logo
AI-powered drones track down fires in German forests

AI-powered drones track down fires in German forests

Local Germany30-03-2025

The installation, resembling a giant golf ball covered in solar panels, is the hangar for an AI-powered drone that its developer hopes one day will be able to sniff out and extinguish new blazes in minutes.
"Fires are spreading much faster and more aggressively than in the past. That also means we have to react more quickly," Carsten Brinkschulte, the CEO of the German firm Dryad, told AFP at a demonstration of the technology outside Berlin.
Once a rarity, the German capital has to get used to more wildfires. Flames ripped through a forest on the city's western edge in the midst of a 2022 heatwave that saw several wildfires spring up in Germany.
The sort of tinderbox conditions which promote blazes -- where heat, drought and strong winds dry out the landscape -- have increased with climate change.
Wildfires have reached the point where they were "basically unstoppable", said Lindon Pronto, senior wildfire management expert at the European Forest Institute.
That is why action is needed to develop tools to "address fire in the prevention phase, during the operational phase, and also post-fire", said Pronto.
Advertisement
'Prevent a disaster'
Dryad is in the running with 29 other teams from around the globe for a multi-million-dollar prize to develop the ability to autonomously put out fires within 10 minutes.
During Dryad's demonstration on Thursday -- the first for a computer-steered wildfire detection drone according to the company -- chemicals in smoke from burning wood were picked up by sensors distributed in the forest.
The signal was relayed back to the company's platform which released the drone from the orb. The unit rose above the trees, charting a zig-zag course to track down the precise location and extent of the fire.
Firefighters using the information collected by the drone would be able "to respond much more efficiently and quickly and prevent a disaster", Brinkschulte said.
Dryad eventually hopes to have the drone descend below the canopy and put out the fire using a novel technology: a "sonic cannon" blasting low-frequency sound waves at the right pressure to suppress small fires.
An experimental acoustic suppression method, if it can be realised, would save the drone from carrying "large amounts of heavy water", making the unit more nimble and effective, according to Brinkschulte.
Advertisement
'Civilisation meets nature'
Technologies like Dryad's are a step towards putting out fires "without putting people's lives in danger", said Pronto, a native of California, where recent wildfires have had a devastating impact.
Huge blazes in Los Angeles in January killed 29 people, razed more than 10,000 homes and caused some $250 billion (€231 billion) in damage, according to estimates by the private meteorological firm AccuWeather.
The greatest benefits of an autonomous fire prevention system would be in areas where "civilisation meets nature", Brinkschulte said.
Such crossover zones are the most vulnerable to man-made wildfires and "where the risk to life and limb is naturally highest".
The company hopes to bring the drone to market in 2026, with the first deployment likely to be outside Europe.
"These systems still need to have the regulatory framework to be able to operate commercially," Brinkschulte said, adding that Dryad was aiming for deployment in Europe in the "coming years"
A couple of kinks need to be worked out before then, however. The first attempt to respond to the dummy fire on Thursday was held up by a faulty GPS signal.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

How Munich became Europe's tech startup capital – DW – 06/04/2025
How Munich became Europe's tech startup capital – DW – 06/04/2025

