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A medieval cemetery unearthed near Cardiff Airport is continuing to confound archaeologists, as the mysteries surrounding it are multiplying.

The discovery of the site, dating to the 6th or 7th Century, was announced last year, with dozens of skeletons found lying in unusual positions with unexpected artefacts.

Now researchers have learned nearly all of those buried in the cemetery are women, and while their bones show signs of wear and tear – indicating they carried out heavy manual work – there are also surprising signs of wealth and luxury.

Another unexpected find has been a woman tossed in a ditch, in stark contrast to all the other people who were buried with great care.

“Every time we think we understand something, something else crops up and the picture gets more intriguing,” said Andy Seaman from Cardiff University, who is leading the project.

About half the site, which lies in an unremarkable field in the grounds of Fonmon Castle, has now been excavated.

So far researchers have found 39 adult skeletons lying in graves carved out of the thick limestone bedrock. A full analysis is still ongoing, but it’s thought that all apart from one are female.

“I’m not entirely sure what it means just yet,” said Dr Seaman.

“It could be that it’s something particular about this community, or it could be that this is perhaps just one cemetery within a broader kind of landscape or it might be that there’s more men in another part of the cemetery.”

The skeletons of two children have also been found – a surprisingly small number given the high infant mortality of the time. Their burials also have some intriguing features.

“The earth that’s been used to backfill the grave looks slightly different to that in the adults’ graves,” explained Dr Marion Shiner, an archaeologist from Cardiff University.

“It’s darker and seems more organic, so potentially some time had elapsed between the burial of the adults and the burial of these two children – it’s more mystery.”

Artefacts at the site are also adding to the puzzle of who these people were.

Shards of pottery and fine, etched glass unearthed in the graves were most likely brought to the cemetery by people feasting while they visited the dead.

“Glass is rare, and where it is found these are sites of quite significant status,” said Dr Seaman.

“It was probably made in the Levant – the Egypt area – and then was manufactured into vessels, we think, in southern France, and probably arrived here alongside wine in barrels.”

The presence of these items suggest this was no ordinary community. And each person here has been buried with painstaking care, some laid flat, others crouching, all facing from east to west.

The team don’t yet know why the woman flung into the ditch was treated so differently, but believe she could have been an outcast or a criminal.

They have taken her bones to the lab at Cardiff University to try to find out more about her.

Osteologist Dr Katie Faillace says she thinks the woman was in her late 30s or early 40s.

Her skeleton shows a healed fracture to her arm, while her tooth was infected and had an abscess, which exposed the roots and must have been painful.

Ten of the skeletons are also now undergoing more detailed analysis.

The results show the people buried in the cemetery aren’t all from the immediate area – they come from all over Wales and possibly from the south-west of England too.

Further DNA analysis will also reveal whether any of them were related.

The team are particularly interested in the skeletons’ teeth.

Because of the way teeth grow, they provide a unique record of everything someone has eaten from the time they are weaned right through to their death.

“They’ve been eating a very consistent diet based on lots of carbs – but not a lot of meat,” said Dr Faillace. “And that’s true from their childhood into their adulthood, and that’s something we’re seeing across the population.

“But there was no fish whatsoever. As soon as the Romans leave, we see an absence of fish signals in the diet. It’s one of the big mysteries.”

The dig is continuing this summer and the archaeologists will start to unearth the other half of the cemetery.

Andy Seaman is hoping to be able to answer the questions the site has thrown up.

“We’re hoping to tell the story of the individuals within the cemetery, but also the broader community,” he said.

“We know a lot about the lives of kings and queens, but much less about everyday people. And never before really have we been able to explore a single community in so much detail and all the interesting inter-relationships.”

But for the moment there are still many contradictions that remain unsolved.

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Rosemary Coogan is surrounded by a team of people pushing, pulling, squishing and squeezing her into a spacesuit.

It takes about 45 minutes to get all her gear on before a helmet is carefully lowered over her head.

The British astronaut is about to undergo her toughest challenge yet – assessing whether she is ready for a spacewalk. The test will take place in one of the largest pools in the world: Nasa’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

The pool – which is 12m deep (40ft) – contains a life-sized replica of the International Space Station (ISS), and a “spacewalk” here is as close as it gets to mimicking weightlessness on Earth.

“It’s a big day,” Rosemary says before the dive, which is going to last more than six hours. “It’s very physically intense – and it’s very psychologically intense.”

But Rosemary doesn’t seem too fazed. She smiles and waves as the platform she’s standing on is slowly lowered into the water.

Being an astronaut was Dr Rosemary Coogan’s dream from a young age, she says. But it was a dream that seemed out of reach.

“At the careers day at school, you don’t tend to meet astronauts,” Rosemary says. “You don’t get to meet people who’ve done it, you don’t really get to hear their stories.”

So she decided to study the stars instead, opting for a career in astrophysics. But when the European Space Agency (ESA) announced it was looking for new recruits to go to space, Rosemary applied and was chosen from more than 22,000 people.

ESA aims to get Rosemary to the International Space Station (ISS) by 2030. She’ll be following in the footsteps of Britons Helen Sharman, who visited the Soviet’s Mir Space Station in 1991, and Tim Peake who launched to the ISS in 2015.

Rosemary has spent the last six months training at the Johnson Space Center. As well as exploring the outside of the submerged ISS, she can head inside the orbiting lab in another life-sized mock-up located in a huge hangar.

