The explosive figure scientists want leaders to know about ocean warming
Scientists warn the ocean has absorbed heat to match the energy of 1.7 billion atomic bomb explosions since the Paris Agreement, leading to record temperatures, sea ice loss, and coral bleaching.
The UN Ocean Conference in Nice is addressing these issues, with UN Secretary-General António Guterres urging a shift "from plunder to protection" to save the oceans.
Record sea surface temperatures, an all-time low for global sea ice, and the largest coral bleaching event ever recorded are among the most serious warnings.
France's President Emmanuel Macron said the High Seas Treaty could be in force by January 2026 and reiterated France's call for a moratorium on deep-sea mining.
The UK announced it would introduce legislation by the end of the year to ratify the High Seas Treaty, while experts call for stronger integration between climate policy and marine conservation efforts.
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Daily Mail
9 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
French police TEAR GAS migrants and enter the water to drag them back to shore but are overwhelmed by sheer numbers as more boats head for Britain
French police used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse hundreds of migrants looking to board boats headed for Britain, while some officers were seen entering the water and dragging them back to shore. Pictures on Friday showed what appeared to be tear gas being launched at migrants at Gravelines, near Calais, with large white clouds of smoke seen billowing in the air. Other images showed asylum seekers standing knee-deep in the water, with police officers, wearing helmets and holding shields, following them into the sea to drag them back to shore. But ultimately, French officers were said to have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of people attempting to clamber onto the small boats. The tactic used by French police appeared to be a change in approach from earlier this week. Just days ago, nearly a dozen officers equipped with anti-riot gear watched as asylum seekers boarded boats bound for Britain. When asked by broadcaster Sky News why they did not intervene, one officer said: 'It's for their safety. There are children there. We are not going to throw grenades at them.' A record number of migrants have left the northern french coastline and arrived in the UK so far this year, with figures surpassing the 15,000 mark. The UK government has vowed to crackdown on people smugglers and illegal migration, with Chancellor Rachel Reeves announcing as part of the government's spending review on Wednesday that the Border Security Command would be funded up to £280m more per year by the end of the review period in 2028-2029. The latest images from Calais come as people smugglers have been reported to be adopting a dangerous new tactic of simultaneously launching multiple small boats at once to try and dodge French police, officials warn. EU border agency Frontex said in an official updated that traffickers were adapting their methods in an attempt to boost the number of successful crossings. It said the tactic of 'simultaneous departures' was putting more lives at risk by overwhelming search and rescue teams. The risk is being compounded by smugglers packing more migrants into flimsy dinghies, with 54 people per boat in the year ending March 2025 compared with 50 in 2024, according to Home Office figures. Channel crossings have continued this week, with pictures showing new arrivals wearing life jackets being brought to shore in a Border Force boat in Dover, Kent and being driven away from the port. They are the first to make the journey to the UK so far this month after a record first five months of the year bringing the provisional total so far to 14,812 arrivals. This has also surpassed the highest total recorded for the first six months of the year, which was previously 13,489 on June 30 last year.
