Law of the Sea in the ‘Plasticene’

Oona Hathaway, Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, discusses her ongoing project supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, entitled ‘War Unbound.’ 

Informal courts created in PoW camps and Jewish ghettos during World War II illustrate the disruption of law in war and the ways in which legal pluralism can help to structure thinking about the concept of law in such a context. 

Sargassum seaweed was recorded as far back as the 15th century when Christopher Columbus wrote in his expedition diaries about miles and miles and miles of dense seaweed as he crossed the Atlantic Ocean. In 2011, a great mass of this seaweed emerged, stretching from West Africa t ...  Show more

The first license of its kind has been granted for deep-sea mining. It will be used to run early tests to see whether the seabed could be good place to harvest rare earth materials in the future. These earth minerals are what powers much of our modern technology, and the demand i ...  Show more

For World Ocean Day, Gaia Vince finds out how the planet’s seas could help us to generate clean power, capture CO2 and feed the world. Gaia is joined in the studio by science journalist and marine biologist Olive Heffernan. She dives into the controversy regarding the potential o ...  Show more

Professor Heather Koldewey wants to protect our oceans from over-fishing and plastic pollution. An academic who is not content to sit back and let the science speak for itself, she wants to turn science into action and has found conservation allies in some unexpected places. Work ...  Show more