Last week, the mauve stinger, Pelagia noctiluca, which has terrorized beaches in the Mediterranean for years, swarmed into a salmon farm, Loch Duart, off the Scottish coast. The berry-sized jellies slipped through the nets that hold the salmon and lodged themselves in the gills of the fish. Loch Duart is located on one of the oldest aquaculture […]
Who’s Been Naughty? Continue reading
A story that forewarns of ecosystem demise begins, for me, with two deaths. On October 17, the effervescent Heather Kahout lost her three-year battle with cancer. Heather and her husband Martin took a chance on me when I was really just a textbook writer and offered me a writing residency at Madroño
Suez Backstory Continue reading
When I was in grad school, my advisor took a sabbatical and then a few leaves of absence to work at the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, or FAO, in Rome. I visited often and I fell in love with the country, it’s food, and energy, and left a small piece of my
Playing Lotto in the Sea Continue reading
No, not the bass that Meghan Trainor’s been singing about so infectiously all summer. It’s all about the base of the animal tree of life. This month’s science news is full of stories from the deep past, which means we know a bit more about the murky ancient world of jellies. A group of researchers from
It’s All About That Base Continue reading
One thing I love about my jellyfish work is the twisty path research often follows, a path that often ends in a place I could have never predicted. Last week my jellyfish Google alert, which notifies me of articles with the word “jellyfish” every afternoon, sent me to a story in the Huffington Post
On the Beach in Qingdao: Face-kinis and Giant Jellies Continue reading
The prize store at the Main Event, a family fun center in a strip mall in north Austin, sucks. And I know I’m not just an aged-out mom on this count. My kids hate it too. They just don’t realize they hate it. My daughter is stuck deciding if she wants to spend her
Rethinking Mother Earth at the Arcade Continue reading
Years ago I visited the Aeolian Islands, the tiny chain that looks like dirt flinging off the the Italian boot after it’s just kicked Sicily. I remember blue seas, incredible calimari, stony beaches, and being simultaneously terrified and thrilled to see ash tossed from an active volcano on the island of Stromboli. This week footage from the seas
Jellyfish Spawn Continue reading
It’s been a colorful week in new jelly species. News media in Australia has been abuzz with stories of a crayon-purple jellyfish that’s been washing up on beaches from the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane to Port Macquarie, half way to Sydney. The peculiar jelly has a bell about the size of a dinner plate and
Mysterious Technicolor Jellies Continue reading
Like me, Iraqi-British artist Athelier Mousawi has found a muse in jellyfish. He paints huge canvases bursting with bright colors and boundaries that scream around curves and screech to a halt at corners. This tension between intertwined organic forms meticulously restrained by clean edges creates a harmonious chaos of color and contour
My grandma ended her 102 years peacefully on April 15, 2014. Ever since then, reels of her life have been playing haphazardly though my mind. I see Grandma plucking small, sour cherries from the tree in the corner of her backyard. She looks up and strikes a bargain with the birds, “Ok,
In My Grandma’s Footprint Continue reading