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Jim Leichter, Aquarius Underwater Laboratory

Jim Leichter is a postdoctoral researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. This is his fourth saturation diving mission at Aquarius, where a team of six aquanauts will spend nine days in the underwater laboratory 63 feet below the ocean’s surface in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Monday, 12 Jun 2000 CONCH REEF, Fla CONCH REEF, […]

Dino Might!

Calling for more use of renewable energy sources, hundreds of protestors concerned about global warming demonstrated yesterday at the start of the five-day World Petroleum Congress meeting in Calgary, Canada. The congress, which includes more than 2,500 delegates from 87 countries, is the latest target of anti-globalization groups that have protested against the World Trade […]

Chinese Water Torture

Beijing plans to crack down on water use in homes and businesses as northern China faces a severe drought that is drying up rivers and destroying crops. The city’s worst water shortage in nearly 20 years has been exacerbated by water pollution and soaring demand from a growing population. Beijing plans to follow the lead […]

A Tribe Called Quest

Conservationists cheered a Friday ruling by a federal appeals court that ordered the U.S. government to reconsider its decision to let the Makah Indian tribe of Washington state hunt migratory gray whales. The court ruled that the federal government had violated environmental laws by agreeing to support the hunt before it had conducted a review […]

Quit Your Blubbering

Norwegian whalers resumed their controversial hunt last month, despite a collapsed market for whale blubber. The International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in 1986, but Norway began hunting again in 1993, flouting the ban. Norwegians have stockpiled some 800 tons of blubber in warehouses — “blubber mountain,” they call it — in hopes that the […]

There aren't many right whales left

Chris Slay wears bib overalls and wire-rimmed glasses, occasionally recites poetry, and watches right whales for a living. Once more into the breach. David Wiley, National Marine Fisheries Service. After this year’s dismal right whale calving season, the poetry that comes to Slay’s mind is darkly pessimistic. The rarest whale of them all may be […]

Once More Into the Reach

Vice President Al Gore toured the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River in Washington state today and announced that President Clinton this morning declared the surrounding area a national monument, a designation that needs no congressional approval. The 200,000 acres to be protected include the only remaining free-flowing stretch of the Columbia River, 51 miles […]

Maples Leaving

U.S. cities will likely be hotter and more humid, sugar maples in the Northeast may disappear, and barrier islands off the Carolinas may be flooded under rising sea levels as climate change takes its toll on the U.S. over the coming century. These predictions are part of a federal government report on the likely effects […]

Wheels of Progress?

The Gray and the Blues

Some environmentalists say California Gov. Gray Davis (D) has succumbed to campaign contributions from the timber industry and is failing to push for more protections for the state’s forestland. Clear-cutting has exploded in the state in recent years, largely because of one company, Sierra Pacific Industries, which owns 1.5 million forest acres in the state, […]