She takes us on a tour of the lab’s interconnected modules. It feels very cramped, especially considering astronauts usually spend many months on board. But Rosemary reminds us about the spectacular views.

“It is an isolated environment, but I think this helps to give that kind of connection to being outside – to alleviate that sense of claustrophobia.”

Rosemary’s training here covers every aspect of going to space – including learning how to use the onboard toilet.

“The lower part is where you put your solid waste,” she says, pointing to a loo in a small cubicle that looks like something you might find at a very old campsite. “And this funnel here is actually attached to an air suction system, and that is where you put your liquid waste.”

Female astronauts have the option of suppressing their periods using drugs, Rosemary says, but can also opt not to.

“There’s essentially a filter that you put on top of the cone in which you urinate and it’s to stop any particles, any blood, from going into the urine system.”

Urine needs to be kept separate because it’s purified and treated to be re-used as drinking water, she explains.

Back in the pool, divers are constantly adjusting Rosemary’s buoyancy in the water to make the experience as close as possible to microgravity.

She moves around painstakingly, making sure she’s always attached to the submerged structure using two hooks.

Every hand-hold is carefully chosen along the bars on the outside of each module. They’re in exactly the same positions as the ones on the real thing, vital muscle memory if she gets to carry out a spacewalk 200 miles (322km) above the Earth.

It’s slow and difficult work, requiring plenty of upper body strength and physical effort in the hot, bulky spacesuit.

“You do a lot of mental preparation – you really think through every single movement,” Rosemary explains. “You have to be really efficient with your energy. You don’t want to do something and realise it wasn’t quite right and have to do it again.”

Rosemary is working alongside another astronaut to complete a list of space station repairs and maintenance for the test. Her every move is monitored by a team in a control room overlooking the pool. They’re in constant communication with her as she works through her tasks.

Former space station commander Aki Hoshide, from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, is on hand for advice. He has completed four spacewalks and says it’s a steep learning curve for new astronauts.

“When we first start out, there’s so much information thrown at you, so many skills that you have to learn and show and demonstrate,” he says. “It is baby steps, but they are moving forward – and I can see their excitement every time they come here and jump in the pool.”

Rosemary takes us to see a Saturn V – the rocket that took the Apollo astronauts to the Moon in 1969. More than 50 years on, Nasa is planning an imminent return to the lunar surface with its Artemis programme. European astronauts will join later missions. With an expected 35-year space career ahead, Rosemary may one day get the chance to become the first Briton to walk on the Moon.

“It’s incredibly exciting that we, as humanity, are going back to the Moon, and of course, any way that I could be a part of that, I would be absolutely delighted. I think it’s absolutely thrilling,” she says.

After six gruelling hours underwater, Rosemary is nearing the end of her spacewalk test – but then she’s thrown a curve ball.

In the control room, we hear her call out for a comms check with her astronaut partner who’s working on another part of the space station. But she’s met with silence.

On a video screen, we can see he’s motionless. Rosemary doesn’t know it, but he’s been asked to pretend to lose consciousness. Rosemary’s job is to reach him, check his condition – and tow him back to the airlock.

After so long under water, we can see how exhausted she is – but working slowly and steadily, she gets him safely to the airlock.

“Rosemary has the endurance of a champion. She crushed it today,” says Jenna Hanson, one of Nasa’s spacewalk instructors who’s been assessing Rosemary. “We’re really happy with where she’s at – she’s doing awesome.”

The spacewalk is finally over. Rosemary’s platform is hoisted out of the pool and the support team help her out of her suit. As her helmet is removed, we can see she’s clearly very tired, but still smiling.

“It was a challenging one, it really was, and a challenging rescue,” she tells us, “But yeah, it was a really enjoyable day.”

Rosemary’s hard work is bringing her ever closer to her dream of getting to space.

“It’s amazing,” Rosemary says, “If I could do that for the real space station – where you can look out and see the stars and see the Earth at the same time – that would just be the cherry on top.”

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Hidden beneath the slopes of a lush forest in Alberta, Canada, is a mass grave on a monumental scale.

Thousands of dinosaurs were buried here, killed in an instant on a day of utter devastation.

Now, a group of palaeontologists have come to Pipestone Creek – appropriately nicknamed the “River of Death” – to help solve a 72-million-year-old enigma: how did they die?

Trying to work out exactly what happened here starts with the hefty strike of a sledgehammer.

Brute force is needed to crack open the thick layer of rock that covers what Professor Emily Bamforth, who’s leading the dig, describes as “palaeo gold”.

As her team begins the more delicate job of removing the layers of dirt and dust, a jumble of fossilised bones slowly begins to emerge.

“That big blob of bone right there is, we think, part of a hip,” Prof Bamforth says, watched on by her dog Aster – whose job today is to bark if she spots any nearby bears.

“Then here, we have all of these long, skinny bones. These are all ribs. And this is a neat one – it’s part of a toe bone. This one here, we have no idea what it is – it’s a great example of a Pipestone Creek mystery.”

BBC News has come to Pipestone Creek to witness the sheer scale of this prehistoric graveyard and see how researchers are piecing together the clues.

Thousands of fossils have been collected from the site, and are constantly generating new discoveries.

The bones all belong to a dinosaur called Pachyrhinosaurus. The species, and Prof Bamforth’s excavation, feature in a new landmark BBC series – Walking With Dinosaurs – which uses visual effects and science to bring this prehistoric world to life.

