Climate change in the Far North puts traditional food sources at risk.
Coast
Posted inGoat
Washington’s new clean-water plan is a mixed bag
Washington’s governor last week announced a bold approach for creating cleaner, safer waters for fish and the people who eat them. Unless he didn’t. Every day, the state’s Department of Health releases a map of waterways so polluted that restrictions are placed on the amount and types of fish people should eat. Washington has many […]
Posted inGoat
Reasons for massive starfish dieoff still unknown
Here’s some shocking news: Since last fall, when I first wrote about Pacific sea stars falling victim to a mysterious disease, turning into goo and dying, the aptly-named “starfish wasting syndrome” has not – as scientists hoped – subsided on its own. It’s gotten much, much worse. How much worse, you ask? Well, from the […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
Geoduck fishermen switch to urchins off Washington’s coast
China banned West Coast shellfish after finding traces of toxins.
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
Butcher of Heartache on the Bering Sea
A former newspaper copyeditor finds his way onboard a fishing boat.
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
A review of West Coast: Bering to Baja
West Coast: Bering to Baja Photographs by David Freese, Foreword by Naomi Rosenblum with text by Simon Winchester, 191 pages, hardcover:$60. George F. Thompson Publishing, 2012. “I have always been drawn to transitional places,” writes photographer David Freese in West Coast: Bering to Baja. “For me, there is no more fascinating place on Earth than […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Vagabond writer Craig Childs on 20,000 years of wanderlust
Savoonga is the place to be on the Fourth of July. The village is a cluster of roofs on the north side of St. Lawrence Island, a treeless hump of capes and dormant volcanoes rising out of the Bering Sea, battered by Arctic weather. The Native Yup’iks here celebrate the holiday with more gusto than […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
The Salt Pond Puzzle: Restoring South San Francisco Bay
FREMONT, CALIFORNIA We were on patrol. Caitlin Robinson-Nilsen, a young biologist in shades and a ponytail, steered the 4WD Explorer along a muddy levee in Fremont, Calif., and I rode shotgun, staying vigilant. She surveys snowy plovers –– adorable, six-inch, two-ounce, skittering shorebirds, with black collars and eye-patches –– as the waterbird program director for […]
Posted inWotr
The lesson of earthquake and tsunami: never forget
The most important image from the disaster that rocked Japan last month might be one that was never captured by anyone’s camera. It has to be conjured up from words: The mayor of a town on the Sanriku coast north of Sendai races to the top of the three-story city hall to escape the tsunami […]