My first experience with a right whale was as a college student alone on the deck of a twenty-seven-foot sailboat. Suddenly, beside me was what looked like a sandbar the length of the boat. Yet, it was alive and moving forward. Those below decks thought I was having an epileptic attack. I had never imagined…
The Miyawaki Forest is one of the most promising developments today in the fight against climate change. “Miyawaki Forest” is a term for a dense urban pocket forest filled with native species of trees, shrubs, and grasses. It is named for Akira Miyawaki, the famed Japanese botanist who is no longer with us. As a…
Climate change isn’t the only factor causing changes in how water moves; it’s also our infrastructure choices. Traditional stormwater management (gray infrastructure) puts us in a fighting position against water, imprisoning its flows in pipes and drains. When we try to resist and restrict what water wants, it retaliates back. Forcefully. This past fall/September, Leominster,…
Phytoplankton in the Gulf of Maine have become 65% less productive. The Gulf of Maine is home to the North Atlantic right whale, a critically endangered species with less than 350 left alive. Right whales feed on zooplankton, krill, and other small crustaceans. These animals are fed by phytoplankton, organisms at the base of the…
None of us are strangers to the reports of the Gulf of Maine heating 97% faster than the world’s oceans. However, the actual reasons for this can be lost in the constant headlines about global warming and rising greenhouse gases. To explain this extraordinary phenomenon, let’s look closely at four factors: surface seawater temperatures, heat…
The anchor chain clinked and clanked through the hawsehole on the Dutch tall ship Oosterschelde until the large anchor set into white coral sands turned periwinkle blue by clear ocean waters. At first light, the volcanic mountains of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) had stepped out of the mist, turning from blue to green as they…
Why did sea surface temperatures go up when summer air temperatures did not? This perplexing question arose after last summer’s unusual findings. Ocean surface water temperatures off Boston, Portsmouth, and Portland were nearly two degrees Fahrenheit warmer than usual, aligning with the long-term trend of increasingly warm conditions primarily driven by climate change. To understand…
In August 1817, the learned men of the Linnaean Society of New England had studied their Bestiaries, ancient, illustrated volumes of all the animals. They set out from Boston for Gloucester’s high rocky shore to survey the seascape. There, they found what they were looking for. The sea serpent was a “60 to 100-foot long, black, shiny,…