These animals, which lived during the Late Cretaceous period, were a relative of the Triceratops. Measuring about five metres long and weighing two tonnes, the four-legged beasts had large heads, adorned with a distinctive bony frill and three horns. Their defining feature was a big bump on the nose called a boss.

The dig season has just started and lasts each year until autumn. The fossils in the small patch of ground that the team are working on are incredibly tightly packed; Prof Bamforth estimates there are up to 300 bones in every square metre.

So far, her team has excavated an area the size of a tennis court, but the bed of bones extends for a kilometre into the hillside.

“It’s jaw dropping in terms of its density,” she tells us.

“It is, we believe, one of the largest bone beds in North America.

“More than half of the known dinosaur species in the world are described from a single specimen. We have thousands of Pachyrhinosaurus here.”

Palaeontologists believe the dinosaurs were migrating together in a colossal herd for hundreds of miles from the south – where they had spent the winter – to the north for the summer.

The area, which had a much warmer climate than it does today, would have been covered in rich vegetation, providing abundant food for this enormous group of plant-eating animals.

“It is a single community of a single species of animal from a snapshot in time, and it’s a huge sample size. That almost never happens in the fossil record,” says Prof Bamforth.

And this patch of north-western Alberta wasn’t just home to Pachyrhinosaurus. Even bigger dinosaurs roamed this land, and studying them is essential to try and understand this ancient ecosystem.

Two hours drive away, we reach the Deadfall Hills. Getting there involves a hike through dense forest, wading – or doggy-paddling in the case of Aster – across a fast-running river, and clambering over slippery rocks.

No digging is required here; super-sized bones lie next to the shoreline, washed out from the rock and cleaned by the flowing water, just waiting to be picked up.

A huge vertebra is quickly spotted, as are bits of ribs and teeth scattered across the mud.

Palaeontologist Jackson Sweder is particularly interested in what looks like a chunk of dinosaur skull. “Most of what we find here is a duck-billed dinosaur called Edmontosaurus. If this is a skull bone, this is a dinosaur that’s large – probably 30ft (10m) long,” he says.

The Edmontosaurus, another herbivore, roamed the forests like the Pachyrhinosaurus – and is helping palaeontologists build up a picture of this ancient land.

Sweder is the collection manager at the Philip J Currie Dinosaur Museum in nearby Grande Prairie, where the bones from both of these giants are taken to be cleaned up and analysed. He is currently working on a huge Pachyrhinosaurus skull that’s about 1.5m long and has been nicknamed “Big Sam”.

He points to where the three horns should be at the top of the frill, but the one in the middle is missing. “All the skulls that are decently complete have a spike in that spot,” he says. “But its nice little unicorn spike doesn’t seem to be there.”

Throughout years working at the extraordinary site, the museum team has collected 8,000 dinosaur bones, and the surfaces of the lab are covered in fossils; there are bones from Pachyrhinosaurus of every size, from young to old.

Having material from so many animals allows researchers to learn about dinosaur biology, answering questions about how the species grows and the make-up of the community. They can also look at individual variations, to see how one Pachyrhinosaurus could stand out from the herd – as may be the case with Big Sam and his missing spike.

All of this detailed research, in the museum and at the two sites, is helping the team to answer the vital question: how did so many animals in Pipestone Creek die at the same time?

“We believe that this was a herd on a seasonal migration that got tangled up in some catastrophic event that effectively wiped out, if not the entire herd, then a good proportion of it,” Prof Bamforth says.

All the evidence suggests that this catastrophic event was a flash flood – perhaps a storm over the mountains that sent an unstoppable torrent of water towards the herd, ripping trees from their roots and shifting boulders.

Prof Bamforth says the Pachyrhinosaurus wouldn’t have stood a chance. “These animals are not able to move very fast because of their sheer numbers, and they’re very top heavy – and really not very good at swimming at all.”

Rocks found at the site show the swirls of sediment from the fast-flowing water churning everything up. It’s as if the destruction is frozen in time as a wave in the stone.

But this nightmare day for the dinosaurs is now a dream for palaeontologists.

“We know, every time we come here, it’s 100% guaranteed we’ll find bones. And every year we discover something new about the species,” says Prof Bamforth.

“That’s why we keep coming back, because we’re still finding new things.”

As the team packs up their tools ready to return another day, they know there’s a lot of work ahead. They’ve only just scratched the surface of what’s here – and there are many more prehistoric secrets just waiting to be revealed.

The new series of Walking With Dinosaurs starts on Sunday 25 May at 18:25 BST on BBC One, with all episodes available on BBC iPlayer.

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A new Oxford study confirms the tremors felt across the globe were caused by tsunamis in Greenland.

A public health warning is issued as 190,000 people are expected at open farm events across the UK.

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The moment that Oceangate’s Titan submersible was lost has been revealed in footage recorded on the sub’s support ship.

Titan imploded about 90 minutes into a descent to see the wreck of the Titanic in June 2023, killing all five people on board.

The passengers had paid Oceangate to see the ship, which lies 3,800m down.

On board were Oceangate’s CEO Stockton Rush, British explorer Hamish Harding, veteran French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, the British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.

The BBC has had unprecedented access to the US Coast Guard’s (USCG) investigation for a documentary, Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster.

The footage was recently obtained by the USCG and shows Wendy Rush, the wife of Mr Rush, hearing the sound of the implosion while watching on from the sub’s support ship and asking: “What was that bang?”

