Claudio Barría has spent many years of his life debunking Steven Spielberg's film SharkThis Chilean biologist, based in Catalonia, has focused his research on these animals—currently at the University of Oviedo but previously at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM)—and is now one of the leading experts on Mediterranean sharks, probably the leading expert. It was precisely at a film forum for the 50th anniversary of this film, in which he participated, that the idea for the book arose. Sharks, together with Ana Colmenero (ICM), within the collection What do we know about? published by Catarata and the CSIC. Both the book and the conversation exude a wealth of knowledge and, above all, an enormous love for these animals, which are invaluable to marine ecosystems.

The European Union's Copernicus Earth observation program is launching a second satellite for its Sentinel-6 mission this Monday to collect data on ocean temperatures, particularly those of the Mediterranean Sea, which is warming twice as fast as the global average. The new satellite, named Sentinel-6B, incorporates a sensor that measures, among other things, sea level rise, one of the consequences of the climate crisis caused by warming waters and the melting of the polar ice caps, which is now considered irreversible. This instrument is the Poseidon-4 radar altimeter, which is also present on its predecessor, Sentinel-6A, launched in November 2020, but will add precision to the collected data. The new launch will take place from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California (United States). "Thanks to the development of new data processing algorithms, we have increasingly precise information about sea level, which helps us better understand how climate change affects us," explains Mónica Roca i Aparici, former president of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce and current CEO of isardSAT, the Catalan space technology company that designed the data received from these two satellites. This satellite will also help to better observe and predict extreme weather events and flooding—especially on the coast—resulting from global warming. The Copernicus oceanographic mission provides essential, high-precision data for monitoring the impacts of the climate emergency on the sea. Satellite monitoring of this variable began in 1991 with the ERS-1 mission (1991-2000) and continued with several more missions. Multiple satellites monitor various ocean characteristics, and Sentinel-6 is specifically responsible for measuring sea level.

Núria Casacuberta Arola (Malla, 1982) is an environmental scientist, researcher, and professor of physical and tracer oceanography at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ). She uses radioactive isotopes released into the oceans to study ocean currents in the North Atlantic and the Arctic, and how climate change is modifying them, which will have profound implications for the Earth's climate.

In the Atlantic, there are an estimated 27 million tons of nanoplastics, which means that these tiny particles of plastic (much smaller than microplastics) are the most abundant in this ocean, much more than the large pieces of plastic or what the well-known microplasticsThis is the conclusion of a new study published this Tuesday in the journal Nature and prepared for Utrecht University.

There are photographs in every home. Of children, granddaughters, parents, grandmothers. People are usually shown in a slightly artificial position, in the middle of some activity that defines them or at an emblematic moment in their lives: about to kick a ball, on top of a mountain, or dressed in a wedding suit. In the dining room of our house, there was a photograph of my great-grandfather Manelet next to a three-meter hammerhead shark. It had accidentally become entangled in the net of the boat in which he was fishing, and when they arrived at the port of Arenys, someone immortalized that extraordinary catch, which even made the news in the United States. The Vanguard. Like everything that becomes normalized because it forms part of the foundation upon which one acquires the use of reason, perhaps I never attributed to it the importance it had. It was simply there. It was part of the domestic landscape, like the rosebushes and loquats in the yard, the pottery workshop on the porch, or the Creedence Clearwater Revival vinyl records.

Rising temperatures, human pressure, overfishing and pollution are leading to Mother Nostrum at a point of no return. There are many scientific voices warning.

He Oceans Treaty, which was agreed in 2023 to protect international waters, it cannot be implemented until it has been ratified by 60 countries. And so far, two years later, only 50 have done so. This week, delegations from 175 UN governments met in Nice for the grand Ocean Summit, which had this as one of the main outstanding issues. And although the summit ended without the 60 signatures, the host of the meeting assured that yes, all the necessary ratifications are committed and will become effective on September 23, in "an official ceremony" at UN headquarters in New York. This was stated this Friday by Olivier Poivre de Arvor, France's special envoy for the oceans, who asserted that this was "a great victory" for the Nice Conference, especially "considering that the United States is withdrawing from everything" and has also disengaged from this negotiation. However, the future ratification of the treaty – which would come into force in early 2026 – will not prevent oil exploitation or deep-sea mining, nor even practices as destructive as bottom trawling, according to the final declaration agreed in Nice.