the water shades of deep red. The beach is known for its vivid red sand and cliffs, created by high concentrations of iron oxide. Continue reading...

Campaigners celebrate defeat of proposal to extend Bilbao institution into areas including nature reserve Environmental groups and local campaigners in the Basque Country have welcomed the scrapping of a project to build an outpost of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum on a Unesco biosphere reserve that is a vital habitat for local wildlife and migrating birds. The scheme’s backers, which include the Guggenheim Foundation, the Basque government and local and regional authorities, had claimed the museum’s twin sites – one in the Basque town of Guernica and one in the nearby Urdaibai reserve – would help revitalise the area, attract investment and create jobs. Continue reading...

The molluscs are decimating food chains in Switzerland, have devastated the Great Lakes in North America, and this week were spotted in Northern Ireland for the first time Like cholesterol clogging up an artery, it took just a couple of years for the quagga mussels to infiltrate the 5km (3-mile) highway of pipes under the Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne (EPFL). By the time anyone realised what was going on, it was too late. The power of some heat exchangers had dropped by a third, blocked with ground-up shells. The air conditioning faltered, and buildings that should have been less than 24C in the summer heat couldn’t get below 26 to 27C. The invasive mollusc had infiltrated pipes that suck cold water from a depth of 75 metres (250ft) in Lake Geneva to cool buildings. “It’s an open invasion,” says Mathurin Dupanier, utilities operations manager at EPFL. Mathurin Dupanier indicates the water cooling systems that were blocked by the invasive quagga mussels. Photographs: Phoebe Weston/the Guardian; École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Continue reading...

Record rains have forced hundreds of rescues, swamped communities and left rivers high, with more storms forecast The extent of the damage in Washington state is profound but unclear after more than a week of heavy rains and record flooding, according to the state’s governor, Bob Ferguson. A barrage of storms from weather systems stretching across the Pacific has dumped close to 2ft (0.6 metres) of rain in parts of the state, swelling rivers far beyond their banks and prompting more than 600 rescues across 10 counties. Continue reading...