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O’Connor’s (1985) article on the Irish naturalist, explorer and ship’s surgeon Bernard O’Reilly is updated with new information on his life and death. His banishment from Dublin society after 1818 is a fiction. Instead, he was away working as a ship’s surgeon in the Southern hemisphere. His achievements are discussed. The controversies concerning his 1818 book on Greenland are re-examined through the availability of new online sources and these vindicate him. He can now be recognised for his accomplishments: a voluntary museum curator, a zoologist, an artist, an accomplished author, and a pioneering explorer – rare achievements for an Irishman in the Georgian Era of the British Empire. His connection with the development of Dún Laoghaire Harbour remains to be documented.

Worldwide, studies on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) especially focusing on fishing harbours have been found in a limited magnitude only. The characteristics of 16 PAHs and their associated ecological adversities in different environmental compartments of Veraval fishing harbour have been investigated. The concentrations of total PAHs in dissolved, particulate and sediment phases varied from 358.19–42,712 ng L−1, 1450.83–15,291.60 ng g−1 dw and 1263.53–217,560.30 ng g−1 dw, respectively. Two approaches adopted for the source apportionment of PAHs, molecular diagnostic ratio (MDR) method and principal component analysis (PCA), implied the impact of potential anthropogenic PAH sources, including petroleum leakage, pollution from boat repairing, maintenance and burning of coal emissions. The interpretation and integration of indices such as the total toxicity equivalence (TEQcarc), mean risk quotient (M-RQ) and mean effect range-medium quotient (M-ERM-Q) indicated that the harbour areas were under severe threat of ecological risk due to the highest concentration of PAHs, while the offshore region signified a high or moderate level of risk. The present study provides effectual scientific insight into the role of fishing harbours in PAH pollution.

Meteorological tsunamis (“meteotsunamis”) are hazardous tsunami-like waves of atmospheric origin. They have typical periods from a few minutes to about 3 h and typical spatial scales from a few hundred meters to approximately 100–150 km. The waves have different local names in different regions of the world: “rissaga” in the Balearic Islands (Spain), “marrobbio” in Sicily (Italy), “šćiga” in the Adriatic Sea (Croatia), “milghuba” in Malta, and “abiki” in Japan. Meteotsunamis have markedly different generation mechanisms than storm surge or rogue waves, and are mainly produced by direct air pressure forcing. Several recent destructive meteotsunami events have attracted considerable attention to the phenomenon. The present paper is one of the first attempts to classify and overview the strongest events. A total of 51 selected events over the past 27 years are examined and described. Some of these events are well known (e.g. the events of 4 July 1992 Daytona Beach, Florida, 15 June 2006 Ciutadella Harbour, Spain, and 13 June 2013 East Coast of USA), while others have only been mentioned in the media and on the Internet. The list of events includes those that have occurred in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Great Lakes, South Africa, the USA, Canada, Brazil, the Netherlands and other countries and regions. All meteotsunami events are separated into four groups: “Good-weather harbour”, “Good-weather open-coast”, “Bad-weather harbour (storm seiches)” and “Bad-weather open-coast”. “Good-weather” meteotsunamis are most typical for the Mediterranean region, while “bad-weather” events mainly occur on the Atlantic coasts of the USA and Europe.

Supermassive black holes are now thought to lie at the heart of every giant galaxy with a spheroidal component, including our own Milky Way. The birth and growth of the first 'seed' black holes in the earlier Universe, however, is observationally unconstrained and we are only beginning to piece together a scenario for their subsequent evolution. Here we report that the nearby dwarf starburst galaxy Henize2-10 (refs 5 and 6) contains a compact radio source at the dynamical centre of the galaxy that is spatially coincident with a hard X-ray source. From these observations, we conclude that Henize2-10 harbours an actively accreting central black hole with a mass of approximately one million solar masses. This nearby dwarf galaxy, simultaneously hosting a massive black hole and an extreme burst of star formation, is analogous in many ways to galaxies in the infant Universe during the early stages of black-hole growth and galaxy mass assembly. Our results confirm that nearby star-forming dwarf galaxies can indeed form massive black holes, and that by implication so can their primordial counterparts. Moreover, the lack of a substantial spheroidal component in Henize2-10 indicates that supermassive black-hole growth may precede the build-up of galaxy spheroids.

This study examines the impact of storm surges, infragravity waves, wider area seiches and natural harbour oscillations (harbour seiches) on port operations in the Baltic Sea, with a particular emphasis on the Port of Klaipėda, all during the severe storm that occurred from November 22–24, 2023. The study examines the interplay between meteorological factors, such as changes in air pressure and wind speed and direction, and the coastal geography of the area. Wind speeds during the storm reached a maximum of 29.7 m/s, and air pressure dropped for f ~ 50 hPa, with a corresponding sea level rise of approximately 40 cm due to the combined effects of storm surges and long waves. The research findings indicate that it was precisely long waves, which were generated offshore and amplified by the port's distinctive resonance characteristics and coastal topography, that were the primary cause of operational disruptions, creating hazardous conditions that necessitated the closure of the port. The port's elongated and narrow inlet played a pivotal role in the amplification of these waves, rendering it particularly vulnerable to resonance-induced oscillations. The research yielded several key findings, including identifying long waves (long ocean waves, wider area seiches, harbour seiches, and infragravity waves) with periods ranging from 12 to 13 h to 2–4 min, which posed significant risks to vessels moored at the port. Furthermore, the occurrence of simultaneous sea level fluctuations between Klaipėda and Karlshamn indicated the presence of seiches with period of 12,4 h across the Baltic Sea, thereby further complicating port operations. These results underscore the critical need for improved forecasting and mitigation strategies to enhance the safety and efficiency of port activities during severe weather events.

The harbour porpoise Phocoena phocoena is a small marine predator with a high conservation status in Europe and the USA. To protect the species effectively, it is crucial to understand its movement patterns and how the distribution of intensively used foraging areas can be predicted from environmental conditions. Here, we investigated the influence of both static and dynamic environmental conditions on large-scale harbour porpoise movements in the North Sea. We used long-term movement data from 57 individuals tracked during 1999–2017 in a state-space model to estimate the underlying behavioural states, i.e. whether animals used area-restricted or directed movements. Subsequently, we assessed whether the probability of using area-restricted movements was related to environmental conditions using a generalized linear mixed model. Harbour porpoises were more likely to use area-restricted movements in areas with low salinity levels, relatively high chlorophyll a concentrations and low current velocity, and in areas with steep bottom slopes, suggesting that such areas are important foraging grounds for porpoises. Our study identifies environmental parameters of relevance for predicting harbour porpoise foraging hot spots over space and time in a dynamic system. The study illustrates how movement patterns and data on environmental conditions can be combined, which is valuable to the conservation of marine mammals.