On the muddy grounds of the deep ocean, sea cucumbers are playing nanny to young king crabs. But are they being compensated?’ These sea cucumbers, commonly known as sea pigs, are bottom-dwelling creatures that look like grapefruit jelly with legs and could fit in the palm of a hand. Juvenile King crabs are around half…
The latest news release by the U.S. Forest Service reads ominously: the Sierra Nevada has over 100 million dead trees. Swathes of standing dry trees infested with insects populate the Stanislaus, Sequoia, and Sierra National Forests. Climate change, a five-year drought and bark beetle attacks have together resulted in what the Forest Service has called…
I stood with my feet buried in sand, staring at the ocean waves as they touched the beach. It was mid-October. To my untrained eye, the Monterey Bay shoreline looked like a child’s bubble bath. To California Fish and Wildlife scientists, it was a terrible déjà vu. Nine years ago, an algal bloom wreaked havoc—and…
I come from the land of tornadoes in the Upper Midwest. I’ve spent nights in the basement, watched rotating clouds for much longer than was wise and picked up softball-sized hail in the aftermath of the storm. But now I live in California, land of earthquakes, and my husband and I are buying a home…
Meet Makana, the only captive Laysan albatross in North America. An ambassador for her species, she takes the stage at the Monterey Bay Aquarium everyday at 1:30 sharp, helping guests understand how human-made plastics—single-use bags, straws, water bottles—can end up in sea birds’ stomachs. One of the props in her show is a 12-inch tube…
Today marks the fourth anniversary of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. On March 11, 2011, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake occurred offshore of Japan and kicked off a tsunami. At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, the natural disasters knocked out backup power systems used to cool reactors. Consequently, three reactors underwent fuel melting, hydrogen explosions,…
“Don’t you dare lick that seal!” screamed a bikini-clad young woman flicking the salty waves with her toes. As I glanced across the Santa Cruz Dog Beach toward the base of a succulent-covered cliff, a brown mutt the size of a footstool was fondling a lifeless pinniped half buried in the sand. It was one…
On Tuesday we Californians will vote on Prop 37 to decide whether or not to force companies to label their genetically modified foods. The European Union already requires the labeling of these GMOs, and some European countries ban genetically modified products outright. This labeling paints the picture that GMOs are dangerous and shouldn’t be developed…
Four years ago, honeymooning in Big Sur, my husband and I stumbled onto an overwintering site for monarch butterflies. Monarchs arrive at pine and eucalyptus groves up and down California’s coast this time of year after migrating hundreds of miles. On a hike in Andrew Molera State Park, we noticed a couple of monarchs perched…
