Billions in Climate Deal Funding Could Help Protect U.S. Coastal Cities

Communities across the country hope to tap into funds from Democrats’ new climate law to restore coastal habitats, part of a program that emphasizes nature-based solutions.

Claire Arre, a marine biologist, waded through the sand in search of an Olympia oyster on a recent sunny afternoon, monitoring the bed her organization had built to clean up the surrounding watershed and contemplating all that could be done if she could get her hands on federal funding to expand the work.

Hurricane Ian Was a Powerful Storm. Real Estate Developers Made it a Catastrophe.

‘Dredge-and-fill’ created thousands of homes vulnerable to storm surge.

A century ago, the coast of southwest Florida was a maze of swamps and shoals, prone to frequent flooding and almost impossible to navigate by boat. These days, the region is home to more than 2 million people, and over the past decade it has ranked as one of the fastest-growing parts of the country. Many of those new homes sit mere feet from the ocean, surrounded by canals that flow to the Gulf of Mexico.

Florida’s Fatal Attraction

Everyone wants a piece of it. That’s the problem.

Boats on roofs; cars out to sea; coastal towns underwater. The sand from Naples Beach now chokes Naples streets. Hurricane Ian’s 150-mph winds yanked houses off of their foundation in Fort Myers, a pretty town once known for its avenues of royal palms. As many as 50 people reportedly are dead in Florida. In some of our glossiest, most affluent, most densely populated communities, survivors now sift through the ruins of their slice of paradise.

Climate Change Comes for the Freezers, a Key Tool for Alaska Natives

Threatened by stronger storms and a melting permafrost, Indigenous Alaskans are grappling with how to keep the power running to their freezers, which store their traditional subsistence foods. As the remnants of Typhoon Merbok lashed the plywood walls of the house she shared with her children and grandchildren, Frieda Stone wrote a Bible verse on a small card. The severe weather, which hit Alaska’s western coast on Sept. 16, was the most powerful early-season storm scientists had ever measured there.

Three Ways to Build Back Smarter After Hurricane Ian

Big storms are becoming more common. That makes it crucial to take climate change into account when rebuilding. The damage from Hurricane Ian will very likely run into the tens of billions of dollars and scientists say the United States can expect more severe storms like it as the planet heats up. They also say the risks of increasingly wild weather make it all the more urgent that cities and states take steps to protect people and property. One of the ways to do that is to heed lessons and rebuild wisely after big storms.

After Ian, Here’s What’s Next For Atlantic Hurricane Season

A new disturbance headed toward the Caribbean has a medium chance to develop

The 2022 Atlantic hurricane season is far from over. Even as former Hurricane Ian lost its tropical characteristics over the weekend in the Mid-Atlantic, its remnants stalled offshore leaving behind stormy weather that may not relent until midweek. Meanwhile, forecasters are closely tracking disturbances at risk of developing in the Caribbean and off the coast of Africa.

Ocean Oil Pollution is Growing — and Not From Oil Spills

Oil spills may be dramatic and devastating, but they’re not the biggest contributor to ocean oil pollution — not by a long shot. A report released Wednesday gives that distinction to fossil fuel runoff from highways, parking lots, and other land-based infrastructure, mostly transportation related. According to the report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “Oil in the Sea,” these sources are by far the largest and fastest-growing contributor to ocean oil pollution.

Hawaii to US Navy: Quit polluting Our Waters

A $9 million fine and a sewage leak into Pearl Harbor are just the latest in a series of water crises. The U.S. Navy confirmed last week that 1,000 gallons of raw sewage leaked into Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, just two days after Hawaii’s Health Department fined the Navy nearly $9 million for hundreds of safety violations at the military wastewater treatment plant. At issue are not only the underground aquifers that supply drinking water for much of the island of Oahu, but also answerability by the military that has long had a contentious presence in Hawaii.

A Better Solution to Florida’s Hurricane Problem

Coral reefs can protect coastal cities from deadly floods, if only we keep them alive. Hurricane Ian was not just a powerful storm, but a preview of what’s to come. Climate change is helping cyclones intensify faster, produce greater storm surges, and dump more rain — all of which makes hurricanes more destructive and expensive. One early assessment for Ian indicates it cost as much as $40 billion in property damage. Engineers have long defended against the threat of hurricanes by building structures like levees and seawalls. Yet these tools are imperfect.

Why Do Sharks Matter? Author Dr. David Shiffman Explains

Dr. David Shiffman’s favorite thing to talk about are sharks, and has been since he was very young. “I’ve loved sharks for a really, really long time, since I was younger than anyone in this room,” Shiffman said to a few dozen last month at North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort.

Shiffman, an interdisciplinary marine conservation biologist who specializes in the ecology and conservation of sharks, stopped in the Carteret County town as part of the tour for his book, “Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive with the World’s Most Misunderstood Predator.”

Defining Terms: What Does ‘sustainable seafood’ Mean?

The term “sustainable seafood” gets used a lot with regard to the fishing and aquaculture industries — it’s a phrase that varies in meaning and is used everywhere from policy directives to marketing strategies. But what does it really mean? 

Colloquially, the term “sustainable” is often in reference to environmental impact, with regard to overfishing and making sure that meeting human demands doesn’t destroy ocean ecosystems.

Socially Sustainable Seafood Requires Diligence, Scrutiny

In an undergraduate classroom at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 2017, a group of students sat in front of a plate of sushi from a local restaurant. But it wasn’t lunchtime — the students were attempting to quantify how common the mislabeling of red snapper was across North Carolina. By analyzing the DNA from 43 fish samples they’d collected from seafood markets, grocery stores and restaurants across 10 counties, they found that a whopping 90.7% were mislabeled as red snapper. Most often, the substitutions were tilapia or vermillion snapper.

Billions of Snow Crabs Have Disappeared From the Waters Around Alaska. Scientists Say Overfishing is Not the Cause

The Alaska snow crab harvest has been canceled for the first time ever after billions of the crustaceans have disappeared from the cold, treacherous waters of the Bering Sea in recent years. The Alaska Board of Fisheries and North Pacific Fishery Management Council announced last week that the population of snow crab in the Bering Sea fell below the regulatory threshold to open up the fishery.