Latest news with #seabed
The Independent
30-06-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Crown Estate profits remain at record high but windfarm boost set to fall back
Profits at The Crown Estate have remained at a record high of more than £1 billion, but earnings are set to drop back sharply as a short-term boost from offshore wind farms fades. The latest annual figures from The Crown Estate, which oversees the royal family's land and property holdings, revealed earnings stayed at the all-time high of £1.1 billion for the second year in a row. This has helped bring returns to the Treasury to £5 billion over the past decade. The Crown Estate is run as an independent business, but its profits are paid directly to the Treasury, which then hands on a small portion of the money to the monarchy, known as the Sovereign Grant, which supports the official duties of the royal family. Earnings have spiked to record levels in the past two years thanks to option fees – payments made by companies to reserve a patch of the seabed to eventually build their wind turbines on. But The Crown Estate said the so-called option fee uplift is expected to drop back significantly in the current financial year – down from £1.07 billion in 2024/25 to around £25 million a year from January 2026 as projects move into the construction phase. This will see the net revenue profit 'normalise', according to The Crown Estate. But it said underlying profits, stripping out the option fee boost, stood at £366 million in the year to the end of March and would continue to grow. The Crown Estate owns the vast majority of Britain's seabed, stretching up to 12 nautical miles from the mainland, and leases part of it to wind farm operators. It also has a 180,000-acre property holding across the UK, including much of London's Regent Street and St James's, and large swathes of arable land and forestry. Dan Labbad, chief executive at The Crown Estate, said it had been a 'landmark year' for collection, but flagged a difficult backdrop in the wider economy. He said: 'This year's results are set against significant global economic disturbance. 'This affects the UK and Crown Estate just as it affects countries and businesses. 'This has made for a more challenging period.' The results showed the value of The Crown Estate's land and assets was £15 billion in 2024/25, down from £15.5 billion the previous year. The drop came after gains in its urban and rural businesses were offset by a £1 billion fall in the valuation of its marine assets. It said the valuation of the marine portfolio had jumped higher in anticipation of option fees, but that it reduced as this income was recognised, falling back to £3.4 billion from £4.4 billion in 2023/24. The figures come after the new Crown Estate Bill was passed earlier this year, handing it more powers to invest and borrow. The Treasury has said the changes will allow The Crown Estate to invest more in green energy and help the UK achieve net zero. Recent investments by The Crown Estate include a joint venture announced in May with Lendlease for housing and science and innovation space across six projects. It said this has the potential to deliver 100,000 jobs, 26,000 homes and have an overall value of up to £24 billion. Mr Labbad said: 'Thanks to new legislation, we now have greater flexibility to invest across our portfolio, increasing our resilience and potential, and enabling us to create lasting benefits for the country and its finances.' Under previous rules, The Crown Estate could not use its cash reserves to invest because it had to hold them against the prospect of future financial losses. But greater ability to borrow will see it invest more in offshore wind. The Government has also committed to doubling its onshore wind capacity by 2030 and Mr Labbad said The Crown Estate was reviewing its land portfolio to see if more onshore wind projects could be 'viable and relevant'. It will report back later in 2025.
The National
30-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
What can the UK's muddy shores tell us about marine conservation in the Gulf?