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
French cops with riot shields FINALLY launch bid to stop overloaded migrant boat… only to retreat & watch it sail away
Ed Southgate in Gravelines Julia Atherley Sam Creed Published: Invalid Date, HEAVY handed French police finally went into the sea to try to stop migrants getting onto a dinghy - but the small boats were still left dangerously overcrowded after the officers retreated. Riot officers dramatically threatened migrants with batons and pepper sprayed them in waist-high water during shocking scenes at Gravelines beach - near Dunkirk - in the early hours of this morning. 12 12 Harrowing babies ' cries and screams rang out from the water as their parents carrying them refused to leave. Smugglers were caught off-guard when the French authorities, who have famously kept to dry land, started wading into the cold water. But 15 minutes later, riot cops were called back out of the water and watched on as the same group of migrants boarded the waiting dinghy. The Sun watched as Smugglers and migrants initially tried to fight back against the police, shouting at them, pushing them and splashing water at them. Then they tried moving along the coast, rather than towards land, to escape the cops and wait for the small boat, and the group slowly dispersed into smaller groups with cops pursuing them. Families began shouting at each other to come back when some moved towards the shore. The dinghy had arrived already with some migrants on, confirming theories that smugglers are now operating boats like a bus route picking people up at various spots. Tear gas grenades were thrown on land as the second group ran around, with smoke completely covering the miles-long beach in scenes comparable to a war zone. This is believed to be one of the first times French police have ever gone into the water. They have repeatedly refused to get their feet wet, claiming it is dangerous and legally complex. New maritime rules allowing cops to intervene at sea have not come into force yet. It has created accusations of officers just wanting to "put on a show" after being exposed in the press, while continuing to fail to stop any dinghies. The first group entered Gravelines beach from the sand dunes at around 4.50am. They walked with pace along the beach before eventually running towards the sea with a very large number of young children and babies. People smugglers were yelling at them, directing them what to do and where to go while no police were on the beach. Parents adjusted their childrens' life jackets as the group of around 50 migrants stood at the edge of the sea. One dad's one-year-old son was crying as he asked for help adjusting the baby's ill-fitting life jacket, which heartbreakingly appeared to be choking him. The dad said he was terrified for his baby ahead of the journey, but insisted they were fleeing war and needed to go to Britain. 12 12 12 12 People smugglers were shouting at the group and aggressively threw sand at the onlooking media. They stayed at the edge of the water until around 5.15am, when around 40 police officers finally emerged from the sand dunes and began marching the three quarters of a mile towards the sea. The migrants were then instructed by smugglers to enter the cold water, which they believed would give them protection against the officers who famously have never been in the sea. At least six riot officers marched into the sea towards the group of migrants and aggressively banged their riot shield with batons as they shouted at the group to go back. It led to a stand-off, with the group refusing to budge. One officer then lunged towards the group and pushed them with his shield, causing them to almost fall. The officers then continued to push them as screams were heard from the group, and they then used pepper spray against them. Parents, carrying their children on their shoulders or in their arms, were among those remaining firm in the water. Other sporadic moments of jostling and pushing between police and migrants continued during the 15 minute standoff. But the police were then called back as tear gas grenades were thrown on the sand as a second group appeared on the beach. It meant the migrants a dinghy could approach the group that the cops had failed to remove from the sea. The Sun then watched as they struggled to get on the already-overcrowded dinghy. Children were hoisted up as adults struggled in the sea. Meanwhile on the beach, hundreds more migrants were running around in a cat and mouse game with the police as they also tried to get to a second boat that was further down the coast. Officers threw a line of tear gas grenades to try to stop them from getting near to the sea. But migrants still managed to get to that boat. Smugglers appear to always bring more migrants than can fit on the boat, to make sure they are as full as possible. It meant there was a large group that were left on the beach after the boats had gone. But this was because there was no more room on the boats, not because the police had stopped them. It comes after The Sun watched on Wednesday morning as police stood idly by on land while migrants almost drowned trying to get onto a boat. But around two hours later today, some miles east in Dunkirk, another group of migrants boarded a small boat as officers continued to look on from the shore. 12 12 12 12
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Attenborough's Ocean is the film I've been waiting my whole career for – now the world must act on its message
