I begin to panic. As I stare into an open Styrofoam container of frozen fillets of lionfish wrapped in plastic and tucked in between blocks of dry ice, I wonder if the $120 I shelled out for this package will be worth it. Eight friends are coming over for dinner the next afternoon and here …
Eating an Alien
I begin to panic. As I stare into an open Styrofoam container of frozen fillets of lionfish wrapped in plastic and tucked in between blocks of dry ice, I wonder if the $120 I shelled out for this package will be worth it. Eight friends are coming over for dinner the next afternoon and here …
Anacostia River, Washington, DC
You belong to no one, everyone, yet you exist in the shadows of politicians and history. You have a reputation of being forgotten. I stride past sweet honeysuckle, but traces of decay, drudgery, death, make me crinkle my nose and hasten my pace. Low tide unveils muddy banks hoarding plastic water bottles and old tires …
Alpine Unrest
"As we hustled into our tent and sleeping bags, somberness settled on us, a stark contrast to the circus stirring outside. It was five o’clock in the evening. It could have been ten minutes; it could have been two hours. Time slipped into a void. Winds ricocheted off the cliffs sending an amplified thrum through …
Vertical Imposition
I reach up with my right hand and slip a tooth-sized aluminum nut into a crack running through the greenstone rocks of Little Stony Man—a cliff outcrop in Shenandoah National Park. This minuscule piece of metal and a rope are all that protect me from a 20-foot drop to a ledge below. Continue reading on Blue …
Menhaden Madness
Bugfish, pogy, American sardine. The menhaden gets talked about in various ways, including how it's an important link in the marine food web and concerns about overfishing. Standing on the pier at Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Maryland, I witnessed the stunning dance of menhaden—the largest fishery in the bay, by volume.
A blob creates a record-breaking bloom
Bloom. It doesn’t sound that bad. The word may conjure up the image of spring crocuses popping up out of the ground. But start talking about harmful algal blooms, Pseudo-nitzschia, and domoic acid poisoning and people begin to realize that something more threatening is happening. Last week during the annual American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, …
Jellies of the Damariscotta
Sitting in the front of a canoe, I dipped my paddle into the salty waters of the Damariscotta River, a 19-mile long tidal river that feeds into the Gulf of Maine. Morning sunlight shimmered on the surface. A faint breeze rippled the water. All was calm on my morning paddling trip at the end of …
Jellies of the Damariscotta
Sitting in the front of a canoe, I dipped my paddle into the salty waters of the Damariscotta River, a nineteen-mile long tidal river that feeds into the Gulf of Maine. A faint breeze rippled the evergreen reflections on the surface like brush strokes of an impressionist painting. All was calm on my morning paddling …
The search for Greenland’s missing ice
When viewed from above, the fjords of Greenland look like arteries carrying water and ice from the heart of the mainland ice sheet. At the head of these fjords are some of the world’s largest glaciers. Called marine-terminating glaciers, they constantly recede and advance with the change of the seasons. And every so often, a …
Kristan Uhlenbrock 