The history of the ocean seabed could be central to the future health of planet Earth, say scientists. Seabeds capture carbon from the remains of marine life. But when the ocean floors are disturbed by trawling or coastal development, the carbon is released from the sea into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. Scientists also believe that the seabed's ability to capture carbon could be used to cut global CO2 emissions by up to 6 per cent of the amount needed to cap the rise in global temperatures at 1.5°C. Carbon stores have been mapped around the world, but scientists are hoping they can go deeper to understand with greater accuracy the human and animal behaviours that cause seabeds to release or capture the gas. 'We will write a new history of the ocean, telling the story of how the seabed has been changed over centuries by human activities,' said Professor Callum Roberts, a marine biologist who is leading the Convex Seascape Survey at the University of Exeter. 'We're figuring out where are the most, the deepest and the most rich deposits of carbon in the seas,' he said, of the project which also involves the Blue Marine Foundation, a UK charity. 'At the moment, we don't have really strong science to give us robust answers,' he told The National. 'We're recreating the oceanography back to 17,000 years ago and we can turn back the clock.' The comprehensive survey, which also brings in researchers from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Jeddah among other institutions, could alter how coastal seas are managed and protected. 'When we think about marine protection, we protect certain things like habitats or species, but not typically the sediments and the organic matter and carbon that's contained within (them),' said Zoe Roseby, a marine geologist at the University of Exeter who is part of the five-year project. Shallow seabeds of the Gulf Although most the research has taken place in the UK, the findings will be of relevance to the Arabian Gulf, a shallow sea where urban development and commercial shipping increase at a rapid pace. 'We're focused on continental shelves, the underwater extensions of land masses. They go down to about 200 metres, which means the entirety of the Arabian Gulf is continental shelf,' said Prof Roberts, who has written about coral reefs in Saudi Arabia, which he helped to map in the 1990s. Although most fishing in the Gulf does not disturb the seabed, the increase in trawling, and the need to create deeper sea routes for commercial shipping could put the area at risk. 'We need to understand that impact, at least because we would need to incorporate this international carbon budgets, so that decision makers know that it's happening and they know that they need to include this in net zero calculations,' he said. Studies had shown there were benefits and negative side-effects to energy infrastructure such as offshore oil wells and wind farms. But Prof Roberts also suggests that shallow sea-beds could be disturbed so as to move the carbon to the deep sea, where there is little chance of it escaping into the atmosphere. 'If you're stirring up carbon from the seabed, then if there is a flow of water off the shelf, then that carbon could be taken into the deep sea, which is a long-term carbon store,' he said. Little is known about this process, and it is one of the possibilities that the project hopes to find an answer to. 'If some of that carbon is going down into the deep sea, then disturbance could actually contribute to long term storage. It's a paradox that we don't know scientifically what the answer is,' he said. Prof Roberts believes the Gulf could be a good test case for this because of the interaction between the freshwater Euphrates and Tigris rivers that feed into the sea, and the sea water from coming in from the other side through the Straits of Hormuz. 'That's one of the things that's keeping the Arabian Gulf habitable for marine life, is that you get this big exchange of water coming in,' Prof Roberts said. 'It could be that disturbing carbon in the Arabian Gulf is leading to the transport of that carbon through the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Sea and deep water,' he said. 'There is possibly a way in which that carbon could be transported to somewhere it is more secure and less likely to come back into the atmosphere,' he said. Antarctica samples go to Jeddah The research is already expanding to other parts of the world. A recent expedition to Antarctica, led marine ecologist Professor Carlos Duarte who is based at KAUST, will seek to establish the role that whales play in maintaining the ocean's ability to sequester carbon. The survey looking back 500 years will examine the changes in carbon stores in periods when whales thrived on the peninsula, compared to those when whale hunting led to their near extinction. "We hope to either validate or reject the hypothesis that great whales contribute to carbon sequestration by keeping the ecosystem in a highly productive stage," Prof Duarte told The National. The samples extracted earlier this year will arrive in Jeddah in June month for eDNA testing. "If the hypothesis is correct, then when whales were being hunted down, we expect to see that ... the organic carbon content of the sediment will decline, ... along with the decline in productivity in plants," he said. "We can reconstruct a record of how the Antarctic ecosystem responded to the massive depletion of whales," he said. North west coastal research Scientists are finding the richest carbon stores around the UK and Ireland by looking at deep history all the way back to the end of the last Ice Age. The melting of ice sheets 17,000 years ago changed the shape of the coastline, as well as the tidal currents. A team led by Dr Sophie Ward developed a model that could trace the changes in coastal shapes, and tidal currents through this time, in order to identify the places with the most carbon-rich mud stores, and how vulnerable they are to disturbance. 