More Cameras On The High Seas, Please
A pair of humpback whales synchronized the release of bubbles to corral and consume sand eels.
This article by Ellie Duke, with photographs and video by Sutton Lynch, is a sort of bookend to another recent article. It makes one wish for more people skilled with cameras in the oceans, and fewer skilled in placing nets:
A school of bluefish forming a circle in shallow water.
The photographer Sutton Lynch is documenting a dramatic turning point off the coast of Long Island — a resurgence of sea life after decades of depletion.
Sutton Lynch rises most days before the sun, arriving at Atlantic Beach in Amagansett, N.Y., for the early-morning calm. It’s the same beach he’s been going to since he was a child, and where he worked as a lifeguard for years as a teenager. Now 23, he spends his mornings surveying the horizon. When he spots activity on the water’s surface, he sends out his drone. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Rattling Cisticola
Maasai Mara National Reserve
Fireflies At Risk
Fireflies in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. RADIM SCHREIBER
Fireflies being among the more charismatic insects, they and other glowing creatures have been covered in our pages second only to bees. Our thanks to Ted Williams, writing for Yale e360, for explaining their specific challenge:
A Summer Light Show Dims: Why Are Fireflies Disappearing?
Fireflies — whose shimmering, magical glows light up summer nights — are in trouble, threatened by habitat destruction, light pollution, and pesticide use. With 18 species now considered at risk of extinction in North America alone, recovery efforts are only just beginning.
For millions of people around the globe, fireflies have been a big part of the magic of spring and early summer nights. They certainly were in our family. When my children were young, our field in central Massachusetts blazed with fireflies. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Striated Heron
Legon Botanical Gardens, Accra, Ghana
Overfishing & Long Island Fancyfolk
Chris Winkler, a fisherman in ever-fancier Montauk on Long Island, is accused of breaking limits on his catch.
We hope that the wrongs get righted:
The Government Takes On a Fisherman Over 200,000 Pounds of Fluke
Chris Winkler is on trial, accused of taking too many fish from the seas off gentrified Montauk. His former partners have pleaded guilty, and stand to make millions from the sale of their small seafood-themed empire.
Along with trash fish, catch that exceeds daily limits must be tossed overboard even if it perishes.
It was just before dawn when Chris Winkler, a fisherman in Montauk, N.Y., set off on his trawler, the New Age.
A longhaired surfer who looks far younger than his 63 years, Mr. Winkler was in flip-flops and shorts, trailed by Murphy, a good-natured Irish water spaniel who is usually his only company. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Bearded Vulture
Hohe Tauern National Park, Austria
Jill Lepore On Walter Isaacson’s Latest Biography
Among topics I would not have shared here previously, Elon Musk. But this is by one of our best biographers, and he has earned the benefit of our doubt. A review by one of our best historians captures my concerns about the system that Musk represents. By extension it raises questions about the biographer’s approach. So, I share:
How Elon Musk Went from Superhero to Supervillain
Walter Isaacson’s new biography depicts a man who wields more power than almost any other person on the planet but seems estranged from humanity itself.
In 2021, Elon Musk became the world’s richest man (no woman came close), and Time named him Person of the Year: “This is the man who aspires to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit: clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman, cad; a madcap hybrid of Thomas Edison, P. T. Barnum, Andrew Carnegie and Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan, the brooding, blue-skinned man-god who invents electric cars and moves to Mars.” Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Barn Owl
Miller Ranch, Presidio County, TX
Environmental Status Reports & Lurking Contradictions
The last time we shared an advertisement here? Never. Occasionally, we promote a video like Kill the K-Cup that serves the opposite purpose. But this ad? Must see. It promotes a powerful message, and paradoxically at the same time, as Bill McKibben points out in this week’s newsletter, a whole other big mess is lurking just behind the curtain. He starts by bringing our attention to a new bill being considered in California, and then relates that bill to Apple in a way that raises questions about the accomplishments celebrated in the ad:
…#In California, SB 253 made it through the legislature, which is an incredibly big deal. Because California is the fifth largest economy on earth, and this law would force the big companies that do business there—which is everyone, really, because who is going to miss out on that economy?—to fully disclose their carbon emissions, including their “Scope 3” emissions, which are the ones that come from the supply chain. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black Kite (Yellow-billed)
Legon Botanical Gardens, Accra, Ghana
Northwest Passage Expedition & Arctic Secrets Revealed
Soren Walljasper, NGM Staff. Sources: Douglas Stenton, University of Waterloo; Jonathan Moore, Parks Canada; Matthew Betts, HMS Terror; Mark Synnott; Tom Gross
We rarely link to expeditions-gone-awry stories, but here is an exception, with thanks to National Geographic:
Seeking to solve the Arctic’s biggest mystery, they ended up trapped in ice at the top of the world
In 1847, Sir John Franklin and a crew of 128 men disappeared while searching for the fabled Northwest Passage. A National Geographic team sought to find evidence of their fate—but the Arctic doesn’t give up its secrets easily.
