Latest news with #NorthAtlantic
Gizmodo
17 hours ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
You Don't Want to Know Where Scientists Just Found 27 Million Tons of Plastic
Despite the hundreds of millions of metric tons of plastic floating in our oceans—not to mention the microplastics in our saliva, blood, breast milk, and semen—researchers have been unable to account for all the plastic ever produced. A new study has just tracked down a large portion of it. Researchers from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and Utrecht University claim to be the first to provide a real estimate of ocean-polluting nanoplastics. Their research indicates that the North Atlantic Ocean alone hosts 27 million tons of floating plastic particles less than 1 micrometer (μm) in size. 'Plastic pollution of the marine realm is widespread, with most scientific attention given to macroplastics and microplastics. By contrast, ocean nanoplastics (<1 μm) remain largely unquantified, leaving gaps in our understanding of the mass budget of this plastic size class,' they explained in a study published earlier this month in the journal Nature. 'Our findings suggest that nanoplastics comprise the dominant fraction of marine plastic pollution.' To reach these conclusions, Utrecht graduate student and study co-author Sophie ten Hietbrink collected water samples from 12 locations while working aboard a research vessel traveling from the Azores to the continental shelf of Europe. She filtered the samples of anything larger than one micrometer and conducted a molecular analysis on what was left behind. The team then extrapolated its results to the entire North Atlantic Ocean. 27 million tons is 'a shocking amount,' Ten Hietbrink said in a NIOZ statement. 'But with this we do have an important answer to the paradox of the missing plastic.' Namely, that a large part of it is floating in our oceans, invisible to the naked eye. Unfortunately, there are a number of ways nanoparticles can end up in the oceans. While some likely arrive via rivers, others fall out of the sky with rain or on their own as 'dry deposition.' (Yes, we've even found plastic pollution in the sky). Nanoparticles can also form when large pieces of plastic already in the ocean are broken down by waves and/or sunlight, according to the researchers. The question now is how this pollution is impacting the world and its creatures—including us. 'It is already known that nanoplastics can penetrate deep into our bodies. They are even found in brain tissue. Now that we know they are so ubiquitous in the oceans, it's also obvious that they penetrate the entire ecosystem; from bacteria and other microorganisms to fish and top predators like humans,' said Helge Niemann, a geochemist at NIOZ and another co-author of the study. 'How that pollution affects the ecosystem needs further investigation.' The missing plastic paradox, however, is not completely solved, because not all plastics were represented in the samples. The team didn't find polyethylene or polypropylene, for example. 'It may well be that those were masked by other molecules in the study. We also want to know if nanoplastics are as abundant in the other oceans. It is to be feared that they do, but that remains to be proven,' Niemann added. 'The nanoplastics that are there, can never be cleaned up. So an important message from this research is that we should at least prevent the further pollution of our environment with plastics.'
Wall Street Journal
2 days ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Europe Will Never Keep Its Promises to Trump on Defense
Among President Donald Trump's more ballyhooed successes in the early months of his second term has been forcing European nations finally to take more responsibility for their own defense. '[It's] something that no one really thought possible,' the president said at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in the Hague last month, when members of the alliance promised to increase their defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product by 2035, from the current average of below 2%. 'They said, 'You did it, sir. You did it.' Well, I don't know if I did it, but I think I did.'
CNN
2 days ago
- Business
- CNN
Analysis: NATO has promised a spending blitz. Can its European members afford it?
