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Livingroom Science: What Our Best and Brightest are Pretty Sure is Happening with Wildlife

Humpback Whale

Salamander Night is a time of cheap thrills for the naturalists of Nova Scotia, requiring only a flashlight on the first rainy evening in April over 9°C. Under these conditions several of the province’s amphibians depart their wintering grounds for the ponds in which they’ll soon breed, and no species is more noteworthy in this short, seasonal migration than the Spotted salamander, who, about a decade ago, was caught breaking the rules of biology.

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Aqua-Controversy: Communities of Queens County Concerned Over Open Pen Aquaculture

Liverpool Open Pen Fish Farm.

Bob Swim has fished the waters of Port Mouton 51 years now, and his luck was pretty good until the mid 1990s.

That decade saw the arrival of open pen aquaculture to his home bay, a relatively inoffensive operation with three pens raising fin fish from spring until fall. The picture changed with the arrival of Cooke Aquaculture a few years later, purchasing and expanding this fish farm until Bob and his colleagues noticed a change.

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A Volunteer’s Voyage

Lesser Yellowlegs

We live in the age of mass extinction, a harsh reality which dogs me each week. Our tactless conquest of the natural world is leaving precious little habitat for the species and ecosystems which made this planet beautiful, mysterious and, incidentally, habitable. My summer reading of authors like David R. Boyd, Lawrence Anthony, Edward O. Wilson and Frans de Waal brought this modern crisis into sharp focus for me, and the weight of my realizations left me with two choices – to implode, like so much weak sauce, or to volunteer.

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Earning McNabs: Novice Paddler Satisfies Obsession with Coastal Rock

Fort McNabs

My kayaking career began not with a paddle, but with a hike, through the splintering trails and crumbling buildings of the York Redoubt National Historic Site, from whose lookouts I admired the entirety of Halifax Harbour. One visit became many as this was the destination of my daily jog, nurturing, over time, my curiosity of a park visible from its peaks, quietly occupying the waters below – McNabs Island.

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Our Acidified Oceans and the Pitfalls of Chemistry: Exploring the Causes and Consequences of our Carbon Addiction

A Coral Reef

The buildup of C02 in our atmosphere is the defining issue of our time, caused by the fundamental workings of our civilization and resulting in the catastrophic warming of our planet. But while our eyes are rightly fixed on this climbing thermometer, another consequence of rising C02 often escapes our gaze.

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