North Sea

The bodies of two men were found in sunken fishing cutter Lummetje in the North Sea early on Sunday afternoon. While official identification is still in progress, the victims are almost certainly 27-year-old Hendrik-Jan de Vries and 41-year-old Jochem Foppen, who disappeared with the Lummetje on Thursday. "It is good for the families that the uncertainty has come to an end", Mayor Ineke Bakker of Urk said in a statement, De Gelderlander reports.

The Netherlands Coastguard launched a massive search for a fishing boat from Urk on the North Sea near Texel on Thursday morning. The Zr.Ms. Makkum, a naval ship designed to search for sea mines, searched the area around where the boat disappeared with its sonar equipment and most likely located it, the Coastguard said. But due to the bad weather conditions, divers can not yet be sent in to confirm. There were two people on board the boat when it disappeared.

Volunteers from foundation Duik de Noordzee Schoon dove 2,500 kilograms of waste out of the North Sea. The team spent nine days searching the seabed for items that are harmful to the ecosystem, focussing on ship wrecks between Ameland and Schiermonnikoog, the foundation said in a statement.

According to the foundations, ship wrecks are a source of marine life, but also hold on to a lot of waste. Fish get entangled in old fishing nets that got caught up on the wrecks, and plastic ends up in the food chain.

A body was found in the North Sea some 30 miles away from the coast on Sunday night. The body washed up at a drilling platform. Rescue company KNRM was deployed to collect the remains, RTL Nieuws reports.

The police were informed about the discovery, and a police detective accompanied the KNRM crew to the platform.

So far nothing is known about the victim's identity or cause of death. According to NH Nieuws, the victim is not an employee of the drilling platform. 

A boating crew sailing in the North Sea found the body of Anja Schaap, a 33-year-old woman from Katwijk aan Zee missing for the last three weeks. Schaap left a bar in her Zuid-Holland hometown in good spirits during the early morning hours of May 29 after having a few drinks with a family member there.

Dutch public works department Rijkswaterstaat and shipping company MSC have located around 220 of an estimated 281 containers that fell off ship MSC Zoe in the North Sea last week. Most of the containers, located with the help of sonar boats, are at the bottom of the North Sea, near the Wadden Islands, a spokesperson for Rijkswaterstaat said to NU.nl.

The Dutch coast guard is keeping an eye out for a sailing yacht that asked for help on the North Sea on Thursday night. After searching for the ship for hours and finding nothing on Thursday, the coast guard is no longer actively searching for the yacht, though they will keep a close eye out during the daily flight along the coast, NOS reports.

Over 2,700 volunteers are participating in the sixth edition of the Boskalis Beach Cleanup Tour, the annual cleaning action organized by the North Sea Foundation. Over the next two weeks, they will clean up the entire stretch of North Sea beaches in the Netherlands, the Telegraaf reports.

The cleanup started on Wednesday with two teams of volunteers - one team starting at Cadzand in the south and the other at Schiermonnikoog. Each day the cleaning teams will get closer to each other, until they finish together in Zandvoort.

A sperm whale was spotted in the North Sea, just off the coast of Den Helder on Monday morning. By Monday evening the whale was still in the same area. According to SOS Dolfijn, the animal is likely disoriented or sick and weakened, the rescue organization said on its website.

The whale was first spotted by crew members of a ship off the coast near Julianadorp around 7:30 a.m. The Coast Guard took a photo and sent it to SOS Dolfijn, who identified it as a sperm whale. 

Entrepreneurs and residents living around Schiphol composed a proposal to expand the airport into the ocean. The North Sea still has plenty of space and noise will not cause any inconvenience there, according to the proposal. Such a 'sea runway' will bring relief to the entire Haarlemmermeer, the Telegraaf reports.

According to the proposal, an 'IJ-plain' should be constructed in the North Sea near IJmuiden for a new runway for Schiphol. It can eventually also be used to move other noisy runways, such as Buitenveldert and Aalsmeer, away from the airport.

The police arrested three seasick Greenpeace activists on Friday. The activists formed part of a group that climbed onto the drilling platform near Schiermonnikoog to protest against gas drilling. They returned to shore because they felt seasick, and was arrested at Lauwersoog in Groningen.