DW

time2 days ago

  • DW

How Munich became Europe's tech startup capital – DW – 06/04/2025

Founders flock to Munich, Germany, to access capital, expertise, and networks that can help turn ideas into thriving businesses. It's like navigating a labyrinth — a journey hundreds of young entrepreneurs across Europe embark on each year in search of opportunity, innovation, funding, and success. They're also looking for the country and city that offers the ideal conditions to launch a business. For an increasing number, that journey leads to Isar Valley, named after the river that runs through Munich, and which provided the informal nickname for the Bavarian capital's technology and artificial intelligence (AI) scene, inspired by the Silicon Valley technology hub in California. Munich's Technical University and its entrepreneurship center are essential for startup founders Image: UnternehmerTUM Munich ranks 17th globally in the latest Global Tech Ecosystem Index compiled by Netherlands-based data provider Dealroom. When measured by high-performance, innovation-driven ecosystems with strong per-capita output, Munich rises to 5th place — just behind US tech hubs San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, New York, and Cambridge. From hackathon enthusiast to startup founder Greek entrepreneurs Nikos Tsiamitros and Georgios Pipelidis also chose to launch their startup in Munich, even though Tsiamitros says there wasn't a "personal reason" to move to the capital of the German southern state of Bavaria. "I didn't know anyone here and had never even visited the city," he told DW, but added that he was well aware of the "excellent reputation" of the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Nikos Tsiamitros (left) and Georgios Pipelidis were drawn to Munich because of its excellent startup environment Image: Georgios Pipelidis Tsiamitros arrived from Athens to pursue his master's degree in Munich, while Pipelidis came to TUM via Austria to complete his PhD. "That's where we started working together on navigation software for public transportation," Pipelidis told DW. They joined a hackathon — an event where programmers team up for several days or weeks to develop software, often around the clock — and they won the competition. "From that moment on, we started to believe that our navigation and localization algorithm could become a real startup," said Tsiamitros. Then, in March 2019, they launched their first startup business called Ariadne — derived from the Cretan princess in Greek mythology who gave Theseus a thread to find his way out of the Minotaur's labyrinth. A fitting metaphor for their software, Pipelidis noted with a grin. UnternehmerTUM provides support with substance But having a strong algorithm is one thing. Launching a startup, writing a business plan, and securing capital is another. That's where Munich's startup ecosystem offers a crucial resource — the UnternehmerTUM entrepreneurship center based at TUM. At UnternehmerTUM, the two business founders learned how to start and run a company, Pipelidis said, adding that thanks to that support, Ariadne was generating revenue just a few months after launch. Ariadne's main product has since evolved from a navigation software into an AI-based people-counting and movement analytics tool. Today, it serves airports in Munich, Glasgow, and Los Angeles, as well as the German cities of Leverkusen, Bielefeld, and Regensburg, plus several malls and retailers, including IKEA. Startups like Ariadne also benefit from hands-on mentorship. Barbara Mehner, managing partner of the Xpreneurs incubator at UnternehmerTUM is one of them. "We help early-stage startups enter the market by connecting them with investors, mentors, and potential customers," she told DW. KEWAZO 'liftbot' and the robotic revolution in scaffolding Among the more than 100 tech startups founded annually in Munich is KEWAZO, a company led by Greek founder Eirini Psallida. Eirini Psallida is one of many successful startup founders who have emerged from the Isar Valley tech hub Image: Eirini Psallida KEWAZO's core product is a battery-powered, remote-controlled robotic lifting system called LIFTBOT. This robot facilitates the transport and assembly of scaffolding and other construction materials. "All industries seemed fully automated — except construction," Eirini told DW, explaining the idea behind the company. Psallida named the startup after the Greek word kataskevazo, meaning "to produce." And like Ariadne, this startup was born out of a hackathon at UnternehmerTUM. Today, the company's robotic lift system is in daily use at major industrial and construction sites — from the chemical park of BASF in Ludwigshafen, Germany, to oil refineries in the US. KEWAZO's liftbots are seen on many construction sites Image: Flint Hills Resources "I can't imagine how we would have done it without UnternehmerTUM," Psallida told DW, as the incubator gave them access to hardware, software, legal and business advice. "And we got help securing public funding without giving up any equity," she added. One in four German unicorns founded by foreigners The KEWAZO team includes six founders from four different countries, reflecting the diverse nature of Germany's startup landscape. According to the latest Migrant Founders Monitor compiled by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and Germany's Startup Association, a significant number of founders in the country have a migration background. "Fourteen percent of startup founders were born abroad," said Vanusch Walk, senior researcher at the Startup Association and lead author of the report. Among the founders of so-called unicorns — startups valued at over a billion dollars — the share is even higher at 23%, he told DW. The survey shows that migrant founders stand out for their "strong entrepreneurial mindset, willingness to take risks, and resilience" — traits that are crucial for startup success. Migrant founders still face higher barriers Despite their strengths, migrant founders also face notable challenges in Germany. "Top of the list is access to networks," said Walk, adding that coping with Germany's infamous bureaucracy is also difficult, as well as gaining access to funding, no matter whether public or private. Germany: More support for migrant entrepreneurs? To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Pipelidis from Ariadne experienced this firsthand. One German venture capital firm made its investment conditional on replacing him as CEO with a German national. "They wanted a native speaker as the public face of the company," he recalled. "I understand that customers prefer dealing with someone who speaks fluent German — that's why all our salespeople are native speakers. But replacing me as CEO? That was too much," he said. In the end, Georgios Pipelidis and Nikos Tsiamitros secured support from a Greek VC firm. And despite the setbacks, their enthusiasm for Munich hasn't wavered. At the end of their own Ariadne thread still lies the Bavarian capital. This article was originally written in German.

