Coastal communities are capturing their cultures and landscapes in virtual reality before sea level rise steals them for good. It’s a sunny day in southern Louisiana, and I’m sitting on a porch listening to 91-year-old Wenceslaus Billiot, the oldest member of the Isle de Jean Charles band of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, describe how the island has […]
Hakai
Unmasking a Salmon Virus
The previously unknown cause of a common chinook salmon disease has turned out to be a familiar foe. A common virus that plagues Atlantic salmon in fish farms around the world also causes disease in farmed Pacific chinook salmon, a new finding that reignites the debate about infectious disease migrating from farmed fish to wild […]
How Island Bats Took Over the Mainland
South America’s short-faced fruit bats are the descendants of “reverse colonists.” When it comes to colonizing new habitats, island species tend to get the short end of the stick. Typically, organisms from the mainland invade an island and take over—pushing the natives to near extinction. But sometimes, colonization can go the other way. In a […]
Saving Canada’s Wild Salmon Policy
Canada already has a forward-thinking salmon management plan on the books. Now it just needs to implement it. When Canada’s Policy for Conservation of Wild Pacific Salmon was announced in 2005, it was hailed as a major step forward for fisheries management in the country. “It was a blueprint for how to manage, rebuild, and […]
Quiet Please, the Fish Are Flirting
Fish that fart together stay together. In an ocean full of clicking shrimp and singing whales, fish are often imagined as the silent actors. Fish use motion, color, and chemicals to communicate, but they lack the iconic mewl of a cat or trill of a bird. Yet in reality, many fish chat constantly to mark […]
Fish Farms Can Be Disease Accelerators
Much like terrestrial animal farms, fish farms are incubators for disease. Last summer, more than half a million farmed salmon died from a sea lice outbreak in New Brunswick’s Passamaquoddy Bay. More than 250,000 died directly from the parasites, which attach themselves to the fish and feed on their skin, blood, and mucus, while another […]
The Effects of Invasive Pythons Slither through the Everglades
Pythons may be setting off a cascade of ecosystem changes. The huge Burmese pythons that are slowly taking over Florida’s Everglades wetlands are a threat to the mammals that live there. But new research shows the pythons’ influence extends far beyond their own appetites: the snakes are setting off cascading changes to the ecosystem. Read more […]
Competition Pressured Killer Whales Into Menopause
Selfish daughters, not altruistic grandmothers, could explain the evolution of menopause. Surviving beyond the end of your reproductive life is a rare trait: only female humans, killer whales, and short-finned pilot whales are known to do it. The question is why? If the purpose of life is to pass on your genes, as evolutionary biologists suggest, then […]
Florida’s White Ibises May Be Spreading Disease
The increasingly urban birds are carrying salmonella. If you’re golfing in Florida this winter, resist the urge to feed the friendly white ibises congregating around the water hazards—they might just give you salmonella. The birds, native to Florida’s dwindling wetlands, have been moving to urban golf courses and parks. There they come into close contact […]
Is This the Year Governments Protect Antarctica’s Seas?
The odds world governments will finally agree to establish marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean are looking better than ever. The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is one of the most diverse, fragile, and poorly studied ocean ecosystems on Earth. But as far as marine protection goes, it’s the Wild West. That could soon change, […]