Dr. Mridula Srinivasan, NOAA/NMFS/OST/AMD

by Richard J. King The French sailor Bernard Moitessier is perhaps best known for sailing alone a full one-and-a-half times around the world, nonstop, in the Golden Globe Race of…

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Renee Takesue on the rocks provided by USGS

Renee Takesue is a marine geochemist for the Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center of the US Geological Survey (USGS). “Geochemistry is a field that combines chemistry and geology. The…

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birds nesting

By Richard J. King When on his outbound passage aboard HMS Beagle, 22-year-old Charles Darwin failed to see the beauty, intelligence, and the usefulness to humans of the seabirds he…

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swimming in the Pacific Islands

By Richard King A sea turtle was once caught by a fisherman, caught his own lucky break, but then had the miserable misfortune to be captured a second time by…

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broad spectrum of colors seen through the waves

Most people use the terms sea and ocean interchangeably. Someone going on an offshore voyage might say they are “going to sea” or sailing on the “high seas,” but in…

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Greg Skomal tagging a shark

Lots of people go fishing in the summer in the waters surrounding Cape Cod, usually for striped bass, bluefish, black sea bass, and the occasional tuna. Greg Skomal does his…

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steamed quahog

by Richard King The quahog, a clam, has had a diverse role in human history, but it’s one that has often been misunderstood. Pronounced kō-hog—derived from the names common to…

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Orca pod

By Richard King “This peacefulness was interrupted,” wrote Teddy Seymour, “by a strange encounter of an animal kind.” Sailing alone in his boat Love Song in 1986, he was cruising…

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parrot silhouette

By Richard King In Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island (1883), Long JohnSilver shows young Hawkins his pee parrot in a cage. Silver’s female bird, which he gives sugar snacks…

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abalone rest on a rock

By Richard J. King For the haenyeo, the traditional female divers of Korea’s Jeju Island, the abalone is not only a prized source of food and security, but is also…

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