Why are oceans getting darker? – DW – 06/06/2025
Why are oceans getting darker? – DW – 06/06/2025

DW

time3 days ago

  • DW

Why are oceans getting darker? – DW – 06/06/2025

In the past 20 years more than a fifth of our oceans have been growing darker. What is causing this and how worried should we be? To mark World Ocean Day on June 8, we've repackaged a deep dive that will take you beneath the Baltic Sea to explore how ocean darkening is changing the marine ecosystem, plus the steps we need to take to protect our oceans. Interviewees: Claas Wollna, fisherman from Stralsund Oliver Zielinski, director of the Leibnitz Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Warnemünde Florian Hoffmann, biologist with the World Wildlife Fund in Stralsund Dag Aksnes, marine ecologist at the University of Bergen Maren Striebel, biologist at the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment in Wilhelmshaven Listen and subscribe to Living Planet wherever you get your podcasts: Got a question for us? Email livingplanet@ And, if you like the show, leave us a rating and review on whichever podcast platform you use – and tell a friend! Transcript: Claas Wollna: That's perch, flounder, pike, zander and whitefish. That's fine, I had worse catch. It's a good morning for fisherman Claas Wollna. He has just come back from the gillnets and now heaves four boxes of catch onto the jetty. Some of the fish are still wriggling. Wollna is the last permanent fisherman in the region of Stralsund, a harbor town on the German coast of the Baltic Sea. Most of his colleagues have given up. Fishing no longer earned them a sufficient income. And that's because their most important fish, the herring, is almost gone. It doesn't reproduce sufficiently. To save the herring from extinction, Wollna is only allowed to catch a meagre 1.3 tons a year. Claas Wollna: I am not against protection of herring at all. I understand that if the stock is poor, it needs to be saved. But that needs to be done in a way that people can survive. Claas Wollna's struggle runs way deeper than mere fishing regulations. And the missing herring is just a symptom of a much a bigger problem. Something's fundamentally wrong with the water ... no, with the sea itself, all along the coast. Not just in the Baltic Sea, but at many coasts around the world. Something has changed. Dag Aksnes: And then we saw that the water down there was very dark. Florian Hoffmann: We could see about an arm's lenght. It wasn't even a meter. You're listening to Living Planet, I'm Neil King. And this deep dive is a literal one. We're about to explore the phenomenon of coastal ocean darkening, also known as coastal browning or brownification. Although 'known' seems to be a bit of an overstatement. A fairly small community of researchers around the world has only just begun to understand where this darkening comes from and how it messes up pretty much everything from seaweed to fishery and even the oceans' ability to help us protect the climate. To get started, we head to another harbor town on the German Baltic Sea coast, Warnemünde, to meet Oliver Zielinski a renowned expert on Coastal Ocean Darkening. Oliver Zielinski: Ocean darkening and specifically coastal ocean darkening refers to how much light gets into the depths of the ocean to a plant or a fish sitting at the bottom of the ocean. It refers to the light within the ocean itself, not as seen from above. From a bird's eye view, an ocean surface can shine brightly and yet be very dark under water. Oliver Zielinski is the director of the Leibnitz Institute for Baltic Sea Research. He has studied the darkening in the Baltic Sea and North Sea for years. However, the problem is a global one. Researchers found the darkening happening in the waters around New Zealand, the US, Singapore, China, Japan and in the Medditerranean Sea. Oliver Zielinski: …that's where we measured darkening of coastal waters. This is where we have long series of measurements and where human interaction with the ocean has been strong. 'Human interaction with the ocean' - we'll save this little bit of what Zielinski just said for later when we talk about what – or who – causes the darkening. Before that, we're taking a little walk with Zielinski to the harbor quay. He wants to show us something. A tool. Oliver Zielinski: I now lower the disk into the water and watch it slowly drift down from the surface. The disk that Zielinski puts in the water, is a Secchi disk, named after its inventor, Pietro Angelo Secchi, a 19th century priest and scientist in Italy. It is white and 30 cm in diameter. A bit like a large pizza plate on a cord. Zielinski is holding the cord with both hands, letting the disk sink down centimeter by centimeter into the water just off the quay. Oliver Zielinski: It is getting harder to see the disk now as the murky water covers it. The important thing is that I now figure out the exact depth at which I can hardly see the disk. If I lift it up a little now, I can see the disk again. That's it. And that is the depth I'll write down. The disk is roughly 2.5 meters under the sea surface. And according to Zielinski, light, as a rule of thumb, reaches down into the water three times as deep. That's ... 