Richard Vevers from the Ocean Agency had never experienced anything like the devastation he witnessed in May diving around the dead and dying coral reefs off Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef. When his team emerged from the water, he says, ‘We realised we just stank – we stank of the smell of rotting animals.’ The reefs around the island have been ravaged by coral bleaching caused by climate change

• Great Barrier Reef: a catastrophe laid bare – special report

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Source: Guardian Environment

Paul Crocombe from Adrenalin Dive in Townsville has been taking tourists to the Great Barrier Reef for more than 20 years. ‘We were really fortuntate this time with the coral bleaching that the majority of the mortality is a long way north of here,’ he says. With the reef in danger, he adds, accurate information is needed

• Great Barrier Reef: a catastrophe laid bare – special report

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Source: Guardian Environment

The once brilliant coral at Lizard Island on Australia’s Great Barrier is now dead and dying, blanketed by seaweed – a sign of extreme ecosystem meltdown. These exclusive photographs are from a series taken by not-for-profit the Ocean Agency as part of its work around the world documenting the longest coral bleaching event in history

• Great Barrier Reef: a catastrophe laid bare – special report

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Source: Guardian Environment

Tiny bird flies 59,650 miles from its breeding grounds in Farne Islands in the UK to Antarctica and back again, clocking the longest ever migration recorded

A tiny bird from the Farne Islands off Northumberland has clocked up the longest migration ever recorded. The Arctic tern’s meandering journey to Antarctica and back saw it clock up 59,650 miles, more than twice the circumference of the planet.

The bird, which weighs just 100g, left its breeding grounds last July and flew down the west coast of Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean and arrived in Antarctica in November. Its mammoth trek was recorded by a tiny device attached to its leg, weighing 0.7g – too light to affect its flight.

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Source: Guardian Environment

West Sussex airport makes eight pledges to bolster its case over Heathrow’s as pressure mounts on PM to make a decision

Gatwick has mounted a fresh lobbying drive to secure a third runway instead of Heathrow, sending an open letter David Cameron in which it promises to speed up its timetable and cap passenger charges.

The airport set out eight pledges designed to sway the prime minister as he faces a tricky political decision soon after the EU referendum.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Vote Leave campaign head mocks partly-EU funded conservation project to revive numbers of little terns as ‘aphrodisiacs for birds’

For Brexit campaigners trawling for examples of apparently badly spent EU cash to hold up for public opprobrium, a project that involves leaving plaster models of birds on beaches may have seemed easy to mock.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Proposal for temporary licence extension for chemical used in weedkiller, to study concerns over cancer risks, fails to get sufficient majority in voting

EU nations have refused to back a limited extension of the pesticide glyphosate’s use, threatening withdrawal of Monsanto’s Roundup and other weedkillers from shelves if no decision is reached by the end of the month.

Contradictory findings on the carcinogenic risks of the chemical have thrust it into the centre of a dispute among EU and US politicians, regulators and researchers.

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Source: Guardian Environment

The flooding in Paris is a stark warning of the danger posed by climate change to everything human civilisation has achieved – no matter how priceless

Related: Strikes, floods, protests and sense of betrayal pile on misery for France

One of the oldest human illusions is that culture is a conquest of, or an escape from, nature. It is an illusion we need to abandon fast.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Companies say offshore wind will generate electricity as cheaply as fossil fuels within a decade if properly supported

A group of offshore wind companies have pledged that the technology will generate electricity as cheaply as fossil fuels in Europe within a decade – but only if policymakers across the EU take the steps needed to ensure such growth as a matter of urgency.

The pledge^(pdf) and the challenge to ministers are designed to reposition offshore wind as having a strong future in the EU. The European commission has tended to emphasise gas as the priority source of energy security.

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Source: Guardian Environment