Voices from Whale Cove

Radiation Reduction, Stalking Sardines,
and Ancient Stowaways

We don’t have salal in Wisconsin. That’s worth mentioning because as I began researching the story that became Thursday’s “Salal’s Worrisome Die-Off,” I knew nothing about the plant, least of all its cultural significance to Indigenous peoples of the West Coast. Fortunately, I had Nancy Turner, ethnobotanist extraordinaire, to fill me in. With professorial verve, she detailed the myriad ways in which salal has historically been, and still is, eaten: its flavorful leaves a component of a bouquet garni, its purplish berries a vehicle for dried fruit cakes. Indeed, an exceptional recipe for jelly, Turner confided, is a 50-50 mixture of salal berry and Oregon grape juices.

Details like those make it all the more difficult to process the recent reports of dying salal.

Turner isn’t certain what’s causing the die-off along the west coast—no one is, at this time. Yet she hasn’t given up hope. “Nature is amazingly resilient,” she told me before our conversation came to a close. At a time when the natural world is most imperiled, her words provide needed solace.

Jess Mackie
Journalism fellow

This Week’s Stories

Voices from Whale Cove

An Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic was created through forced relocation; six locals share their family stories.

by Suzie Napayok-Short and Cody Punter • 5,500 words / 27 mins

Salal’s Worrisome Die-Off

This ubiquitous shrub of the Pacific Northwest is dying—and the impact could be catastrophic.

by Jess Mackie • 1,300 words / 7 mins

The Baltic Sea Is Nearly Free of (Some) Chernobyl Radiation

Sampling efforts show that in the Baltic Sea, the concentration of radioactive cesium-137 in the water should return to baseline levels by 2023.

by Jessica Haapkylä • 500 words / 2 mins

Jurassic Ark

For millions of years, ancient life hitched a ride across the seas on gigantic Jurassic crinoids.

by Raleigh McElvery • 900 words / 4 mins

One Great Shot: Chasing the Sardine Run

As predators hunt down the oily fish, so, too, does an intrepid photographer.

by Dhritiman Mukherjee • a quick read with one great photo

This Week’s Audio

Swimming with Tuna

A controversial plan for a tourist attraction sparks questions about South Australia’s celebrated tuna ranching industry.

by Jessica Wynne Lockhart • 20 mins • Listen here or with your podcast app

What We’re Reading

AquaBounty’s transgenic salmon have arrived in Indiana. They’re the first genetically modified animal to be raised in the United States and sold for food. (Indianapolis Star)

We’re learning more and more about anglerfish, the strange nightmarish fish of the deepest ocean with the glowing lure dangling above its gaping jaw. (New York Times)

Offshore wind takes one step forward in Scotland and one step back in the United States. (CNBC, GCaptain)

Historical records show the whaling crews of the Moby Dick–era were diverse. One in six crewmembers was black in the 1850s and many Indigenous people worked on board as well. (JStor Daily)

Off the coast of British Columbia, beyond the swimming grounds of their famous southern resident cousins, swims another population of killer whales—and these ones eat sharks. They chomp them so hard, in fact, that their teeth show chronic damage. (CBC)

This snail is the first deep-sea animal to be dubbed endangered thanks to deep-sea mining in its habitat. (Nature)

Eating plastic doesn’t always kill seabirds. Sometimes it just makes them smaller and sicker. (CNN)

The Amazon rainforest, Southern Ocean, and South Atlantic Ocean are nourished by vital phosphorous that was long assumed to come from dust swept up from the Sahara Desert and blown across the sea. It turns out a good chunk of these nutrients actually comes from biomass burning in Africa. (New Scientist)

Is granting the endangered southern resident killer whales legal personhood the only way to save them? (The Walrus)

Begone straws! Next on the single-use plastics chopping block: travel-size plastic shampoo. The Holiday Inn hotel chain says it will start phasing out these single-use bottles. (Associated Press)

Question: This week, Canada got a new marine protected area. What is its name and where is it?

Click here to tweet your answer to @hakaimagazine. As before, there’s no prize, just the glory of winning.

Congratulations to Dan Wilt who correctly answered last week’s question: Approximately how much of the world’s food supply is wasted every year? As we noted in our feature story, “Wasted,” about one-third is wasted. Dan did some investigating on his own and reported between 33 and 55 percent of all food produced globally is never eaten, and the value of the wasted food is worth over US $1-trillion.

While they may look the part, rough keyhole limpets are limpets in common name only. These marine snails are more closely related to abalone than “true” limpets. The flattened, conical shell shape helps the snails endure powerful waves that could otherwise knock them off the rocks. Rough keyhole limpets often share their shells with a kind of scaleworm, which pops its head out to nip predatory sea stars that venture too close. Who doesn’t want an attack worm to protect their house?

Photo by Grant Callegari

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