The video has been presented as evidence to the USCG Marine Board of Investigation, which has spent the last two years looking into the sub’s catastrophic failure.

The documentary also reveals the carbon fibre used to build the submersible started to break apart a year before the fatal dive.

Titan’s support ship was with the sub while it was diving in the Atlantic Ocean. The video shows Mrs Rush, who was a director of Oceangate with her husband, sitting in front of a computer that was used to send and receive text messages from Titan.

When the sub reaches a depth of about 3,300m, a noise that sounds like a door slamming is heard. Mrs Rush is seen to pause then look up and ask other Oceangate crew members what the noise was.

Within moments she then receives a text message from the sub saying it had dropped two weights, which seems to have led her to mistakenly think the dive was proceeding as expected.

The USCG says the noise was in fact the sound of Titan imploding. However, the text message, which must have been sent just before the sub failed, took longer to reach the ship than the sound of the implosion.

All five people on board Titan died instantly.

Prior to the fatal dive, warnings had been raised by deep sea experts and some former Oceangate employees about Titan’s design. One described it as an “abomination” and said the disaster was “inevitable”.

Titan had never undergone an independent safety assessment, known as certification, and a key concern was that its hull – the main body of the sub where the passengers sat – was made of layers of carbon fibre mixed with resin.

The USCG says it has now identified the moment the hull started to fail.

Carbon fibre is a highly unusual material for a deep sea submersible because it is unreliable under pressure. A known problem is that the layers of carbon fibre can separate, a process called delamination.

The USCG believes that the carbon fibre layers of the hull started to break apart during a dive to the Titanic, which took place a year before the disaster – the 80th dive that Titan had made.

Passengers on board reported hearing a loud bang as the sub made its way back to the surface. They said that at the time Mr Rush said that this noise was the sub shifting in its frame.

But the USCG says the data collected from sensors fitted to Titan shows that the bang was caused by delamination.

“Delamination at dive 80 was the beginning of the end,” said Lieutenant Commander Katie Williams from USCG.

“And everyone that stepped onboard the Titan after dive 80 was risking their life.”

Titan took passengers on three more dives in the summer of 2022 – two to the Titanic and one to a nearby reef, before it failed on its next deep dive, in June 2023.

Businessman Oisin Fanning was onboard Titan for the last two dives before the disaster.

“If you’re asking a simple question: ‘Would I go again knowing what I know now?’ – the answer is no,” he told BBC News.

“A lot of people would not have gone. Very intelligent people who lost their lives, who, had they had all the facts, would not have made that journey.”

Deep sea explorer Victor Vescovo said he had grave misgivings about Titan and that he had told people that diving in the sub was like playing Russian roulette.

“I myself warned people away from getting into that submersible. I specifically told them that it was simply a matter of time before it failed catastrophically. I told Stockton Rush himself that I believed that.”

After the sub imploded, its mangled wreckage was discovered scattered across the sea floor of the Atlantic.

The USCG has described the process of sifting through the recovered debris – and said clothing from Mr Rush had been found, as well as business cards and stickers of the Titanic.

Later this year, the US Coast Guard will publish a final report of the findings from its investigation, which aims to establish what went wrong and prevent a disaster like this from ever happening again.

Speaking to the BBC’s documentary team, Christine Dawood, who lost her husband Shahzada and son Suleman in the disaster, said it had changed her forever.

“I don’t think that anybody who goes through loss and such a trauma can ever be the same,” she said.

The ripples from the Oceangate disaster are likely to continue for years – some private lawsuits have already been filed and criminal prosecutions may follow.

Oceangate told the BBC: “We again offer our deepest condolences to the families of those who died on June 18, 2023, and to all those impacted by the tragic accident.

“Since the tragedy occurred, Oceangate permanently wound down its operations and focused its resources on fully cooperating with the investigations. It would be inappropriate to respond further while we await the agencies’ reports.”

You can watch Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster on 9pm on Tuesday 27 May on BBC Two. It will also be available on the BBC iPlayer.

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RRS James Cook embarks to study the Porcupine Abyssal Plain, monitoring life at depths of 5,000m.

The violin was used to play hymn Nearer My God To Thee as the ship sank in the Oscar-winning film.

Colonel Archibald Gracie’s letter from onboard the ill-fated ocean liner has been described as “prophetic”.

Colonel Gracie wrote he would wait until the ship’s voyage ended before he would “pass judgement”.

The timepiece was found among the belongings of Danish passenger who died in the 1912 disaster.

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A key planning restriction that heat pumps need to be one metre from a neighbour’s property has been lifted as the government seeks to accelerate the take up of the low-carbon technology.

The change, which is part of the government’s Warm Homes Plan to lower household bills and cut planet warming emissions, means it could be easier for millions of homes in England to have a heat pump installed.

But consumer groups warn that the changes will not help those in rented or leasehold properties and the biggest barrier to installing a heat pump remains the high upfront costs.

This is a particular problem for older housing stock where upgrades to pipework and insulation may also be required.

Most UK homes use gas boilers for their hot water and heating, but this produces up to 14% of the country’s planet warming greenhouse gases.

In comparison, heat pumps use electricity, so as the country moves to generating more electricity from renewable energy sources like solar and wind, they could produce far fewer emissions than boilers.

But switching from a gas boiler to a heat pump is expensive and not straightforward if you live in one of England’s six million terraced homes.

