Having Your Desalination and Eating It, Too
Residents of the parched, volcanic Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago in the North Atlantic, have relied heavily on desalination to supplement their scant fresh water for the past 50 years. But...
View ArticlePetrifying Climate Change
A new method for combatting climate change feels like a bit of modern-day alchemy: scientists have figured out how to take carbon dioxide out of the ocean and turn it into harmless rock. For every...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Key Tool for Cleaning Up Oil Spills Is More Hazardous Than Helpful
When most kids in Arabi, Louisiana, were spending their summer holidays sleeping in and playing baseball, George Barisich was working. Starting when he was 10 years old, Barisich was an apprentice...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Catching Crabs in a Suffocating Sea
Congratulations to Julia Rosen on winning the American Geophysical Union’s Walter Sullivan Award and the Society of Professional Journalists Northwest Excellence Award for this story. The crab pots...
View ArticleHow Your Caffeine Addiction Is Hurting Marine Life
Whether sipping a cappuccino or tossing back an energy drink, people turn to caffeine as the world’s most popular stimulant. What these devotees may not appreciate is that caffeine passed through the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Landfill of the Future
The molecular disassembly line works like this: polluted air and water move through a series of tanks, slowly being purified along the way. Between the tanks, hidden from view, grids of submicroscopic,...
View ArticleCoastal Job: Baleen Investigator
Some people work in cubicles, others work in kitchens, but the most intriguing workplace of all may be the coast. Meet the people who head to the ocean instead of the office in our Coastal Jobs...
View ArticleCoastal Job: Artisanal Salt Maker
Some people work in cubicles, others work in kitchens, but the most intriguing workplace of all may be the coast. Meet the people who head to the ocean instead of the office in our Coastal Jobs...
View ArticleA Warming Sea Is Forming Crystals and Belching CO₂
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. If you stand on the coast of Israel and gaze out across the Mediterranean Sea, you’ll spy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Price of Paper
The Crofton pulp and paper mill—one of the biggest in Canada—occupies a sprawling site carved out of the coastal Douglas fir forests on the east side of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The mill’s...
View ArticleDon’t Overestimate Bioplastics’ Benefits
Plastics produced from plants are often considered less environmentally damaging than plastics made from petrochemicals. But scientists are warning that we should be careful making such assumptions. A...
View ArticleMarine Wonders Explained
The beach is a good place to ask questions but sometimes a terrible place to find answers—especially if you’re asking science questions and your only equipment is a pair of sunglasses and sunblock. The...
View ArticleEating Insects Makes Tasty Crabs Tastier
Chinese mitten crabs are a delicacy among some seafood lovers: deeply savory, with a distinctive tinge of sweetness. Diners crack the shells open and eat the meat piping hot, dipped in rice vinegar and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Coolest Library on Earth
In a narrow aisle of shelves packed with cardboard boxes, Jørgen Peder Steffensen grins like a mischievous child unwrapping a holiday present as he pulls out a plastic-wrapped hunk of ice from a box...
View ArticleBiofuel Made from Algae Isn’t the Holy Grail We Expected
Biofuels made from algae have had their time in the sun, with years of highly publicized investments from fossil fuel companies, such as Exxon and Chevron, and studies showing potential for the energy...
View ArticleMicroplastic Exposure Breeds Antimicrobial Resistance
Two scourges of 20th century public and environmental health—microplastics and antimicrobial resistance—seem to be teaming up to birth a whole new worry. The ocean is teeming with microorganisms. And...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Problem with Boating’s High-Fiberglass Diet
Oysters first alerted marine biologist Corina Ciocan to an overlooked global marine pollution crisis. Ciocan, a marine biologist at the University of Brighton in England, has worked since 2018 on an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In Graphic Detail: Cigarette Butt Research Is Lighting Up
Back in 1964, when only around half of manufactured cigarettes had filters, a Wisconsin inventor patented a filter made from dairy—specifically from hard cheeses like Parmesan, Romano, Swiss, or aged...
View ArticleIron Fertilization Isn’t Going to Save Us
Last year, global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels reached an all-time high. As the world heats up, many influential bodies—such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Centuries-Old Shark Teeth Suggest Brazil’s Ocean Is Less Resilient Today
When a condo development threatened the remains of a 13th-century coastal fishing site on Santa Catarina Island in southern Brazil in 1996, archaeologists rushed to excavate. They rapidly collected...
View Article
