Articles by Katharine Wroth

Bubba, we hardly knew ye

It all started innocently enough. Well, sort of. Nantucket lobstermen hauled up a 22-pound crustacean and sold it to a market in Pittsburgh. The owner, awed by the clawed -- which was nicknamed Bubba and estimated to be 100 years old -- decided to donate it to the local zoo. On Tuesday, the big fella arrived there, and promptly swam to the big trap in the sky.

Lobster author Trevor Corson has a few thoughts about the misguided effort to "save" Bubba, and conservation guidelines in Maine that would have left him in the sea to begin with.

P.S.: You know what would be funny? Dead lobster gummi candy.

Reefer madness

A U.S. research ship made its way out of Mexico yesterday after banging up a coral reef and potentially screwing with marine life. The vessel -- operated by Columbia University but carrying scientists from several countries -- had spent five weeks using sonic pulses to examine a crater for clues to dinosaur extinction. While whalehuggers asserted that the technology could damage undersea creatures, the crew encountered a bigger problem: it ran aground in mid-February, damaging 20 square yards of reef north of the Yucatan Peninsula. Upon departing, Columbia coughed up $200,000 and blamed the whole thing on faulty charts.

Hasta luego!

Trading fossils for fossil fuels

It may not be as expansive or awe-inspiring as, say, an Alaskan refuge, but a 12-million-year-old snail-fossil bed in Thailand is at risk of being destroyed in the name of insatiable energy consumption. While a state-sponsored firm digs away for coal on 10 of the area's 17 acres, snailhuggers protest that it's a loss to science and history. "But if we conserve the entire site," a representative from the power authority sputtered, "we would lose 265 million tons of coal worth 130 billion baht [about $3 billion]." Still, the company recently suspended operations for two weeks, giving geologists a chance to make their case. Go, rockhound gang.

Pollute, two, three four

I'm just going to hazard a guess, here, but it seems like if the Israeli military is a major source of environmental damage, other similar outfits in nations around the world probably are too. Note to all the big guys: war is good for, as they say, absolutely nothing. Good god, y'all.