Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Yorkshire plant has been criticised for taking material from some of British Columbia’s most environmentally important forests The owner of Drax power plant has started reducing the amount of Canadian wood pellets it burns, and will stop burning trees from British Columbia entirely within the next year. The FTSE 250 company Drax Group said its Canadian wood pellet plants, which once supplied millions of tonnes of biomass to be burnt in its North Yorkshire power plant, had cost the company almost £200m in financial impairments last year. Continue reading...

Panama joins smaller nations in dropping support for policy aimed at cutting maritime emissions US “bullying” over a proposed carbon levy on shipping appears to be paying off, experts have said, after Panama reversed its support for the measure. In a leaked document seen by the Guardian, the key maritime state has co-sponsored a proposal to the International Maritime Organization that would in effect cancel the carbon levy and undermine attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Continue reading...

Supermarket chain says it will point customers to herring and other species to protect threatened Atlantic stocks Waitrose has become the first UK supermarket to suspend the sale of mackerel because of overfishing and will start pointing customers toward herring and other species. The Marine Conservation Society warned last year that stocks were at breaking point owing to overfishing, and it downgraded mackerel from a three to a four on its five-point Good Fish Guide sustainability scale. Continue reading...

As fish stocks dwindle, surf tourism may offer a lifeline to traditional caballitos de totora fishers, whose vessels are thought to be among the first ever used to ride waves Just before dawn, in a scene that has repeated itself over thousands of years on the north coast of Peru, fishers drag boats made of bound reeds to the water’s edge and, kneeling on them, use paddles shaped from split bamboo to row out into the Pacific Ocean to catch their breakfast. A few hours later, these surfer fishers return with netfuls of their catch, riding waves on the final stretch back to the shore. From the main beach in Huanchaco – a seaside town near the city of Trujillo – the fish are taken to sell at the market or to beachfront restaurants preparing meals for tourists. The four-metre-long reed vessels – known as caballitos de totora in Spanish, or “little reed horses” – are placed upright on their ends by the promenade on El Mogote beach so that the seawater drains away and they are ready to be used the next morning. Continue reading...