7.5 meters then. That sounds pretty deep actually, but it used to be much more. Since 1900, the depth of visibility, or Secchi depth, on the coasts of the Baltic Sea and North Sea has decreased by 3 to 4 centimeters per year. The question is: why did this happen? Oliver Zielinski: The water itself obviously didn't change over the past 100 years. So it's the substances that got into the water, three of them: algae, dissolved matter and sediments. Okay, so here is what we've got so far. Coastal waters around the globe have been getting darker for decades. Meaning that the depth to which light can reach into the water has decreased. And that's because of algae, dissolved matter and sediments. Let's explore what that exactly means – and what harm it does. We're in a speedboat, heading out to a lagoon in the Baltic Sea, east of Stralsund. We're not here on our own of course. Florian Hoffmann: I am Florian Hoffmann, I am a biologist and have been working with the World Wildlife Fund in Stralsund for 10 years. Florian has kindly agreed to take us out for a diving trip. We arrive at the lagoon. But if you're thinking of crystal-clear, turquoise water now, you won't find that here. Quite the opposite. But that's why we're here after all. We drop anchor near a small island, where many plants are supposed to grow on the seabed, like seaweed or crested pondweed, green and lush. The water is not that deep, only 2.5 meters, as the echo sounder on board indicates. You don't need big diving gear for this depth. So, we're already dressed with a wetsuit, now it's time for the flippers and the belt with heavy weights. Florian Hoffmann: I'll start with two weights. I'll go down and then tell you how much you take with you. Because the wetsuit leads to a little buoyancy. Time to spit on the diving goggles, rub the spittle so that the goggles don't fog up, adjust the mouthpiece of the snorkel - and we're ready to go. Hoffmann jumps first. Florian Hoffmann: Visibility is terrible. Let's go take a look for ourselves. The seabed is just a few strong pulls away. Gliding above it, we can only see about an arm's length, beyond that it gets dark. Not dark in the sense of black of course, we are in shallow water after all, more like a fog, a dense and murky mixture of brown and green. What we can see directly in front of us are patches of sand and then again patches of seaweed and other plants. Their stalks seem to pop up out of nowhere and sweep across our arms and face. To be honest, it's a bit of a confusing and uncomfortable environment at first, but after gaining some orientation, much of the murkiness seems to come from masses of small green particles. They float around in the water weightlessly, like artificial snow in one of those kitschy snow globes. Back on the boat, Florian Hoffmann explains what we just saw. The green particles, he says, that's phytoplankton, the basis of all life in the seas and producer of half the oxygen we breathe. So having phytoplankton in the seas is essential. But when there's too much of it, it makes the water foggy as it dies and slowly sinks to the ground. Florian Hoffmann:This means that the light zone decreases. ... We know from older literature that the depths to which you could look down into the water here used to be up to 8 meters. It now has decreased to three or two meters. And that of course makes it a lot harder for sea plants to grow on the seabed here. Hoffmann pulled out a handful of seaweed and brought it back on board. Some of the stalks are covered with small brown stains. The remains of phytoplankton shield the living plants from light even in death. The reason for this mess in the water lies on land, Hoffmann says. When farmers spread too much fertilizer on their fields, it doesn't only make their crops grow. Florian Hoffmann:That overuse of fertilizer leads to increased supply of water bodies with nutrients. That's nitrogen, which is important for photosynthesis, and phosphorus, a component of the DNA, which is also an important building block for life. Florian Hoffmann has brought a clipboard with him, with sheets of paper, showing charts and numbers. Florian Hoffmann:So, these are figures from the Federal Ministry of Environment from 2021. Agriculture accounted for 78% of nitrogen inputs in the Baltic Sea and 51% of phosphorus inputs, while point sources such as sewage treatment plants accounted for another 10% of nitrogen inputs and 20% of phosphorus inputs. Apart from these nutrients and water of course, it's light that makes photosynthesis possible and lets plants grow. Imagine if someone switched off the sun. How long would life on earth survive? The trees, the bushes, insects, birds, mammals, all life. This is a dark thought experiment. But looking at the foggy water underneath our boat out there on the lagoon, the threat seems real enough. If the seaweed doesn't get enough light, it dies. Like here in the lagoon. Spanning more than 500 km² big there used to be giant underwater seaweed lawn here just 70 years ago. Today, the plants have retreated to the shallow edges of the lagoon. This has effects on the whole food chain in the water and beyond. Small fish that are at the start of the chain use seaweed to hide and to spawn. In this part of the Baltic Sea, it's the herring that essentially depends on it as it lays its spawn in the seaweed. The herring population