I have been saying this a lot recently: 'At last!' At last, a mainstream film bluntly revealing the plunder of our seas. At last, a proposed ban on bottom trawling in so-called 'marine protected areas' (MPAs). At last, some solid research on seabed carbon and the vast releases caused by the trawlers ploughing it up. But still I feel that almost everyone is missing the point. David Attenborough's Ocean film, made for National Geographic, is the one I've been waiting for all my working life. An epoch ago, when I worked in the BBC's Natural History Unit in the mid-1980s, some of us lobbied repeatedly for films like this, without success. Since then, even programmes that purport to discuss marine destruction have carefully avoided the principal cause: the fishing industry. The BBC's Blue Planet II and Blue Planet Live series exemplified the organisation's perennial failure of courage. You can see the results in public beliefs. While assessments have long shown that the primary reason for the destruction of marine life is overfishing, in a poll last year, people in the UK placed it fourth. Eating our fish dinners while shaking our heads at the state of the oceans, we have been systematically misled by those whose job is to inform us. Maybe Ocean will change that. The great public enthusiasm for the film shows, yet again, that the mantra endlessly recited by broadcasters – environmental issues turn away viewers – is false. You just have to do it, as this film does, powerfully and well. The government's announcement that trawling and scallop dredging will be banned from half of England's MPAs is welcome. But this should be seen as the very least it could do. Conservationists have been calling for years for these protected areas to be, well, protected from the major cause of destruction. While heralded as a great step forward, the new policy is actually a step back from the Tory position: the Conservatives planned 'to protect all 54 English offshore MPAs from fishing activity by the end of 2024'. It also falls far short of the call last week by the House of Commons environmental audit committee for full protection of MPAs, and the achievement of 'good environmental status' for our seas. The statutory deadline for reaching this status was 2020, but we are still nowhere near. Nor does the new policy take us anywhere close to the promise of '30x30': the protection of 30% of our land and sea by 2030. How will the government close this gap? Labour keeps slicing and dicing the problem. The new measures are intended to protect particular seabed features and particular species. But the fishing industry trashes everything. A government spokesperson told me 'a full ban across MPAs is not needed as some MPAs are designated solely for highly mobile species such as birds'. But what about mobile species such as fish? In fact, almost all marine animals, at some point in their life cycles, are highly mobile. The spokesperson said protection was needed only where particular features occurred. Why might large areas of seabed possess no valuable features? Because they have been ploughed out by trawlers. Much of the bed of the North Sea, for example, was once covered with a biotic crust of oysters and beautiful sessile animals. Now it's mostly bare mud, sand and gravel, and deemed unworthy of protection. But if boats stopped ploughing it, the crust would recover. Good environmental status requires very large areas closed to destructive fishing techniques, regardless of what currently survives there. Some of us had long speculated that trawling and dredging must release large amounts of carbon from the seabed. But data on the issue was remarkably slow in coming. Now, at last, solid research has begun, and we find that it is indeed a major problem, adding even more to the costs that the fishing industry imposes on society and the living planet. But in almost all public discussion of these issues, including Ocean, I feel the problem has been framed the wrong way round. Nearly everyone seems to agree that we should carve out some areas of sea from the fishing industry and other destructive forces. The implication is that the default state of the seas is exploitation, from which we should make exceptions. But as the marine campaigner Deborah Rowan Wright has long argued, it makes more sense to reverse this presumption. The default position should be protection, from which we might exclude some places (the least fragile) where some fishing activities (the least damaging) are permitted. Such residual fishing should be concentrated in the hands of local coastal communities, rather than captured by the huge industrial combines that, as Ocean showed, are snatching food from the people who need it most. This would cause the mother of all 'spillover effects'. Spillover is what happens when fish and shellfish are allowed to breed and grow undisturbed in protected places: in many cases, as their offspring spread into surrounding waters, total fish catches increase, even though the area in which fishing is permitted has shrunk. If killing were allowed in only a minority of places, far less fishing effort would be required to catch more and bigger fish. Even then, we should remember that fish are wildlife, not 'seafood'. They are not put on Earth for our consumption. They do not exist in 'stocks', but in populations and ecosystems. There is no such thing as 'underexploited' or 'underfished', though these terms have long featured in the lexicon of official bodies and compliant scientists. The extraordinary thing is just how tiny this industry is, yet it seems to hold the world's governments to ransom. Last month, the British government announced that it was giving £360m to the fishing industry 'to drive growth and boost the sector'. Why? The government's own figures show that fishing costs us far more than it makes: it estimates that the proposed ban on trawling in half of England's MPAs will cost UK businesses and public bodies £7.8m, while delivering 'benefits from enhanced environmental protection' of approximately £3.1bn. Why the hell should public money, withheld from public services in desperate need, be spent on fishing, the most destructive of all private industries? I've watched for 40 years as governments, protected by timid broadcasters, have wasted every opportunity to prevent ecological collapse. As they assemble in France for the UN Ocean Conference, they should pledge not to waste another day. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
