About three weeks ago I received as an early birthday gift a new camera. I had been thinking for a while now that I should get a “real” grown-up camera with interchangeable lenses; you know, a DSLR. My little Olympus point-and-shoot camera is a fantastic field camera–it takes amazing macro shots and I can dunk…
Why does the ocean stink?
Several people in the past few days have asked me why the ocean stinks. The answer is simple. The red tide that I documented a month ago is back, and worse than ever. The culprit is the same, but now it is present in even higher numbers. I can’t show you how it smells, but…
Fall colors
People who live in other parts of the world often say that California doesn’t have real seasons. I would argue that we do indeed have seasons, they’re just . . . subtle. Certainly here on the coast the Pacific Ocean moderates weather so that we don’t have to deal with temperature extremes. However, in the…
Balancing act
When the concept of conservation biology was first introduced in the 1970s, it applied to the species that were disappearing due to deforestation in the tropics. Biologists began to realize that species were going extinct as a direct result of human activity. As conservation science evolved over the decades it has become a multidisciplinary melding of population biology and…
The downside to Indian summer
Autumn along the California coast can be spectacular. With the cessation of northerly winds and coastal upwelling, ocean and air temperatures rise. September and October typically offer the sunniest days of the year. Summer tourists who shiver in their jackets in July might be surprised to know that in September the natives run around in…
A third of a year
In addition to being the autumnal equinox, today also marks the four-month anniversary of the car accident that left me with bruises, some cracked/bruised ribs, and a concussion. All of the physical injuries have healed by now, except for some residual soreness when I push on the left side of my rib cage, but the concussion…
What the muck?
This past weekend I was trying to manage some concussion headache issues and stayed away from the marine lab for four days. Usually that’s not a big deal. Since I’ve been absent so much of the summer due to the head injury, the lab assistants whose job it is to make sure that everybody has air…
Not-so-happy anniversary
Seeing as today is the third anniversary of the first blog post I wrote about sea star wasting syndrome (SSWS), I thought it would be appropriate to take inventory of my remaining stars and see how they’re doing. Right now I have custody of ~10 bat stars (Patiria miniata), 7 ochre stars (Pisaster ochraceus–collected last…
Camera test-drive: Nikon D7200
For the past several years now I’ve been using various iterations of an Olympus point-and-shoot camera, mostly for field and lab work. My current version, which I’ve had for over a year now, is the TG-4, in which the ‘T’ stands for Tough. This camera really stands up to its name. I routinely clamber over slippery…
Life in a drop of water
Spending the summer trying to heal a concussion brain injury means that not much science has been happening in my life lately. Now three months post-accident, I’m finally able to do a little bit of thinking and am not quite as exhausted as I was, although extended periods of concentration are still taxing and usually…