Rachel Carson Country

The ocean is a place of paradoxes. It is the home of the hundred-foot blue whale, the largest animal that ever lived. It is also the home of living things so small that your two hands might scoop up as many of them as there are stars in the Milky Way.

— Rachel Carson, “Undersea.”

For as long as my family has lived in Virginia, I have, as often as I can, committed to the windows-down, progressively flatter drive from Richmond to the sloping coasts of “Rachel Carson country.”

‘A strange and beautiful place’: My Portable Paradise

Mine is a short journey, but you wouldn’t know it.

Hushed ripples as my paddle slips through the water are the only noise I make, but everyone else is making a racket. A cacophony of mingling bird calls, fish splashing as they wake up and bounce out of the water every which way. Sunrise is feeding time. I watch a big blue heron standing gracefully in the marsh and swiftly scarfing down a fish for breakfast.

Where New York’s Sick Sea Turtles Go for Rehab and Squid Snacks

At New York State’s only sea turtle rehabilitation center, workers are nursing a record number of sick patients back to health. On a recent Thursday morning, Maxine Montello was at work making breakfast for 48 hungry diners. She had a stack of numbered plastic trays, and a clipboard with a list of corresponding menu orders. Methodically, she placed each tray on a scale, cut up pieces of frozen squid and cold raw herring and added them — including heads and tails — measuring just the right amount.

Scientists Are Trying to Pull Carbon Out of the Ocean to Combat Climate Change

Instead of sucking planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, some scientists are looking to capture it from the oceans

There's a growing consensus among climate scientists that in order to avoid the worst effects of global warming, humanity has to find a way to sequester carbon dioxide — and most efforts to date have focused on removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

Antarctic Sea Ice Has Reached a Record Low For the Year, Researchers Say

The sea ice serves as a buffer for some of the largest melting glaciers.

Scientists are keeping a close eye on the Antarctic ice shelf as recent activity could soon cause rapid melting and rising sea levels. The sea ice in Antarctica has likely met its minimum extent for 2023, furthering expectations from researchers that continued melting will occur at a record-fast pace, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Climate Crisis Increases Human-Wildlife Conflict

In 2019, an archipelago in the Russian Arctic Ocean declared a state of emergency when an aurora of polar bears muscled their way into a settlement and began nosing through the garbage.

At the time, experts said that the climate crisis likely caused the polar bear invasion, as dwindling sea ice forced them to seek food from human dumpsters instead. Now, a new study led by researchers from the University of Washington (UW) finds that this was not an isolated incident.

Duke to Host STEM Event

Area middle school students are invited to Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort April 1 to learn more about science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, activities, resources and role models.

Held annually, Growing Equity in Science & Technology, or GEST, is a collaborative, graduate student-led event that brings together scientists from different Eastern North Carolina institutions, showcasing the diversity of fields, practitioners and careers that are possible in STEM.

US Coastal Wetlands Are Rapidly Disappearing. Here's What It'll Take to Save Them

Saving wetlands provides both coastal protection and economic benefits.

As the effects of heat-trapping pollution continue to raise sea levels, wetlands dotting American coastlines could drown — or they could flourish. Their fate will depend upon rates of sea-level rise, how quickly the plants can grow, and whether there’s space inland into which they can migrate.

Pulverized Glass Is Becoming Much-Needed Sand Along Louisiana's Coasts

Glass Half Full in New Orleans is diverting bottles from landfills and recycling them into safe, nature-friendly sand.

Glass Half Full and Tulane University researchers are winners of the 2023 Gizmodo Science Fair for recycling glass bottles and using them to restore shoreline in Louisiana. Can a glass recycling project divert New Orleans’ glass bottles from landfills and turn them into sand for emergency response and shoreline restoration?

The East Coast Whale Die-Offs: Unraveling the Causes

Activists are blaming a recent spate of humpback strandings off New York and New Jersey on seismic exploration by offshore wind companies. But scientists say the deaths are not unusual and are likely due to increased ship traffic and entanglements with fishing gear. In early December of 2016, the carcasses of juvenile humpback whales began turning up in the busy waters around the mouth of Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay. By the end of February, 10 animals had been found within about a 200-mile stretch of coast between Virginia and North Carolina.

Why 23 Dead Whales Have Washed Up on the East Coast Since December

Another humpback whale was spotted dead late Monday, floating near a shipping channel between New York and New Jersey, the 13th whale found in the two states in three months.

First a North Atlantic right whale, a critically endangered species, washed ashore in Virginia. Then a humpback floated onto a beach in New Jersey. Not long afterward, a minke whale, swept in on the morning tide, landed on the Rockaway Peninsula in New York City.

Is it Best to Protect Whale Habitat Where it Once Was, or Where it is Now?

Scientists discover that today’s sperm whale habitat is shaped by the ghost of human hunting, hinting at the peril of ignoring the past when working to change the planet’s future. Scientists of all sorts struggle to resurrect the past. Archaeologists create portraits of ancient societies from bits of pottery, coins and the remains of buildings. Paleontologists piece together the lives of dinosaurs from isolated fossils, a tiny sliver of the life that once roamed the earth.

SUNY Geneseo and NOAA Ocean Exploration Bring the Deep Sea to Undergrad Classroom

SUNY Geneseo’s Assistant Professor Mackenzie Gerringer and thirteen biology undergraduates and alums partnered with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Ocean Exploration program to study the deep seas in an online classroom. Their project, partially funded by the National Marine Sanctuaries Foundation, focused on how to use deep-sea biology data in the classroom and its educational benefits.