Until Thursday, homeowners needed planning permission if they wanted to put a heat pump within one metre of their neighbour’s property – because of concerns over noise.

Tom Clarke, a gas engineer who recently retrained to fit heat pumps, said having to apply for planning permission had been a barrier for his customers.

“When you look across London we have loads and loads of terraced houses and no matter where you site the appliance it is always going to be within one metre of the boundary,” he said.

It was particularly problematic for people replacing a broken gas boiler because many customers would not want to go more than a month without heating waiting for council approval, he said.

This is echoed by Octopus Energy, who told parliament’s Energy Security and Net Zero (ESNZ) Committee in 2023 that this planning rule was affecting 27% of its customers.

“Those who try to proceed end up waiting an additional eight to 10 weeks on average. Even if customers meet all the requirements, there is no guarantee that local councils will grant the permission, as they all have different interpretations of central planning guidelines,” the company wrote in its submission. “The combined impact of all these things mean that very few of the 27% of customers who require planning have made it to install.”

The rule has now been dropped to accelerate the uptake of heat pumps. Previous concerns over noise are less of an issue with newer devices, though units will still be required to be below a certain volume level.

The planning changes also include a relaxation of the rules for the size and number of heat pumps households can install.

Households most likely to be affected are those living in terraced housing. In 2021, they accounted for 5.7 million households, or 23% of the total. Some of these will still need planning permission, for example those living in conservation areas.

The change is part of the government’s Warm Homes Plan which aims to give 300,000 households upgrades to improve their energy efficiency and lower bills.

Although the heat pump industry welcomed the changes, many point out the main barrier for many customers is that installing heat pumps is expensive, particularly in older houses, where better insulation may also be needed.

This was the case at social housing estate Sutton Dwellings in Chelsea, London, which underwent a full refurbishment of its fabric alongside a new ground source heat pump network.

Its landlord, Clarion Housing Group, did receive a grant from the government to install the new network but also invested its own money.

Stuart Gadsden, commercial director at Kensa, the company which designed and installed the system, said this was an issue for many landlords: “A big [barrier] is funding, this obviously does cost more to install than a traditional gas boiler system.

“In the social housing sector we have funding from the warm homes social housing fund, but it was oversubscribed by double. Lots of housing associations want to put low carbon heating in but there is not enough to go around.”

Renters have to rely on landlords being willing to make the initial upfront investment.

Rob Lane, Chief Property Officer at Clarion, said the company was happy to do this at Sutton Dwellings because of the impact for residents: “We’re waiting to see how the costs of running this system bear out, but our forecasts suggests that each home is going to cost on average £450 – £500 per home (each year) – considerable savings for residents.”

From 2030, as part of the Warm Homes plan, there will be mandatory requirements for all private landlords to upgrade the energy efficiency of their properties.

But the way that Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) are currently calculated means a gas boiler can sometimes have a better rating than a heat pump because it looks at energy costs and assumes gas is cheaper.

Katy King, deputy director of sustainability at charity Nesta, said the government could bring down electricity costs.

“The UK has some of the most expensive electricity prices in Europe. The government could take levies off electricity and put them onto gas or use general taxation. It is a tricky choice and one we do expect them to be consulting on within the year,” she said.

A spokesperson from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero said: “We are supporting industry to develop financing models that can remove the upfront cost entirely, and consulting on new approaches, such as heat pump subscriptions, to help more households make the switch to cleaner heating in a way that works for them.”

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Proposals to build on land near Wickersley had been rejected over the development of the green belt.

Acorn says its project will safeguard about 18,000 jobs that would have been lost, including jobs at Grangemouth.

Campaigners express their glee after planning officers advise councillors turn down the plant.

Applicants say a 15MW array near Braunton will offset annual electricity usage of about 8,600 homes.

Students draw on inspiration from three cultural figures to help them write the Suffolk Day proclamation.

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The UK’s saltmarshes are vital “sinks” that lock away climate-warming greenhouse gases in layers of mud, according to a new report from WWF.

Much of the UK’s saltmarshes have been lost to agriculture but the charity says they are unsung heroes in nature’s fight against climate change.

It is now calling for these muddy, tidal habitats to be added to the official UK inventory of how much carbon is emitted and how much is removed from our atmosphere every year.

This formal recognition could, it hopes, provide more of an incentive to restore and protect more of these sites.

Working with researchers from the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, a WWF team installed solar-powered greenhouse gas monitoring stations on Hesketh Out Marsh, a saltmarsh in North-West England that has been restored and is managed by the RSPB.

Analysing gases in the air flowing around the marsh – over the course of a year – revealed how plants there “breathe in” more carbon dioxide in the summer than they release in winter.

These new findings build on previous studies that have measured the amount of carbon in the marshland’s mud.

To carry it out, the team fixed analytical equipment to a sturdy 2.5m tall tower made of scaffolding poles. The site is regularly flooded by the tide, so the tower has kept their kit safe from salt water and debris.

With WWF’s ocean conservation specialist, Tom Brook as our guide, we waded through the thigh-high grass to visit the site of the experiment.

At low tide, the sea is not visible beyond the expanse of grassland, but the area is littered with driftwood, some plastic waste and there is even a small, upturned boat nearby.

“The plants grow so quickly here in spring and summer that they almost grow on top of each other – layering and decomposing,” Tom said. “That captures carbon in the soils. So while we’re typically taught about how trees breathe in carbon and store that in the wood, here salt marshes are doing that as mud.