'We've used this case study to look at the carbon stock of the surface elements of that area, to consider the amount of carbon that's being stored in this elements, but also the kind of quality, the reactivity of that carbon as well," Dr Roseby said. "So, how vulnerable is that carbon to disturbance from human pressures, such as trawling." The study published last month found that while mud was still accumulating in places like the Western Irish Sea Mud Belt and the Celtic Deep, in the North Sea's Fladen Ground above Scotland, the mud floor was ancient, formed after the end of the last Ice Age and preserved for millennia by low tidal currents. She hopes the model will allow them to predict the location of muds in other lesser studied seas, such as those on the coast of Patagonia, where the team will be heading next. Their findings will remain open source so that other scientists can access them, she said. The data that we produce in our projects is going to be open access, so other members of the scientific community will be able to utilise our model and data outputs for like, any you know, ongoing work that they're doing,' she said. Sedimentologist Torsa Sengupta showed how she was able to trace the amount of carbon in a muddle samples from the laboratories at Exeter University's Penryn campus in Cornwall. Sediment cores several metres long were extracted from the North Sea corers, then cut into metre-long samples and analysed in laboratories. The deeper the sediment, the older the carbon deposits in there will be. The mud is first dried and then mortared make a fine powder. Then an acid is poured onto it to remove the inorganic carbon that comes from sea shells. The resulting powder, which has isolated the organic carbon, is then put into a carbon analysis machine. 'We use this course to identify the total amount of carbon, and the difference in the proportion between organic and inorganic carbon, and how did the amount and the types of organic carbon change through time,' she said. 'This is mainly to find out the natural organic carbon, or the natural carbon reservoirs deep down in ocean sediments which can spread,' she said. The research can take months of this painstaking work. Yet Ms Sengupta said she is compelled to do it because of the rise in climate-related migration, which affects the developing world the most. 'Even when humans had no control over the climate, the natural climate has driven large human populations to migrate,' she said. 'That motivated me to find out, where is this total source of carbon?'.
NHK
20-05-2025
- Science
- NHK
Baltic Sea nations display latest technology for protecting undersea cables
Six European countries have unveiled the latest drone and other technologies they are jointly developing to protect seabed infrastructure amid allegations that Russia is behind damage to Baltic Sea cables. Since November of last year, repeated damage has been reported to electricity transmission and communications cables laid in the Baltic Sea. Some have pointed to possible sabotage by Russia. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, has responded by strengthening monitoring via ships and aircraft. The six countries, including Finland and Sweden, border Baltic waters where such damage has been found. A research organization they set up to develop technology for securing the safety of undersea infrastructure has showcased its latest equipment. Among the items is a monitoring device equipped with four sonar sensors that is placed on the bottom of the sea. It can detect the movement of objects within a 100-kilometer radius at a depth of 600 meters and is expected to support undersea cable surveillance. The research organization has also developed a drone weighing about 10 kilograms that uses sonar and cameras for tasks such as identifying damaged sections of cables. The organization plans to further advance this work and hopes it will lead to procurement by national governments.
RNZ News
09-05-2025
- General
- RNZ News
Drilling for Auckland's mythical harbour crossing
This jack-up barge is providing information about the seabed in the Waitematā harbour to inform plans of a second city harbour crossing. Photo: Davina Zimmer Is it a Pak'nSave for yachties, or maybe a new venue for manu competitions? The yellow platform on sticks in the Waitematā harbour is the topic of discussion on a series of Reddit and Facebook threads. But instead of suppling everyday bargains or a big splash, this mysterious vessel is providing information about the seabed to inform plans of a second city harbour crossing. We've been here before. There was the Skybridge, then the Northern Pathway, and let's not forget mayoral hopeful John Tamihere's double-decker 18-lane proposal . Yet despite the many plans, reports and debates, no government has managed to get a shovel in the ground. So, what makes it different this time? "There's never been any substantive geo-technical drilling in the Waitematā before, so this is really the first time that we're seeing a picture of what the rock conditions are underground," Sian France, a geologist and the investigations lead of the Waitematā Harbour Connections Alliance said. Today, The Detail gets a closer look at this jack-up barge, finding out more about the drilling process, the geological testing and how it's helping further plans for the long awaited new crossing. The project should take about seven months, which sounds like a long time, but Mark Ware, project director for NZTA, says there's a lot more to it than drilling a couple of holes. NZTA project director Mark Ware. Photo: Davina Zimmer "Each hole takes