Dmitry Kalmykov is a Ukrainian scientist who has dedicated his life to investigating environmental disasters, first at Chornobyl and now in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan - formerly the Soviet Union's primary nuclear weapons testing site. He teaches schoolchildren about how bombs were tested, and how – more than 30 years after the site was decommissioned – the surrounding community is only beginning to comprehend radiation's lasting deadly effects. Against the backdrop of war in Ukraine and the long shadow of a nuclear conflict across the region, Dmitry debates Kazakhstan's nuclear future with its next generation
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/15/2025 - 01:00
The country’s average temperature has risen by 0.48C a decade from 2000. Last August, photographer Susan Schulman visited Baghdad and Amarah, to capture the impact of extreme weather on everyday lives
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04/15/2025 - 01:00
Britain’s traditional retailers were in decline for years. Then the pandemic changed how we buy food and boosted the fishing industry
The seafood chef and restaurateur Mitch Tonks recalls the moment things for him changed dramatically. It was March 2020, the start of Covid, when a local fishing boat skipper called him in a panic. “Nick was having a tough time; nobody was buying his catch, so I emailed our customer network,” he says.
Tonks asked people to bring cash and containers. The next morning, Nick landed his boat at Brixham, the south Devon port that is England’s largest fish market by value of catch sold. “About 150 people turned up to buy his fish. Many asked ‘why can’t we just buy fish straight off boats like this normally?’”
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04/14/2025 - 21:00
European State of the Climate report ‘lays bare’ impact of fossil fuels on continent during its hottest 12 months on record
The home-wrecking storms and floods that swept Europe last year affected 413,000 people, a report has found, as fossil fuel pollution forced the continent to suffer through its hottest year on record.
Dramatic scenes of cars piled up on inundated streets and bridges being ripped away by raging torrents were seen around the continent in 2024, with “high” floods on 30% of the European river network and 12% crossing the “severe” flood threshold, according to the European State of the Climate report.
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04/13/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 14 April 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00105-w
Modeling coastal land use scenario impacts on ecosystem services restoration in Southwest Ghana, West Africa
04/12/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 13 April 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00114-9
Progress and challenges of multi-habitat marine restoration in the eastern Aegean Sea, Türkiye
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
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