The drama has captivated the country, making politicians cry and drawing shamans from distant parts. Experts brought in first to help save the whale, and then to ease the animal's demise, have faced death threats.
"When a whale washes up on the beach like that, we work with different organizations to decide what the best course of action is," said Atlantic Marine Conservation Society (AMSEAS) Chief Scientist Robert DiGiovanni, who was tasked with processing the whale. "Every stranding has a unique set of circumstances."
"We just have not kept up with water supply and water infrastructure like we should have. And it's decades in the making," said Peter Zanoni, the city manager since 2019.
After six weeks stranded in the Gulf, one of the 20,000 seafarers trapped by Iran's chokehold on the strait of Hormuz is reaching their limit. We're at anchor, near dozens of loaded tankers. No one has moved an inch.
When you dredge sand at that scale without a proper assessment of its environmental impacts, it destroys or wipes out certain species, which harms fisheries and, ultimately, everyone who depends on them.
The Arctic Metagaz was part of a Russian shadow fleet used to circumvent sanctions imposed on the country's oil and gas after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It was struck in a suspected drone attack close to Maltese waters earlier this month, causing a huge hole.
A massive fire broke out Tuesday morning on a barge carrying huge piles of scrap metal on the Delaware Bay near New Castle. The U.S. Coast Guard responded after 8 a.m. to reports of the fire and dispatched a helicopter and two boats, Petty Officer First Class Matthew West said. Local fire departments, including those from Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware, also responded.
Recovered CWMs continue to pose worker and food safety risks. Because of ocean drift, storms, and offshore industries, sea-disposed CWMs locations are largely unknown and potentially far from their originally documented dump site. The three incidents exposed at least six crew members to mustard agent, which causes blistering chemical burns on skin and mucous membranes.
If you enter the amounts of different types of plastic that you clean up into the Wildlife Impact Calculator, it will tell you how many animal lives would have been at risk, had those items made their way into the ocean and been ingested.
Beaches, mangroves, fish, turtles and manatees. Little by little, oil has coated them all. About two weeks have been enough for the sticky black residue to permeate everything in its path. Its advance has been met with an outcry. Since the first fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico reported the discovery of chapapote (petroleum residue) in their nets on March 2, the progression has been documented by the affected communities.
But one key voice was missing from the celebration: Texas GulfLink's developer. Dallas-based Sentinel Midstream declined to comment on the administration's announcement, and didn't issue any press release for its politically ballyhooed project approval. Sentinel's silence was a symptom of a bigger disconnect in the gulf.What once was a race to build a series of deepwater terminals prior to the pandemic-including the involvement of household names such as Phillips 66 and Chevron-has now turned into silence over stalled projects that may never come to fruition.
The Russian shadow fleet is a ticking environmental time bomb. The question isn't if there will be a catastrophic spill, it's when. Older tankers can suffer from metal fatigue, corroded hulls, and overall structural deterioration, significantly increasing the risk of structural failures at sea.
In California and across the nation from Hawaii to Maine, a growing number of state and local governments are fighting in court to hold oil giants like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell and BP accountable for their well-documented efforts to deceive the public about climate change and the "catastrophic events" and "more violent weather" their own scientists accurately predicted would result if the use of their fossil fuel products was not curbed.
On September 14, Alejandro Carranza, a 42-year-old fisherman, set out to sea from a remote town in La Guajira, Colombia's northernmost province, bordering Venezuela. It was an ordinary fishing trip, in search of tuna and marlin, said Leonardo Vega, a childhood friend and the president of the fishing association Carranza belonged to. But this time, Carranza never returned.
Then she read an article in this newspaper, just over eight years ago, and discovered that fossil fuel companies had ploughed more than $180bn (130bn) into plastic plants in the US since 2010. It was a kick in the teeth, says Gardiner. You're telling me that while I am beating myself up because I forgot to bring my water bottle, all these huge oil companies are pouring billions She looks appalled. It was just such a shock.
Within a few minutes of moving down the estuary from Jack London Square, it started looking like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean. Boats, big and small, sank or half-sunk along the length of the estuary. Spicer pointed out a large sailboat listing on its side, which neighbors say has been disabled for months. "It was actually anchored in the center of the channel for quite some time. A lot of our community members reported it," she said.
Raw sewage and solid waste flow into the bay from surrounding cities, home to more than 8 million people. Cargo ships and oil platforms chug in and out of commercial ports, while dozens of abandoned vessels lie rotting in the water. But at the head of the bay, between the cities of Itaborai and Mage, the environment feels different. The air is purer, the waters are empty but for small fishing canoes, and flocks of birds soar overhead.