“So the mud here is just as important for climate mitigation as trees are.”

WWF has published its first year of findings in a report called The Importance of UK Saltmarshes. Unusually, this been co-published with an insurance company that is interested in understanding the role these sites have in protecting homes from coastal flooding.

The UK has lost about 85% of its saltmarshes since 1860. They were seen as useless land and many were drained for agriculture.

Hesketh Out Marsh has been restored – bought by the wildlife charity RSPB and re-flooded by tide. Now, in late spring, it is teeming with bird life. A variety of species, including avocets, oyster catchers and black-tailed godwits, probe the mud for food and nest on the land between lagoons and streams.

The researchers hope the findings will help make the case to restore and protect more of these muddy bufferzones between the land and the sea.

“The mud here is so important,” explained Alex Pigott, the RSPB warden at Hesketh Out Marsh. “It’s is like a service station for birds.”

With their differently shaped bills – some ideal for scooping and some for probing – marshland birds feed in the tidal mud.

“We know these sites act as a natural flood defences, too and that they store carbon,” said Ms Pigott. “Any any of these habitats that we can restore will be a big win for nature.”

Off the coast of Sicily, Sea Shepherd and its volunteers are hunting down illegal fish traps and working with Italian authorities to crack down on this environmental crime.

The craft was described as having crossed the path of the pod off Findochty earlier this month.

Conservationists say the plans in the Borders underestimate the danger posed to birds in the area.

One bird watcher is thrilled to spot the pure-white starling and describes it as “quite incredible”.

The innovative collection created by Blackburn College students will be auctioned off for charity.

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Sir David Attenborough has told Prince William he is “appalled” by the damage certain fishing methods are wreaking on the world’s oceans.

The Prince of Wales interviewed the TV naturalist ahead of a key UN Oceans conference which kicks off on Monday.

The world’s countries are gathering for the first time in three years to discuss how to better protect the oceans, which are facing growing threats from plastic pollution, climate change and over-exploitation.

The UN’s key aim is to get the High Seas Treaty – an agreement signed two years ago to put 30% of the ocean into protected areas – ratified by 60 countries to bring it into force.

“What we have done to the deep ocean floor is just unspeakably awful,” said Sir David.

“If you did anything remotely like it on land, everybody would be up in arms,” he said in the interview released on Saturday. It was conducted at the premiere of his new documentary, Ocean, last month.

The documentary draws attention to the potential damage from some fishing practices, like bottom trawling, for marine life and the ability of the ocean to lock up planet-warming carbon.

Governments, charities and scientists will come together at the UN Oceans Conference (UNOC) in Nice to try and agree how to accelerate action on the issues most affecting the world’s seas.

Sir David said he hopes the leaders gathering for the UN conference will “realise how much the oceans matter to all of us, the citizens of the world”.

The ocean is crucial for the survival of all organisms on the planet – it is the largest ecosystem, is estimated to contribute $2.5 trillion to world economies and provides up to 80% of the oxygen we breath.

The key aim for the UN is to galvanise enough support to bring the High Seas Treaty into force – including commitment from the UK.

Three years ago countries agreed to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030, across national and international waters.

International waters – or high seas – are a common resource with no ruling country so nations signed the High Seas Treaty in 2023 agreeing to work together to put a third of them into Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

Since then only 32 countries have ratified the treaty – 60 are needed to bring it into force.

But many scientists and NGOs are worried MPAs will not be effective whilst practices like bottom trawling are still allowed within them.

“Our ocean is 99% of our living space on the globe, we have huge dependency on the ocean in every possible way, but bottom trawling does a lot of damage,” Dr Amanda Vincent, Professor in Marine Conservation at The University of British Columbia told BBC’s Inside Science.

Bottom trawling or dredging is currently allowed in 90% of the UK’s MPAs, according to environmental campaigners Oceana, and the Environment Audit Committee (EAC) has called for a ban on it within them.

But some fishing communities have pushed back on the assertion that certain fishing practices need to be banned in these areas.

“Bottom trawling is only a destructive process if it’s taking place in the wrong place, otherwise, it is an efficient way to produce food from our seas,” Elspeth Macdonald, CEO of Scottish Fisherman’s Association told the BBC.

Scientists point to evidence that restricting the practice in some areas allows fish stocks to recover and be better in the long term for the industry.

The conference had been called after concern by the UN that oceans were facing irreparable damage, particularly from climate change.

The oceans are a crucial buffer against the worst impacts of a warming planet, absorbing excess heat and greenhouse gases, said Callum Roberts, Professor of Marine Conservation at the University of Exeter.

“If the sea had not absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat that has been added to the planet as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, then the world wouldn’t just be one and a half degrees warmer it would be about 36 degrees warmer.

“Those of us who were left would be struggling with Death Valley temperatures everywhere,” he said.

This excess heat is having significant impacts on marine life, warn scientists.

“Coral reefs, for the past 20 years, have been subject to mass bleaching and mass mortality and that is due to extreme temperatures,” said Dr Jean-Pierre Gattuso, senior research scientist at Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche and co-chair of the One Ocean Science Congress (OOSC).

“This really is the first marine ecosystem and perhaps the first ecosystem which is potentially subject to disappearance.”

The OOSC is a gathering of 2,000 of the world’s scientists, prior to the UN conference, where the latest data on ocean health is assessed and recommendations put forward to governments.

