Having sailed Drake’s Passage from Chile to the South Shetland Islands through the English Channel, never seeing land for the clouds, turning South along snow-covered Greenwich Island, we came to Yankee Harbor, where seals, giant petrels, and gentoo penguins greet you on the beach. A few chinstrap penguins stood off to one side, looking like…
Massachusetts officially declared April 24 as Right Whale Day to raise awareness about the endangered: North Atlantic right whales, the state’s official marine mammal. Right whales have been coming to Cape Cod Bay in April for as long as there has been a Cape Cod Bay. These sandy, shoaly waters warm faster than deeper, dark-bottom…
The forests of the U.S. Northeast are in peril. Global warming has raised temperatures, improving conditions for insects such as the emerald ash borer, to ravage trees already stressed due to drought and scorching summers. Massachusetts forests experienced 97 wildfires across the state during the summer of 2022. Keeping pace with destruction by fire is…
The tall ship, Tecla, a Dutch North Sea sailing herring dragger built in 1915, was tied by three heavy hawser lines to the ferry quay in Ullapool, Northwest Scotland, a town of white-washed buildings packed together for the herring fishery. Most of us had arrived the evening before and we were ready to sail except…
Federal officials overseeing the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont are scheduled to double the amount of logging in the next five years over the previous five years. Under that plan, as much as 62 million board feet of lumber would be cut from the national forest. Mature and old growth forests are the best…
With rising seas, fighting climate change is a participatory challenge of us against the elements. It is all hands-on deck reducing carbon emissions. Friday, President Biden stood by the Red Sea in Egypt before delegates from 197 nations at the UN Climate Conference COP27. With Republicans taking the majority of the House and Congress hogtied…
“Algae eats the fertilizer. Then there are too many algae, no more oxygen and the fish die.” “Carbon capture, yes.” “Do not take away my bees.” “I’ll leave the bees.” “I think water has got to stay at the top. Because we in a drought” “Fertilizer creates sunspills. I feel that could be lower down.”…
Off the coast of Maine, an explosive exhalation of air swept my attention over the sailboat’s starboard rail. A broad stretch of hide rose like a pebbled sand bar the length of the twenty-seven-foot boat. The right whale wheeled forward, sliding into opaque water while I stammered and pointed. I was alone at the helm…
