Latest news with #StLawrence
CTV News
29-05-2025
- Health
- CTV News
North Atlantic right whale found entangled in St. Lawrence estuary
Fisheries and Oceans Canada says an entangled North Atlantic right whale has been spotted on the north shore of the St. Lawrence estuary.
BBC News
09-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
New memorial announced for Jersey slave labourers
A Jersey visitor destination has unveiled plans for a new public memorial to honour slave labourers who were brought to the island in World War War Tunnels, which tells the story of life in the island during the German Occupation, is planning a large sculpture called Sentinel of Souls and a commemorative trail, said owner Lance said the aim was to "create a significant memorial that draws public attention to the terrible cost of war, the lives lost, and the human suffering endured during the Occupation".Thousands of slave labourers were brought to the Channel Islands by the Germans to build concrete defences, including a gun emplacement at Corbiere. Mr Trevellyan said the privately funded project, part of wider plans under way to upgrade the tunnels, would involve a consultation with local communities, artists, and historians, with local artists expected to contribute to the final tunnels are a former underground hospital complex in St Lawrence.
BBC News
30-04-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Jersey pupils come together for first Liberation Games
The first Liberation Games are under way to honour the 80th anniversary of Jersey's freedom from German Occupation. Year 6 pupils from all primary schools across the island will participate over four days at FB fields, Springfield Stadium and Les Quennevais Sports will take part in cycling, cricket and kickboxing among other Royal, St George's, St Lawrence and St John's schools were at the first of the four-day event. Chris Riley, school sport development officer for Jersey Sport, said: "It's been amazing. The feedback has been really good, children are loving it and there are smiles on faces, that's the main thing we want."It installs a main sense of community spirit, how everybody from schools come together just like we do with Liberation 80 to celebrate."He added that giving children the opportunity to try new sports was important for their physical wellbeing. Students, Isla and Thea, said their favourite sports were the cycling and the said: "I like the netball. We played in teams and it's very active and it's one of my favourites."
The Guardian
24-02-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
‘Super exciting' visit of dolphins to East River offers hope of cleaner New York
When New Yorkers were graced by the presence of two dolphins in the city's East River earlier this month, marine experts said such a sighting was rare – but also a sign that this spring and summer season could be a good one for spotting more marine mammals, both great and small. On the morning of 14 February, a pair of common short-beaked dolphins was spotted alongside Manhattan's Upper East Side. Experts tracking them observed that they lingered until 17 February, swimming up and down the fast-flowing channel that divides Manhattan from the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn and is lined with skyscrapers. 'We received a few reports that morning that people driving along the Franklin D Roosevelt East River Drive saw dolphins jumping in the water,' Chris St Lawrence, a researcher and spokesperson for Gotham Whale, a local marine tracking and research organization, said, referring to the busy Manhattan highway that runs along the shoreline. 'We take these things with a grain of salt, especially when there aren't any photos, so I went out there and I was able to see this pair of dolphins and they spent the entire day right there,' he added. According to St Lawrence, common short-beaked dolphins are not a species that residents would typically see in New York City's inner waterways. 'This is a species that we see here in New York year round but they are usually found further offshore … so it is super exciting to have them this accessible for people to see.' The two were probably pursuing dinner. Maxine Montello, executive director of New York Marine Rescue Center, said: 'There's definitely some fish resources in there … The two that were spotted were noted to be playing and potentially foraging … They're definitely eating smaller schooling fish in that area.' Describing the physical differences between common short-beaked dolphins and bottlenose dolphins, which are more typically spotted from local beaches, St Lawrence said the most visible marker of the former species was the yellowish hourglass marking along their sides. 'It's super, super distinct. Bottlenose are all gray with a whitish belly but these common dolphins have a yellow flash on their side. And common dolphins are quite playful so when they jump out of the water, you can see that yellow pretty clearly,' he said. As reports of the dolphin duo emerged over the weekend, St Lawrence said the biggest reaction Gotham Whale received was concern from people who wondered whether the dolphins were OK. 'We've seen dolphins and other marine life end up in some of these polluted canals and then end up dying and people were worried about that happening with these animals right in the East River,' St Lawrence explained, adding: 'But experts have shown that the East River is the cleanest now than it's been in a century.' Pointing to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the 1972 Clean Water Act, which regulates discharges of pollutants into waters across the US, St Lawrence said: 'These environmental regulations have cleaned up our city's waterways, enabling things like fish to marine mammals to come into these waters and survive.' Dolphins are not the only unusual marine visitors. Last November, a humpback whale made an appearance in the East River underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, reflecting the growing number of whale sightings that have been made across the city in recent years. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion When Gotham Whales first started documenting sightings in 2011, marine experts were only able to document five whales that year. However, in 2024, experts identified approximately 160 individual whales in the New York City area, St Lawrence said. 'Last season was record-setting for our humpbacks so it's looking pretty good for this coming year,' St Lawrence said. Montello said: 'These are all kind of positive signs of potentially how our water is allowing these animals to kind of go into areas that maybe were less ideal many moons ago.' In addition to the Clean Water Act, Montello pointed to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which affords federal protections to marine mammals by prohibiting hunting, capturing and harassing them. To Montello, the combination is 'really furthering the protection of both resources and animal populations, to increase these populations and protect these populations so that we do see them on a bigger basis'. There was a climate element, too, Montello said. 'In the positive realm, we know climate change and increased warmer waters could potentially expand animals' territory, so that would indicate animals that we don't normally see coming to our waters,' she said. On the downside, she added, there could also be 'an increase of virus-spreading and other elements of those calibers because maybe more animals are overlapping [territorially] that didn't originally, due to these kind of climate change-related effects.' Nevertheless, dolphins and whales are still threatened by local plastic pollution. 'Plastic and digestion is an issue for marine mammals in our area,' St Lawrence said, adding that local residents should mind their trash and support local government cleanup efforts. 'What we're trying to share with people is that city and wildlife can go together and … make that connection between the city and our ocean. New York is a series of islands in the Atlantic and people don't know that,' St Lawrence said, adding: 'Our mission … is to make people realize that not only are we an ocean city, we are near an ocean that's very much alive.'