Alongside efforts on climate change the scientists recommended an end to deep sea activities.

The most controversial issue to be discussed is perhaps deep sea mining.

For more than a decade countries have been trying to agree how deep sea mining in international waters could work – how resources could be shared and environmental damage could be minimised.

But in April President Trump bypassed those discussions and signed an executive order saying he would permit mining within international waters.

China and France called it a breach of international law, although no formal legal proceedings have yet been started.

Scientists have warned that too little is understood about the ecosystems in the deep sea and therefore no commercial activities should go forward without more research.

“Deep sea biology is the most threatened of global biology, and of what we know the least. We must act with precaution where we don’t have the science,” said Prof Peter Haugan, Co-chair of the International Science Council Expert Group on the Ocean.

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Lyme Bay is still recovering from the effects of bottom trawling despite a ban, researchers say.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres spoke at the start of the UN Oceans Conference in Nice, France.

As governments gather at the UN Oceans Conference, protections off Arran are hailed as an example in restoration.

The Prince of Wales gave a speech in Monaco hoping to drive investments to protect the world’s oceans.

The prince will use his influence to draw in people who can help generate environmental change.

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Unregulated mining in the deep sea should not be allowed to go ahead, the head of the United Nations has warned.

“The deep sea cannot become the Wild West,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said at the opening of the UN Oceans Conference in Nice, France.

His words were echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who declared the “oceans are not for sale”.

The remarks appear to refer to the decision by President Trump in April to begin issuing permits for the extraction of critical minerals in international waters.

There is increasing interest in extracting precious minerals from what are called metallic “nodules” that naturally occur on the seabed.

But marine scientists are concerned about the harm that could be caused.

“The ocean is not for sale. We’re talking about a common shared good,” President Macron said. “I think it’s madness to launch predatory economic action that will disrupt the deep seabed, disrupt biodiversity, destroy it.”

This issue is one of a number on the agenda in France, including over-fishing, plastic pollution and climate change.

Over 2,000 of the world’s scientists met last week to review the latest data on ocean health – they recommended to governments meeting this week that deep sea exploration be halted whilst further research be carried out on the impacts.

More than 30 countries support this position and are calling for a moratorium – but President Trump has not rowed back on his executive order.

A key aim of the UN oceans conference, which runs until Friday, is to get 60 countries to ratify a High Seas Treaty and thus bring it into force.

This agreement was made two years ago to put 30% of international waters into marine protected areas (MPAs) by 2030, in the hope it would preserve and help ecosystems recover.

President Macron declared in his opening speech that an additional 15 had ratified but that only brings the total number to 47.

The UK government has not yet ratified the agreement, though on Monday it said a ban on a bottom “destructive” type of fishing that drags large nets along the seafloor could be extended across MPAs in England.

Even if enough countries sign there are concerns from environmentalists, including Sir David Attenborough, that there is nothing explicit in the Treaty to ban bottom trawling in these MPAs.

Bottom trawling is one of the more destructive fishing practices that can lead to accidentally killing larger marine species.

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The innovative collection created by Blackburn College students will be auctioned off for charity.

The BBC looks at the latest innovation and technology as workboats try to decarbonise.

Lyme Bay is still recovering from the effects of bottom trawling despite a ban, researchers say.

Customers need stronger protections against scammers capitalising on green energy schemes, says Scotland’s consumer body.

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Successive governments have failed to deal with the threat posed by spreading sewage sludge containing toxic chemicals on farmers’ fields, a former chair of the Environment Agency has told the BBC.

About 3.5 million tonnes of sludge – the solid waste produced from human sewage at treatment plants – is put on fields every year as cheap fertiliser.

But campaigners have long warned about a lack of regulation and that sludge could be contaminated with cancer-linked chemicals, microplastics, and other industrial pollutants.

Emma Howard Boyd, who led the EA from 2016 to 2022, says the agency had been aware since 2017 that the sludge can be contaminated with substances, including ‘forever chemicals’.

“Forever chemicals” or PFAS are a group of synthetic chemicals which come from things like non-stick saucepans. They don’t degrade quickly in nature and have been linked to cancer.

Documents seen by BBC News suggest the water industry is now increasingly concerned that farmers could stop accepting the sludge to spread and that water firms have been lobbying regulators and making contingency plans in case rules change.

Ms Howard Boyd says efforts to update rules, which date back to 1989, to include new contaminants were “continually frustrated by the lack of ministerial appetite to deal with this issue.” In a public letter signed by more than 20 others she called on the current Environment Minister Steve Reed, to act now.

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) told the BBC regulations around sludge spreading are being looked at. The water companies trade body Water UK told the BBC they were aware of the concerns but that no legal standards for contaminants had been set by the government.

Unlike the cleaned water that is discharged from wastewater treatment plants, the sewage sludge, or biosolid as the industry calls it, is considered “exempted waste”.

That means the treatment focuses mainly on killing bacteria and testing for heavy metals in the sludge.

There is no routine testing for chemicals, including “forever chemicals”, which have been developed over the last three decades and are getting into the sewage network from both from domestic and industrial users.

“I think the big concern is because these substances (forever chemicals) are so persistent they’ll stay around in the soil for hundreds, if not thousands of years,” says Alistair Boxall, professor of environmental science at York University.