has massively collapsed over the last 10 years. In an unfavorable combination, the fish migrated to the lagoon earlier due to warmer waters – but then failed to find sufficient seaweed there. The problem with that is that the herring is at the beginning of the local marine food web. Less herring means less food for bigger fish, ducks, and less catch for fisherman Claas Wollna, whom we heard at the beginning of this episode. Healthy seaweed is also a real climate superhero. One square kilometer of seaweed captures twice as much CO2 as terrestrial forest and it does this 35 times faster as well. The same goes for other plants in coastal waters. Researchers in New Zealand looked at the health of kelp in a lagoon that had strong inflow of nutrients from agriculture and the city of Auckland. The found that the darkening in that lagoon caused local kelp forests to degrade and fix up to 4.7 times less carbon than they usually would. To mention it a bit in advance: we're not doomed because of Coastal Ocean Darkening. That being said though, our take-away from the diving trip with Florian Hoffmann is that Coastal Ocean Darkening does both harm biodiversity and the climate. Except for one life form that seems to handle the dark waters quite well. As Hoffmann speaks, a handful of common jellyfish floats past the boat, just a little below the sea surface. Jellyfish who consist of 95% water are particularly transparent and small, about the size of a saucer. They have a distinct advantage in the murky water. Dag Aksnes: Jellyfish don't need light to feed. It's a so-called tactile predator. That's Dag Aksnes. Dag Aksnes: I'm a marine ecologist at the University of Bergen. And I have studied mostly fjords but also the ocean. You've likely seen pictures of Norway's majestic fjords. Long and narrow, placed between steep cliffs and several hundred meters deep. At first glance the fjords appear to be lakes, but they are in fact saltwater inlets from the North Sea, mixed with some freshwater from land that gets into the fjords via mighty waterfalls. But we're moving away from the topic... After decades of research, Dag Aksnes has come to know the fjords around Bergen like the back of his hand, both above and below the water's, in the living and non-living world. Until he and his colleagues from the University of Bergen went to a fjord called Lurefjord to check up on the fish population there. They let the trawl net down into the water, started the boat's engine and set off. Dag Aksnes: We would expect, like, at maximum in half an hour to get like 100 kilograms of this fish, which is very abundant also. But, when we trawled in this field, then we actually had to cut the trawl in the water and destroy it because we couldn't have it all up on deck. Instead of a bit of fish – and after just a few minutes – the trawl net was bursting with thousands of big, orange, fluorescent jellyfish. Dag Aksnes: You can trawl them and, actually, in five minutes you can have five tons. So it's a ton per minute. The helmet jellyfish is found all over the world and that's perfectly normal. But not in such large numbers. For the whole fjord, Aksnes estimated the population of jellyfish at 50,000 tons. Or in individuals... Dag Aksnes: Ohhh (laughs). Well if it's 500 grams each, in a ton you will have 2000 and then you have 50,000 tons multiplied by 2,000. Which translates into 100 million jellyfish. But almost no other life. Dag Aksnes: And then we started wondering, why is this jellyfish here and not the fishes? Dag Aksnes: And then we saw that the water down there was very dark. Too dark for visual-hunting fish to see its prey. Meanwhile jellyfish don't need light but use their tentacles to sense prey. Less competition and warmer seas due to climate change help them to spread. Not only in the Lurefjord, which is now also known as the 'jellyfish fjord', but to a smaller extent also in many other fjords along the Norwegian coast. But the reason for the dark water in the fjords is different from the nutrient overflow in the Baltic Sea. Dag Aksnes: So actually, we got a very extended water column with coastal water containing lots of dissolved organic matter which originates from land. And then this question, of course, which we still investigate, is why has this amount of dissolved organic matter which absorbs lights increased. Dissolved organic matter. Small particles of rotten leaves or wood. It gets into the Norwegian fjords via the rivers from all over Northern Europe. And stays in there for decades before it eventually degrades. In the case of Lurefjord, it accumulates more and more due to an exceptionally narrow exit to the sea. The irony here is that the source of all this organic matter is something that we'd usually desire: more nature. Dag Aksnes: The evidence now is that this is because of increased greening in Northern Europe. [...] There are more trees now than a hundred years ago. Much more. This is partly because of change in land use. [...] The other reason is, I believe, warming and also increased precipitation over Northern Europe, which also stimulates greening. [...] More green coverage in Scandinavia and Northern Europe which produces more dissolved organic matter that enters the sea sooner or later. Think of it as a cup of tea. You pour in the