Wadden Sea

The Dutch government should do more to protect historic shipwrecks in the Wadden Sea and North Sea from looters, tides and mussel bank constructions, the five coastal provinces wrote in a letter to Minister Jet Bussemaker of Education, Culture and Science. If there is no intervention, hundreds of those historic shipwrecks and their sometimes precious cargo may be lost, they write, NOS reports.

The provinces want an investigation to be done to map the status of the shipwrecks. Based on the results, the necessary measures can be taken.

The police arrested a 51-year-old man in connection with three German passengers being killed by a falling front mast on a historic ship on Sunday. The arrested man is both the owner and captain of the ship

Dutch meteorological office KNMI terminated its warnings for icy roads in the northeast of the country. The weather office was joined by motorist association ANWB and infrastructure agency Rijkswaterstaat in calls for drivers to stay off the roads in the provinces of Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe.

Zeeland mussels will be available everywhere from next week. This was announced after the successful testing of some samples in Oosterschelde and the Wadden Sea, NU reports.

There is a lot of unrest on among Terschelling residents about possible gas drilling in the Wadden Sea.

Visitors to beaches in Ameland and Schiermonnikoog were advised to get somewhere safe at 9:30 a.m. Thursday morning after multiple waterspouts were spotted over the Wadden Sea. Several hundred meters high, onlookers tweeted spectacular photos of the spouts whirling into the sky.

The state of fish populations in the Wadden Sea has seen a significant decline in the last 50 years. The Wadden Association announced on Wednesday that the number of fish in the sea is "only a fraction of what it was in the 60s."

As the Netherlands is preparing to endure the storm, the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) also issued a code 'orange'. The DMI warns for very strong winds, first from the southwest, later from the northwest with gusts of 35 to 40 m per second, which equals 126 to 144 km per hour.

It was remarkably crowded at the Holwerd pier last Sunday the 15th. Over a hundred and fifty people had gathered to participate in the popular Dutch mudflat hiking. Called ‘wadlooptocht’, this recreation is a walk from Holwerd to Ameland, wading in the waters of the mudflats of the Wadden Sea. Mudflat hiking is a unique activity that only can be experienced in a few parts of Europe.