-
4 weeks ago | 
thehyphen.substack.com | Neneh Cherry |Chloe Dalton |Helen Scales |Emma Gannon
I follow the Women’s Prize with great interest and enthusiasm every year, setting my alarm for the announcements across fiction and non-fiction, and then filling up my Bookshop.org shopping basket with some fantastic new reads. So when Claire, the brilliant executive director of the Women’s Prize Trust, invited me to be a judge for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025, I felt like pinching myself. “I am so excited,” I said.
-
Nov 19, 2024 | 
scotsman.com | Helen Scales
In the second article in The Scotsman’s series, Scotland’s Wonderful Wildlife, Dr Helen Scales describes her attempts to see orcas and explains how she realised it’s alright to be both optimistic and pessimistic about the natural world’s futureRecently, I went to Shetland with the plan of getting my mind blown by sea life.
-
Nov 17, 2024 | 
sciencefocus.com | Helen Scales
Back pain is on the rise. Around the world, a staggering 619 million people – around one in 13 of us – suffer from back pain. By 2050, it’s expected that number will rise to around 843 million. For some, it steals the sunshine from life. Sleep can become fractured, mental health becomes eroded and once-normal activities, such as playing with the kids or going to work, can become utterly impossible.
-
Oct 6, 2024 | 
sciencefocus.com | Helen Scales
That all hinges on what you consider to be cute. Depending on the species, a newborn shark can be anything from an adorable, hand-sized tiddler, like the small-spotted catsharks that hatch from ‘mermaid’s purse’ egg cases, or they can emerge directly from their mothers, with bodies as long as your outstretched arms. This is the case with sand tiger sharks, and how these baby sharks get so big is rather shocking.
-
Oct 2, 2024 | 
discoverwildlife.com | Helen Scales
It’s easy to see how these shimmering creatures earned their name — their sparkling exteriors closely resemble the sequinned jumpsuits worn by the King of Rock 'n' Roll himself. If you’re anything like me, you probably can’t help falling in love with Elvis worms - one of the prettiest tiny creatures in the sea - and their stunning, sparkly costumes, says Helen Scales.
-
Sep 25, 2024 | 
discoverwildlife.com | Helen Scales
Chaetopterus pugaporcinus, the pig’s rump worm - also known as the pigbutt worm, is one of those species whose name perfectly describes its appearance. To see one, you’ll need to dive 800m into the twilight zone where they float around looking – quite frankly – like a pair of pink, peachy pig’s buttocks.
-
Sep 18, 2024 | 
sciencefocus.com | Helen Scales
What lives around 1,000m (approx 3,200ft) underwater, is the size of a chickpea and looks like the plump pink rear end of a pig? This question had scientists puzzled for a long time. Teams from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) occasionally spotted these odd creatures while surveying the Monterey Canyon, off the coast of California, with remote-controlled submersibles. But they couldn’t figure out what kind of animal it was.
-
Sep 6, 2024 | 
discoverwildlife.com | Helen Scales
Fish, squid, jellyfish and many other animals live in the abyss, thousandsof metres below the surface, where the pressure is at least 150 times higher than inside a car tyre. These animals don’t implode, but bring one to the surface and it may melt in your hand. Their cell membranes are high in unsaturated fatty acids, making them less like butter and more like olive oil, keeping them flexible under pressure and less liable to crack.
-
Sep 6, 2024 | 
countryfile.com | Lauren Franklin |Helen Scales
Coral reefs are certainly not confined to the shallow, sunny waters of the tropics. More than half of around 5,000 known species of corals live in cold and deep waters. The main reef-forming coral in UK waters is a bushy, white species, Lophelia pertusa, or Desmophyllum pertusa as some scientists prefer to call it. Mostly located off the west coast of Scotland, Lophelia reefs are found from around 150m deep and are very slow growing.
-
Aug 19, 2024 | 
lithub.com | Helen Scales
First, they were bright white dots moving in the distance between sea and sky. Then, as I reached the end of the land at the cliff’s edge, the gannets were everywhere. From eyeline to the waterline six hundred feet below, huge birds filled all the available space. They followed invisible contours through the air in every direction and on every horizontal plane. Somehow, silently, they knew to steer to avoid each other, their black-tipped wings never touching.