between four and five days. So you're drilling upwards of 75 metres in the marine area below the surface and 65 on land," he says. Ware is hoping for a decision on the crossing by mid next year. "Depending on what that decision looks like it will then take us a number of years to finish off the designs, procure our services and contractors, so we're looking to be in the ground or under the seabed by 2029-2030." But for this to go ahead, governments over the next couple of parliamentary terms will need to be on board. With an election happening next year and no legislation securing the plan, there is the risk that it could be scrapped in favour of a new idea. "Hopefully we've got a strong enough case that any government coming in sees the benefit of actually undertaking the work that we're doing and building an alternative harbour crossing," Ware says. The drilling is done with a steel pipe that has industrial grade diamonds on the end of it, which cuts through the rock. Sections have to be removed 1.5 metres at a time. Then geologists like Georgia Woodside and Sian France get the extracted material ready for testing. From left to right: Sam Woodford, Georgia Woodside and Sian France. Photo: Davina Zimmer "Often when it comes out it's got a bit of drilling fluid or a bit of clay from the hole so we wash it off so it's clear what we're looking at and then we box it up, taking great care not to break it because it can be used for different kinds of testing," Woodside says. That testing includes looking at the rock formation, and what it's made of. "For example, here [Waitematā Harbour] we've got the East Coast Bays Formation, so that's saltstone and sandstone interbedded," Woodside explains. All of this information is logged and used to inform how the crossing will be built. "It's all about how the ground will respond to construction activity," France says. "So, if you pile for a bridge, if we bring a tunnel boring machine in for a tunnel, how will the ground respond? Will it stay open by itself? Do we need additional engineering means to support it? How do we design and build it in a safe manner?" France says all this prior investigation is important to avoid later cost blowouts, because by the time shovels are in the ground it's too late. "You've missed the opportunity to really manage cost risk and so that's a really huge part of getting Geotech investigations done upfront. "We're trying to minimise surprises; there's a whole bunch of really good stats that come out of construction projects in the UK that essentially demonstrate that a very small percentage of overall spending on Geotech will significantly reduce the likelihood of having construction overruns." Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here . You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter .
The Independent
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Attenborough film unveils seabed destruction caused by bottom trawling
Dramatic footage from Sir David Attenborough's landmark new film captures the destruction caused to the seabed by bottom trawling. Ocean With David Attenborough, released in cinemas to mark the renowned naturalist and TV presenter's 99th birthday, includes a sequence where the camera follows a bottom trawl, where nets are dragged with a metal beam across the seabed to catch fish. As the iron chains travel across the ocean floor they can be seen bulldozing through the habitat, stirring up silt which releases carbon and scooping up species indiscriminately. The footage is thought to be the first time the process has been filmed in such high quality, showing the scale of destruction caused by trawling. Sir David can be heard saying that 'very few places are safe' from the damaging fishing method, which occurs daily across vast swathes of the world's seabeds. In the cilp, he also highlights how trawlers, often on the hunt for a single species, discard almost everything they catch. 'It's hard to imagine a more wasteful way to catch fish,' he notes. Bottom trawling and other forms of destructive fishing are permitted in UK waters but conservationists have long been campaigning for a full ban across all marine protected areas. The impacts of bottom trawling and dredging are largely hidden from public view and are carried out without the knowledge of what marine life is being destroyed. Ocean looks to spotlight how human actions are leading to ecosystem collapse. The film also seeks to highlight the need to protect nearly a third of the oceans so they can recover from overfishing and habitat destruction, secure food for billions of people and tackle climate change. Beyond the destruction seen from bottom trawling and coral bleaching, Sir David also highlights inspiring stories from around the world, delivering the message that taking collective action will provide the opportunity for marine life to recover. 'If we save the sea, we save our world,' he says. Toby Nowlan, Keith Scholey and Colin Butfield, who directed the film, said: 'Collaborating with David Attenborough to deliver this powerful message is a dream come true for us as filmmakers and storytellers. 'We hope that sharing this unprecedented look at bottom trawling will bring greater awareness to the reality of what's happening beneath the waves and inspire audiences to protect the world around us.' Enric Sala, National Geographic Pristine Seas founder and executive producer of the film, said: 'I couldn't think of a more crucial time for this film to be available to a global audience. 'For the first time, people can see the destruction of bottom trawling unfold in front of their eyes — the heavy nets dragging across the ocean's precious floor and killing everything in their wake. 'I hope the film makes people all over the world fall in love with the ocean and inspires them to protect it.'