Jacob Keanik scanned his binoculars over the field of ice surrounding our sailboat. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Audouin’s Gull
Valencia, Spain
Carbon Capture, Scaled To Texas
A direct air capture system at the Carbon Engineering pilot facility in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Carbon capture technology has its skeptics, but it has steadily improved and is closer to proof of concept. Next step, scaling to Texas:
The world’s biggest carbon capture facility is being built in Texas. Will it work?
The plant will inject 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the ground each year – but is it just greenwashing from big oil?
Plastic membrane used in the direct air capture system. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Rising out of the arid scrubland of western Texas is the world’s largest project yet to remove excess carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, a quest that has been lauded as essential to help avert climate catastrophe. The project has now been awarded funding from the Biden administration, even as critics attack it as a fossil fuel industry-backed distraction. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Andean Condor
El Palmar Integrated Management Natural Area, Chuquisaca, Bolivia
Stories from the Field: Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Year 2015 was special for Shashank Dalvi. It was his “Big Year” – a birder’s personal challenge to identify as many species as possible within that time period. I had the opportunity to bird with him and learn from him earlier in the year. He is truly devoted to nature and fills up your brain with tonnes of useful and jaw-dropping information on all creatures in the wild. He decided to wrap the year finding the Nicobar Megapod and was travelling to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. He managed to obtain permission with several Government departments for himself and our group of 8 birders to travel to Central and Great Nicobars before closing the year in Gujarat.
We were to leave for Port Blair on 15th December, and the timing couldn’t have been worse. Chennai and the east coast of India was drowned in rains. Ominous clouds moved in fast-forward mode. It was like watching a horror movie.
Nature’s fury rendered people and their deities helpless. Bridges and dams tumbled down. People were stranded in higher floors. More than 15 feet of water covered the low-lying residential areas. The expedition was 5 days away.
I googled the weather pattern over Andamans and Nicobars. I could not see a bit of land. Just purple swirls. The first ever trip with legal documents to travel to any of the islands of Central and Great Nicobar might get washed out due to rains. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Hays County, TX
The Coming Wave, Reviewed
The primary author of this book is one of the pioneers of AI, so what he has to say about it as a dilemma is relevant. From a recent conversation he had with Sam Harris my takeaway was that while I do not have much agency in the dilemma, it is better for me to understand it than ignore it. Containment is not, apparently, an option. So what can I do? In this book review, a quicker version of the same message, and the only option may be to ponder it:
The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman review – a tech tsunami
The co-founder of DeepMind issues a terrifying warning about AI and synthetic biology – but how seriously should we take it?
On 22 February 1946, George Kennan, an American diplomat stationed in Moscow, dictated a 5,000-word cable to Washington. In this famous telegram, Kennan warned that the Soviet Union’s commitment to communism meant that it was inherently expansionist, and urged the US government to resist any attempts by the Soviets to increase their influence. This strategy quickly became known as “containment” – and defined American foreign policy for the next 40 years. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Broad-billed Roller
Legon Botanical Gardens, Accra, Ghana
Heat Pumps Questioned
image: michael haddad
The technology of heat pumps was made understandable in an earlier article. While remarkable, questions have arisen. Read the following in full at The Economist to hear about it in more detail:
Heat pumps show how hard decarbonisation will be
The row over them portends more backlashes against greenery
They hang from the walls of utility rooms, nestle inside kitchen cupboards and hunker down in cellars. Continue reading
Organikos 