water, add a tea bag and watch as the water slowly turns brown. And now think of that cup of tea as a big barrel standing in a garage building, named like a character from a Transformers movie: planktotron. We're at the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment in Wilhelmshaven. That's another German harbor town – the last one, that's a promise – but this one is situated at the North Sea coast. The planktotrons are 12 large cylindrical tanks made from stainless steel and wrapped with hemp and black foil for insulation. The numbers 1 to 12 are taped on the foil with pink duct tape. Maren Striebel: We can simulate the marine environment on a smaller scale here. We can manipulate nutrients or what we did in the Coastal Ocean Darkening project was to manipulate the light. Maren Striebel is a biologist at the institute. She does research on plankton and was part of the research group of Oliver Zielinski, whom we heard earlier. Maren Striebel: We had three different levels of intensity of input of dissolved organic matter. There was definitely shading at the beginning and an impact on the primary producers, the phytoplankton. We observed a reduction in its biomass, which had an impact on the next trophical stage, i.e. the food web in the water. But then the organic matter degraded over time and the nutrients were used up, so the system returned to its orginial state at some point. The dissolved organic matter waseaten up, so to say, by organisms in the water, which subsequently cleared and brightend up. That's good news. But in another experiment Striebel and her colleagues also added sediment to the water in the planktotrons, or sand, taken from the local beach. And sand doesn't get used up by organism because, well, it's just sand, there are no useful nutrients in it like the organic matter. So the sand stays in the water. Again, think of it as a cup or glass. This time you add a teaspoon of sand and give it a good stir. The water turns murky for some time, before the sand slowly settles at the bottom of the glass. But the seas are no glass of water and the sediment in it is more than a teaspoon. Here's Oliver Zielinski again. Oliver Zielinski: Storms carry more sediment into the water and make the water murky. We will have more storms as a result of climate change. But we also have more sediment in the water because we have coastal erosion due to coastlines and construction work [in the water]. Trawlers stir up the sea ground with their heavy nets. All these things mobilize sediments and make the water cloudy. So the effect of sediment for visibility in the water is very strong. Nature's trick to keep sediment on the seabed is vegetation, like seaweed. It stabilizes the ground with its roots. If the seaweed retreats because of too little light, the seabed becomes even more unstable and the water even murkier. It's a vicious cycle, if you like. Oliver Zielinski: I rather like to tell science in positive narratives. If we manage to grow seaweed again, this will also bind sediment. The water will become clearer and we may be able to go deeper to establish even more seaweed. Speaking of positive narratives, Oliver Zielinski hardly complains as we talk. He has every reason to do so, doesn't he? I mean, people are worried about plastic in the seas or coral bleaching. But darkening water isn't getting that kind of attention. His optimism comes from the fact that darkening is already stagnating in the Baltic Sea in particular, but also in the Mediterranean and North America. In the North Sea, the water has even been brightening again since the 1980ies thanks to regulations around fertilizer use and the ban of phosphate in washing detergents, less nutrients have been entering the North Sea. But with global warming, rainfall and storms will become more extreme, which will lead to more organic matter and sediment being washed into coastal waters, Zielinski says. The best way to stop coastal ocean darkening would therefore be to limit global warming. Oliver Zielinski: Measures are being taken. But the efforts need to be increased, they actually need to be doubled, because climate change is working against us. We have to make an even greater effort to get back to the situation we had [in the coastal waters] before. That's the big picture. Back in the harbor, marine biologist Florian Hoffmanns thinks that very specific, local action is needed too. Florian Hoffmann: Well, trying to use less fertilizer and specifically for what you need. And possibly trying to keep water in the landscape, not pumping it directly into the sea, but letting it flow through a reedbed area where the washed-away nutrients can separate. Today's episode of Living Planet was researched and written by Jonas Mayer. It was narrated and edited by me, Neil King. Our sound engineer was Thomas Schmidt. To download this and past episodes of Living Planet, go to Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what we do, make sure to hit the subscribe button. We're also available on DW's website, that's You can also find this and other great podcasts on our YouTube channel DW podcasts. Thanks for listening and sharing Living Planet with your friends and family. Living Planet is produced by DW in Bonn, Germany.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store