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the defense alliance of 32 countries, is on a spending spree, with plans to funnel billions into their militaries and security systems over the coming decade. But it's a splurge that some European members of NATO, grappling with huge and ballooning debt burdens, can ill-afford. 'It's something unprecedented in peacetime to have such a massive increase in spending on any item – in particular, on defense,' Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research or DIW, told CNN. Last month, NATO members agreed to boost their respective defense spending targets to 5% of gross domestic product by 2035 – more than double the current 2% target and the sort of major increase that US President Donald Trump has been demanding for many years. The pledge came as Europe's NATO members have to contend with an aggressive Russia and an America that has backed away from its long-standing role as the guarantor of the region's security. Governments have three options to meet the new spending target – cut other expenses, raise taxes or borrow more – but analysts told CNN that each is either politically unpalatable or unviable in the long term for heavily indebted European NATO countries. 'Many (European Union) countries face hard fiscal constraints,' analysts at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank, wrote earlier this month. 'It is unrealistic to expect countries that have struggled for decades to reach a 2% defense spending target to embrace credibly an ill-justified, much higher target.' Many NATO countries have failed to meet the previous, 2% target, set in 2014. Most have increased spending in recent years in response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – so much so that the European Union's executive arm expects its 23 member states belonging to NATO to meet that target this year, based on their combined GDP. But they now need to go further. The new, 5% target includes a commitment by NATO member states to spend the equivalent of 3.5% of their annual GDP on so-called 'core' defense requirements, such as weapons, with the remaining 1.5% allocated to areas supporting defense like port infrastructure. For some nations, that will mean finding tens of billions of extra dollars a year. Frank Gill, a senior sovereign credit ratings analyst for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at S&P Global Ratings, thinks that meeting the 3.5% target alone will require European countries, including the United Kingdom, to borrow huge sums of money. Some nations may also cut or reallocate government spending to reduce the amount they need to borrow, he said, but that could prove difficult. 'A lot of (European governments) are facing other fiscal pressures… not least aging populations, which are essentially leading to even higher pension spending,' Gill told CNN. 'Politically, (that) is very challenging to cut.' Fratzscher at DIW in Germany agrees. For most NATO countries, he argued, cutting spending is 'utterly impossible.' 'Europe is aging quickly,' he said. 'It's completely illusionary to believe that… governments in Europe could save on public pensions, on healthcare, on care more generally.' The only sustainable way to finance the 'kind of magnitude of extra (defense) spending' now pledged by NATO is to hike taxes, he argued. Yet there exists neither the political will nor the public support to spend 'in such a dramatic way in this direction… and actually accept the consequences.' Simply borrowing more is a similarly tricky option in Europe where a number of governments are already saddled with debts close to, or larger than, the size of their country's entire economy. All else remaining equal, meeting just the 3.5% 'core' defense spending target could add roughly $2 trillion to the collective government debt of NATO's European members, including the UK, by 2035, according to a recent analysis by S&P Global Ratings. That compares with combined GDP of $23.1 trillion for the EU – a proxy for European NATO members – and Britain, based on World Bank data for 2024. The extra debt would be particularly hard to swallow for countries such as Italy, France and Belgium. These NATO members had some of the highest public debt-to-GDP ratios at the end of 2024, at 135%, 113% and 105% respectively, according to the EU's statistics office. Those are already heavy burdens. On Tuesday, French Prime Minister François Bayrou said the EU's second-largest economy risks a 'crushing by debt.' He warned that, should nothing change, just the interest France pays on its debt will swell to €100 billion ($117 billion) in 2029, becoming the government's largest single expense. He still supports splashing the cash on defense, while reining in other government spending. The EU is trying to make it easier for member states to invest in their security. Brussels has exempted defense expenditure from its strict rules on government spending and pledged to create a €150 billion fund from which countries can borrow, at favorable interest rates, to invest in their defense. However, there is another option for EU NATO members, according to Guntram Wolff, a senior fellow at Bruegel. 'Just not doing it. Not spending more,' he told CNN. Already, Spain has said it will not meet the 5% target, arguing that doing so would compromise its spending on welfare. Last year, the southern European nation spent only 1.28% of its GDP on defense, based on NATO estimates. Wolff said the 'best predictor for the increase in defense spending is (a country's) distance to Moscow – much more than any pledges at the NATO summit.'
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Why is a Russian ‘shadow fleet' using Irish waters?
