Category: Environment
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Abalone: the Chase, the Lore, the Future
Abalone are definitely one of the most exquisite things to eat from the sea. Their sublime flavor is both buttery and slightly salty and tastes like a cross between a scallop and calamari. But a big part of abalone is the culture of chasing, catching and eating wild abalone.
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Ocean Movies you Love to Hate: Endless Descent (aka The Rift) (1989)
Most science fiction movies are based loosely on science. Usually, this means they make a few technical or impossible leaps to move the plot forward but generally adhere to the basic laws of science. But in most cases, filmmakers are forgiven for their science-defying sins as long as the story makes up for it. In…
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Songs of the Trees
For if time truly is the fire in which our lives burn, shouldn’t we slow life down? Isn’t it prudent to seek solace as the seconds’ tick by? Most of us, myself included, are content to pack our daily lives full of activity. Rushing hither and yon chasing a dream that is perpetually beyond our…
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Legend of the Killer Abalone
There is a legend, spawned deep in the mysterious kelp forests of southern California, of the killer abalone. On extremely rare occasions, conditions align with a violation of the abalone code that triggers the rare spawn of the trio of terror in the abalone universe: the red, the black, and their offspring, the pink abalone.…
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Reflections on Blogging for Science and Surfing
Blogging had made me a better writer, created new opportunities and expanded my creative directions. Above all, it’s fun and I enjoy it.
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Lessons from Killer Dana
Among the powerful slogans used in the battles to protect surf spots along the coast of California, that of “Killer Dana” still resonates among the surf community. The loss of Dana Point, and it’s renown right point break, should serve a stark reminder of what could happen without the protections we currently have in place.…
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Our Environmental Past Can’t Become Our Future…
Forty-eight years ago millions of people in 192 countries across the globe created Earth Day on April 22, 1970. The first celebration took place in 2,000 colleges and universities, 10,000 primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the US involving over 20 million Americans. That day changed the world. Lately, it seems like we are forgetting what…
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Crush Depth: Adventures with Scientific Submersibles
“What’s your depth?” echoed down from the surface radio, unanswered for the third time in a row and sounding increasingly desperate. It was 2002 and I was riding inside the scientific submersible Delta, heading towards the seafloor off Anacapa island in an area known simply as the “footprint,” a deep-water fish, coral and sponge hot spot…
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Find the Kraken! The Search for Giant Squid
The idea of the Kraken appears in Melville’s Moby Dick in 1851; played a major role in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in 1870; and appeared as the Watcher in the Water in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, lurking in a lake beneath the western walls of Moria. The truth is…
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Chasing the Wild Abalone: Confessions of a Field Biologist
To be honest, I love abalone and have always been fascinated by this most unusual of snails. In college I truly began to “chase the abalone” which led me to become a field biologist. So these are my confessions; some of my adventures while chasing abalone. Things I normally wouldn’t admit to but looking back…
