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Australia: Melbourne Officials Vote to Ban Rental E-scooters

Hire e-scooters are lined up in Melbourne's central business district (CBD) on August 13, 2024. (Photo by William WEST / AFP)
Hire e-scooters are lined up in Melbourne's central business district (CBD) on August 13, 2024. (Photo by William WEST / AFP)
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Australia: Melbourne Officials Vote to Ban Rental E-scooters

Hire e-scooters are lined up in Melbourne's central business district (CBD) on August 13, 2024. (Photo by William WEST / AFP)
Hire e-scooters are lined up in Melbourne's central business district (CBD) on August 13, 2024. (Photo by William WEST / AFP)

Melbourne has become the latest city to ban rental e-scooters, abruptly moving to end a trial contract with two firms after a community revolt.

After a six-to-four council vote late Tuesday, city authorities said they would give operators Lime and Neuron 30 days to rid the city center of the two-wheeled contraptions.

Mayor Nicholas Reece -- a former executive at the men's health charity Movember -- backed the move and said it had popular support.

He alleged scooters had been scattered around the city "like confetti", posing a risk to the community.

For fans, e-scooters are a transport revolution -- allowing commuters to zip around crowded cities with ease and at minimal cost.

For detractors, they are injury-inducing street litter and a hipsters' plague on peaceful pedestrians.

In just two decades, e-scooters have grown into a worldwide market worth tens of billions of dollars a year.

But Melbourne follows cities from Barcelona to Montreal in banning or limiting where e-scooters can go.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales report the growth of e-scooters has brought a rise in related injuries and hospital admissions, mostly from men aged in their late 20s to early 30s.

The Royal Melbourne Hospital recorded 256 e-scooter-related injuries in 2022.

Rental company Neuron Mobility said Melbourne's "drastic" decision was made without "proper discussion".

"We still believe that Melbourne is an excellent city for e-scooters," Neuron's local general manager Jayden Bryant told AFP.

"If given the opportunity, we could quickly implement a variety of measures to address many, if not all, of the councilors’ concerns."

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Varieties

Italy Oyster Farmers Dream of Pearls from Warming Mediterranean 

A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
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Italy Oyster Farmers Dream of Pearls from Warming Mediterranean 

A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 

Pearls may soon be cultivated in European seas for the first time ever, as Italian oyster farmers seek to exploit an unexpected opportunity offered by the rapidly warming Mediterranean.

In late 2023, the first specimens of Pinctada radiata, a pearl oyster native to the Red Sea, were spotted in the Gulf of Poets, a popular tourist area around 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Genoa on Italy's north-western coast.

Less than a year later, they are proliferating in what have always been some of the Mediterranean's coldest waters, more normally associated with other types of oyster used for food rather than jewellery.

"We are looking into the possibility of producing cultivated pearls here," said Paolo Varrella, the head of a cooperative that has been breeding food oysters in the area since 2011.

The group has already made contact with pearl oyster farmers in Mexico to get tips on production techniques, Varrella said.

"The Pinctada radiata has been reported in the Ionian Sea around the island of Sicily since the 1970s, but only in the last decade has it moved north" to the cooler Tyrrhenian and Ligurian seas that lap the western Italian mainland, said Salvatore Giacobbe, professor of ecology at the University of Messina.

It is the latest in a succession of alien warm-water species to enter the Mediterranean as it heats up due to climate change.

Manuela Falautano, a scientist at the Italian environmental research and protection institute ISPRA, said this trend had seen "an exponential increase" in the last decade.

Some of these species are aggressive and disrupt delicate ecosystems. In a few cases, such the spotted puffer fish and the scorpion fish, they are also dangerous to humans.

The 2.5 million square kilometer (970,000 square mile) expanse of water that separates southern Europe from Africa and the Middle East is heating up faster than the average of the world's seas, Falautano said.

BIG MONEY

Pearl production, more readily associated with Polynesian atolls than the northern Mediterranean, has an annual global turnover of 11 billion dollars, and Italian oyster farmers are keen to cash in.

Adriano Genisi, a pearl importer for more than 30 years, said the Radiata may produce gems similar to Japan's renowned "Akoya" pearls which have a diameter of 5-9 millimeters and a white color with shades of grey, pink and green.

If all goes well the first pearls could be harvested in about a year, he said.

The rising temperature of the Mediterranean is also blamed for an increase in violent storms such as the one that sank the luxury yacht of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch off Sicily last month, killing six passengers and the boat's cook.

Franco Reseghetti, a researcher at Italy's National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology, said measurements taken in the Tyrrhenian in December at depths of between 300 and 800 meters showed the highest temperatures since 2013, and he expected to see a further increase this year.

"The huge amount of energy behind this heating can act as a fuel for devastating atmospheric phenomena" such as the violent storm which appeared to have sunk the yacht off Sicily, Reseghetti said.