Monday's Good News

Editor OGN Daily
Jun 16
3 min read

What better way to start the week than with some upbeat news?

eye of a humpback whale — Winner UN WOD 2025 | Rachel Moore, USA

Eye of The Beholder

As a testament to the exquisiteness of the ocean and the art of photography, the winners of the 2025 United Nations World Oceans Day Photo Competition were selected from thousands of submissions from around the world, inspired by this year’s theme, “Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us.” The world’s oceans are ever-changing places of magnificent vastness and beauty and since its inception in 2008, UN WOD endeavoured to underscore the ocean’s importance to the planet and our lives. This year's winning image was taken in Mo’orea, French Polynesia and captures the eye of a humpback whale.

Biodegradable Plastic

Reuters reports that scientists in Japan have created a biodegradable plastic that completely dissolves in seawater within hours. Unlike existing bioplastics, it leaves no microplastics or toxins behind. The innovation could revolutionise marine packaging and fishing gear - two major contributors to ocean waste - and is already being tested for real-world use.

Artist's impression of a possible ninth planet — Credit: Caltech / R.Hurt (IPAC)

Planet Nine

Scientists believe our solar system may have a mysterious ninth planet - and no, it’s not Pluto (which was demoted to a dwarf planet in 2006). For about a century, astronomers have had a hunch that another planet has been waiting to be discovered. And one group of researchers recently gathered some celestial clues indicating that this “Planet Nine” is more than hypothetical. The potential planet in question is about the size of Neptune, and it’s so deep into the solar system that it could take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to orbit the sun. The Earth, for reference, takes one year to complete the trip. “If the existence of Planet Nine can be confirmed by observations in the near future, it will improve our understanding of the history and structure of the entire solar system in early stages,” the team concluded in the paper.

World's Largest MPA

French Polynesia has announced the creation of the world’s largest marine protected area. The MPA will cover the entirety of the country's exclusive economic zone, almost 2 million square miles, and will restrict extractive practices like deep-sea mining and bottom-trawling. Of that, says Time, 425,000 square miles will be designated as a highly or fully protected area, where only traditional coastal fishing, ecotourism, and scientific exploration will be allowed.

Rights of Waves: The city of Linhares, Brazil, has granted legal rights to the waves at the mouth of the Dolce River, the first instance in which a government has conferred rights upon part of the ocean.

Free School Meals

The UK government expanded its free school meals to 500,000 more of the country’s poorest children. The expansion to the former threshold for qualifying, which hadn’t changed since 2018, will lift 100,000 students out of poverty and give them “the nutrition they need to thrive”.

'Cultured' Salmon

Lab-grown salmon cleared for sale in the United States. Want to eat some tasty salmon, but don’t like the idea of killing fish? Wildtype’s 'cultured' salmon is made in a lab from a few cells, meaning no farmed or wild salmon need die to fill out your sashimi. In May 2025, the FDA approved Wildtype’s salmon for commercial sale, paving the way for the world’s first commercial sales of cell-based seafood. The company says its sushi-grade product will debut in restaurants this year.

“When we sow a seed, we plant a narrative of future possibility.” Sue Stuart-Smith