“It may be in 10 years’ time that we start understanding that these molecules are causing harm,” he said. “Then we’re going to be in a bit of a mess, because we’ll be in a situation where we’ll have soils in the UK that will have residues of these molecules in them, and at the moment we have no way of cleaning that up.”

In 2022, the US state of Maine became the first state to ban the spreading of sludge contaminated with “forever chemicals” after high levels were found in water, soil and crops.

Reports and emails shown to the BBC by Greenpeace’s Unearthed investigation unit and obtained using Freedom of Information Act requests, reveal the water industry is acutely aware that attitudes are changing and is both lobbying government and making contingency plans.

The companies are concerned on two fronts: that general rules regarding the spreading of sludge on land (so called Farming Rules for Water) may soon be tightened due to fears that it’s polluting watercourses and that farmers’ concerns about the chemicals in the sludge might make them unwilling to put it on their fields.

The water industry has already commissioned reports looking at what might happen if the spreading is restricted.

One of them predicts that the “most likely” scenario is a shortfall of about three million hectares in land needed to spread the sludge. The water industry says that would lead to them either incinerating it or putting it into landfill. Both options would bring extra costs that would be passed on to billpayers.

“This investigation is yet more proof that we can’t trust the privatised water companies to deal with waste responsibly,” Reshima Sharma from Greenpeace said.

“So long as they can get away with it, they will just pass any problems on to our countryside and pocket the money they should be investing in solutions.”

In 2017 a report commissioned by the Environment Agency found that sludge contained potentially harmful substances, including microplastics and “forever chemicals”, at levels that “may present a risk to human health” and may create soil that is “unsuitable for agriculture”.

It said that “perhaps the biggest risk to the landbank” is from the spreading of physical contaminants such as microplastics into agricultural soil. The report also said it had heard evidence from EA staff indicating that some companies may be using wastewater treatment plants to “mask disposal of individual high risk waste streams not suitable for land spreading”.

“EA colleagues were continually frustrated by the lack of ministerial appetite to deal with this issue,” Ms Howard Boyd, who was chair of the regulator at the time, told the BBC in an email.

“EA proposals since 2020 to reform the regulations were treated with a lack of urgency, hampered by delays in passing requests up to the relevant ministers for decision-making, and a consistent failure by successive secretaries of state to take the matter seriously.”

The letter Ms Howard Boyd has signed jointly signed was organised by campaign group Fighting Dirty. It calls the contents of the sewage sludge a “dirty secret” and demands that Environment Secretary Steve Reed take action.

Sewage sludge is cheaper than other fertilisers, and can sometimes be free, though farmers may have to spread it themselves.

Julie Lewis-Thompson tells me it has “the smell of death”.

“It lingers in the air for somewhere around two to three weeks,” she tells me when I go to visit in her home on Dartmoor in the south-west of England.

She’s gathered together a group of neighbours who’ve all had direct experience of sewage sludge being spread near their properties. Before we start recording there’s a long discussion about whether they should speak out for fear of upsetting nearby farmers and the contractors who spread the sludge, who are often local.

Many of their concerns are about the smell and about potential contamination of their water sources. One young woman leaves in tears saying it had made her sick.

“The fact it’s spread for free ought to raise a few eyebrows,” Richard Smallwood, a local beef and sheep farmer who doesn’t use sewage sludge, tells me.

“If we’re starting to produce food on grassland and arable land which is filled up to the ear holes with PFAS compounds and nano and micro-plastics that find their way into the food chain I think my job’s over before I begin.”

With the alternatives to sewage sludge disposal costly, there’s broad agreement that the recycling of sludge into fertiliser has to be made to work.

“In principle, I think using properly treated human sewage to spread on the land, put it back into the ground for growing food in the UK, that’s the right thing to do,” Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the cook, writer and broadcaster, tells me at his small farm and café in east Devon. He’s also signed the protest letter to the environment minister.

“We know it’s happening. Our farmers are rightly worried. We’ve got to take action. Government’s got to take action,” Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall says.

“That means regulations are not voluntary regulations or guidelines, [they should be] legally enforceable regulations that stop these pollutants getting into the sewage and onto our land.”

Despite the concerns there are still plenty of farmers who see the sludge as a cheap way to fertilise their fields.

Will Oliver is on the National Farmers Union Crops Board. He says he applies about 800 tonnes of sewage sludge every year to fields where he grows maize destined for animal feed.

The water company provides the sludge for free and Mr Oliver says he’s careful how much he uses and trusts the company to make sure it doesn’t have chemical contamination.

“If we can be sensible with how it’s used and spread on the land, it can be positive for farmers and for the water companies,” he says.

“I’m doing it because it’s adding value. It’s improving our organic matter. It’s benefitting the crop that I’m growing, and it’s reducing my spend on bagged fertilisers.”

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs did not contest anything the former chair of the EA Ms Howard Boyd told the BBC.

“We need to see the safe and sustainable use of sludge in agriculture to help clean up our waterways,” a spokesperson said.

“The Independent Water Commission will explore a range of issues, including the regulatory framework for sludge spreading, and we continue to work closely with the Environment Agency, water companies and farmers in this area.”

Water UK represents the water companies of England and Wales, and a spokesperson said: “Although there are some concerns that some bioresources may contain contaminants, such as microplastics and forever chemicals (PFAS), there are no legal standards for them and, in some cases, no agreed assessment techniques.”

“Any standards and techniques are a matter for the government and the regulator and need to be based on firm evidence and detailed scientific research.”

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