Dispatches · News

News from
the North Sea

Progress reports, precedents, and perspectives from the project to rebuild Doggerland, collected here as the vision moves from map to water.

Aerial view of a long rectangle of concrete caissons standing in open sea, its interior still flooded, with tugs towing a caisson towards the last gap in one corner and a jack-up rig on the horizon

26 October 2026Industry News

The Last Caisson Goes In at Princess Elisabeth Island

All 23 concrete caissons of Princess Elisabeth Island now stand 45 km off the Belgian coast, and the European Investment Bank has lent €1 billion for the substation that goes inside them. The direct-current half of the plan is still unfunded.

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Overhead drone view of a green split hopper barge alongside a quay, its long hopper loaded with terracotta clay bricks, with a crane and stillages of bricks on the dockside

12 October 2026Industry News

Vlaanderen VIII: The Barge That Delivered a Million Oysters

A 70-metre split hopper barge, the class that normally carries dredged sand to a reclamation site, opened its hull over the Hinder Banks and dropped 1,800 clay bricks carrying a million oyster spat. Nieuw Doggerland needs builders who can do both.

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Three NATO frigates, Norwegian, German and Dutch, under way on open grey water beneath a high cloudbank

23 September 2026Industry News

Defending the North Sea from the Middle

In a single year 13,079 vessels were logged drifting over subsea infrastructure in the North Sea, a rise of 52%. In the spring, British, Norwegian and American forces turned back a Russian rehearsal for cutting the cables to Svalbard.

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Pelagic trawlers berthed at Holmsgarth Pier in Lerwick, Shetland, with net stores and stacked fishing gear on the quay

12 September 2026Industry News

Britain's Tinned Mackerel Is Now a Different Fish

Princes has swapped Atlantic mackerel for Chilean jack mackerel in supermarket tins after fifteen years of quotas set above the science. The substitute comes from the Pacific. Nieuw Doggerland's answer is food from protected water, with the take fixed by treaty.

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Aerial view of a frond of Palm Jebel Ali under construction: pale new land in turquoise water, with a black floating pipeline running out to sea

12 September 2026Industry News

Two Hundred Million Cubic Metres of Sand

Jan De Nul is placing the last fronds of Palm Jebel Ali, an archipelago that will have swallowed close to 200 million cubic metres of sand. The same firm is building the world's first energy island. Whether islands can be built at this scale is settled.

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The trailing suction hopper dredger Al-Idrisi under way in open water, suction pipes stowed along her yellow-craned hull

7 September 2026Industry News

Georgia Settles Who Owns the Harbour

Jan De Nul has two jumbo dredgers cutting the channels for Georgia's first deep-sea port, ten years after it was announced. Anaklia was never held up by engineering, but by the question of who owns the harbour. Nieuw Haven will meet that question too.

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