Earlier this month, the Sierra tanker set off from a Russian port on the Baltic Sea laden with thousands of tonnes of crude oil and set a course for India. There was nothing unusual about that – Russia has continued to export vast amounts of fossil fuels despite the international sanctions imposed following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. However, when the Sierra, a 250 metre tanker, reached Dutch waters, it did something which left maritime and naval experts scratching their heads. Instead of taking the safest and most economically efficient route through the English Channel and down the coast of France, the ship abruptly turned north. It sailed all the way around the British Isles into the North Atlantic before coming down the Irish west coast on July 10th. It skirted down the very edge of the Irish Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) before continuing south to India. READ MORE Two weeks previously, the Marathon, another sanctioned vessel carrying Russian oil, made the exact same journey. The Sierra and Marathon are part of what has become known as Russia's shadow fleet and are just two of an increasing number of vessels which have been engaging in suspicious and sometimes bizarre behaviour around Irish waters in recent months. This has raised both environmental and national security concerns among Irish officials, especially given Ireland's extremely limited ability to monitor such vessels. An Irish Times investigation has identified 19 shadow fleet vessels sailing in, or just outside, the Irish EEZ since May. Five of these ships appeared more than once. All are subject to US or UK sanctions, while 11 are subject to EU sanctions. [ New €60m sonar system aims to protect transatlantic cables, gas pipelines in Irish waters Opens in new window ] The most recent sailing occurred on Saturday when the Matari, a crude oil tanker flagged in Sierra Leone, sailed north through the EEZ on its way to the Gulf of Kola in the Russian Arctic. There are various definitions of a shadow fleet vessel, but most involve a ship engaging in deceptive practices to transport sanctioned oil or other cargos. In the majority of cases, these ships fly the flag of a small country with a poor reputation for maritime regulations. Sometimes, as is the case with the Sierra which claims it is flagged in the landlocked African nation of Malawi, the registration is fraudulent (it previously flew the flags of Sao Tome and Principe, Liberia, Gabon and Barbados). The tally of 19 ships observed around Ireland recently is likely an undercount. The vessels were tracked using tools from Starboard Maritime Intelligence, a New Zealand-based marine software firm, and open source marine tracking platforms. Their location was based on the signals from their automatic identification systems (AIS). A defining feature of shadow vessels is that they often sail with AIS turned off, which makes them all but impossible to track. The figure of 19 shadow fleet vessels does not include the Shtandart, a replica of a historic Russian navy ship, which visited a Co Louth port earlier this month despite being under EU sanctions. [ State needs to invest in Navy and Air Corps to beef up our ability to protect vital undersea connections Opens in new window ] Many of the recent incidents in Irish waters involved ships engaging in unusual and economically inefficient practices, including sailing outside of recognised shipping lanes and taking the long way around Ireland on the way to the Baltic Sea. 'Vessels don't take longer routes, especially those that include the North Atlantic, unless there's a reason,' said Mark Douglas, a maritime domain analyst with Starboard Maritime Intelligence and a former New Zealand Royal Navy officer. 'The important thing about all of this is, I don't know why this is happening and no one else does either,' he said. One possible explanation for the growing number of sanctioned ships sailing up the Irish west coast is increased monitoring of traffic in the English Channel by UK authorities. UK officials are now challenging by radio an average of 40 shadow vessels every month off the British coast as part of a joint campaign with a group of EU countries to tackle Russian sanction busting. Christian Panton, an expert in maritime open source intelligence, said European countries are increasingly concerned about the presence of unflagged or fraudulently flagged vessels in their waters. The Russian oil tanker Sierra. Photograph: Marinetraffic/Hannes van Rijn The Shtandart, a replica of a historic Russian navy ship, in Dublin. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw He pointed to a recent joint communication from the NB8++, a group of 12 northern European countries, stating that 'if vessels fail to fly a valid flag in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, we will take appropriate action within international law'. Ireland is not a member of this group, meaning vessels may feel more comfortable sailing off its west coast than going through the English Channel. Evidence suggests shadow fleet ships may also be attempting to avoid areas which impose specific environmental conditions on oil tankers. Since 2005, the Western European Tanker Reporting System (Wetrep) has required oil tankers to provide details of their crews, cargo and seaworthiness when sailing through a designated area. Ireland is a member of Wetrep and much of its EEZ is classified as a designated reporting area. Several of the shadow vessel ships tracked through the EEZ in recent weeks appeared to be just skirting the Wetrep area, meaning they did not have to provide details on their operations to authorities. The increased presence of the shadow fleet off Ireland has raised concern among national security officials. During one recent voyage through the English Channel, the Sierra was escorted by a Russian warship which had disguised itself as a fishing vessel. [ Ireland cannot protect its waters alone, UN expert says Opens in new window ] There is concern Russia intends to start regularly providing military escorts for shadow vessels to deter western intervention. This raises the chances of military escalation. Secondly, there is concern about the activity of shadow fleet vessels around Irish undersea cables. In a small number of cases, vessels have been observed by the Irish Air Corps or Naval Service loitering in the areas of these cables. Last March, the Arne, a shadow fleet tanker previously boarded by German federal police over suspicions of sabotage, was spotted by the Naval Service near undersea cables off Cork. The main risks to undersea infrastructure may come not from deliberate action but from the poor condition of shadow fleet vessels. Douglas points out accidents account for 90 per cent of incidents of damage to undersea cables globally. Many shadow fleet vessels are in poor condition and are crewed by inexperienced sailors. The countries they are flagged in take little interest in enforcing safety standards or crew working conditions. All of this raises the danger of an anchor being accidentally dropped and dredged across some cables, said Douglas. The biggest concern for Irish officials is that the poor condition of these ships could result in an ecological disaster. Eleven of the 19 ships identified in recent weeks were carrying full loads of crude oil when sailing off Ireland. The clean-up costs for an oil spill from a single shadow fleet tanker could be nearly €750 million, according to recent estimates from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. Such an incident would be devastating to Irish waters, even if the ship was sailing just outside the EEZ, as was the case with the Sierra and Marathon. 'That is the thing would keep me up at night, more than anything with cables,' said an Irish maritime official. 'There are redundancies built into the cable system. There's no redundancy for an oil spill.' It is not an entirely hypothetical scenario. In January, the sanctioned tanker Eventin lost control while at anchor off Germany. The Blue, a sanctioned oil tanker heading for the Baltic, took an unusual route around Ireland. Photograph: Marinetraffic/Hans Rosenkranz Last week, the Pushpa, a shadow fleet oil tanker, reported losing control about 50 nautical miles off Malta. 'Imagine that on Ireland's Atlantic coast,' said Douglas. The right of Ireland to do anything about these ships is up for debate. Maritime law is ambiguous about the rights of countries to board or seize shadow fleet vessels. In April, the Estonian Naval Service boarded an unflagged shadow fleet vessel off its coast, but no other country has taking similar action. Ireland largely lacks the ability to conduct such operations, but some action is being taken. The Defence Forces and Coast Guard monitor many of these vessels as they pass through. The newly acquired Airbus C295 maritime patrol aircraft, which has extended range and more advanced sensors than its predecessors, has proven invaluable. Just last Friday, an Air Corps C295 set a course for the Mayo coast where it monitored the Blue, a sanctioned oil tanker heading for the Baltic and taking an unusual route around Ireland. It is understood the Defence Forces received prior intelligence about the ship, which has since left Irish waters. Earlier in the week, it intercepted the Belgorod, another sanctioned tanker sailing north through the EEZ. A Defence Forces spokesman declined to comment on the operations but said it 'maintains a continuous presence and vigilance within Ireland's maritime domain. 'We monitor all activity within our Exclusive Economic Zone as part of our routine operations to ensure the security and integrity of our waters.' The Department of Transport, which regulates maritime traffic, said the Irish Coast Guard 'has instituted specific measures to monitor the presence of these vessels and passage through and out of Irish EEZ'. It said the Coast Guard is specifically concerned about the increased possibility of maritime casualty incidents 'from such vessels'. A spokesman also pointed to several measures being taken to crack down on shadow fleet vessels operating without maritime insurance. Ireland is taking part in a one-month 'focused inspection campaign' to check the insurance documents of oil tankers calling to ports. It has also signed up to a new EU system to monitor shadow fleet vessels. Nevertheless, recent events suggest shadow fleet traffic is only likely to increase. Last week, the EU agreed an additional sanctions package for Russia which will further limit the legitimate market for its oil exports and increase Moscow's reliance on its shadow fleet.
CBC
3 days ago
- CBC
Looking to spot a whale this summer? An expert has tips
Whether in a boat or on the shore, there's nothing like the thrill of seeing a whale in the water. Marine biologist Laura Lilly — who also runs a Facebook page where people can share their whale sightings, capelin and icebergs — has some tips on how to make the most of your time when looking for elusive North Atlantic animals.
