

BUDS, BIRDS, BLUE WHALES, and BLOOMIN’ URCHINS
What Victoria lacks in cultural or economic might she makes up for in geography, climate, flora, and fauna. If you’re from Victoria, or...
Jul 229 min read


HOW MANY FEET IN A SALISH SEA?
You can’t spend time anywhere near the Salish Sea without hearing about the mystery feet. Averaging about one a year, sneakers with...
Jul 132 min read


RECORD RETURNS
The West Vancouver Streamkeeper Society was established in 2001. Their objective is to restore and sustain local aquatic wildlife...
Mar 31 min read


"PHYLOGENETICALLY DISTINCT"
Somehow I missed obelisks . Well, I suppose everyone missed it — or them . Discovered in human gut and oral bacteria, researchers...
Mar 22 min read


SILLY WHALES
We’ve never really known a lot about blue whales ( Balaenoptera musculus ); yes, despite our long history near and on the sea, blue...
Feb 232 min read


NO BRAINER: HOW APHANTASIA IS LIKE ATHEISM
Maybe twenty years ago I was writing about the strangeness of finding myself labelled an ‘atheist’. To begin with, I argued that labelling others was a weird practice, and that gifting someone membership in a group that they themselves haven’t or wouldn’t was a mode of conduct we probably wanted to avoid. (No, I couldn't have imagined the era we were about to enter. And you can imagine my consternation.) But, if you still insisted, then it seemed to me like framing things in
Jan 1210 min read


NEW IN PERU
A team of researchers from Conservation International conducted a survey in the heart of Peru during the summer of 2022. Their rapid assessment bulletin was just now published . In their report, Conservation International’s Rapid Assessment Program team (a kind of biologist Special Forces unit, like the Green Berets but instead of suppressed rifles and thermal goggles they come carrying microscopes and PhDs in butterfly reproduction) revealed a remarkable diversity in Peru’s
Dec 23, 20245 min read


SALMON RUN
The Quinsam River, just outside Campbell River on Vancouver Island, has just seen the highest pink salmon return in a decade . And this...
Nov 3, 20241 min read


NOT SO FAST
According to the IUCN Red List , more than 45,000 species on Earth are currently threatened with extinction. Particularly threatened are...
Oct 16, 20243 min read


COMPLEX FIRE
In 2020 a massive wildfire, known as the CZU Lightening Complex Fire , broke out in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Initially, several small fires were sparked by lightening. Those fires eventually grew and coalesced into one much larger conflagration. Part of that fire surrounded and consumed the ancient old-growth forests of Big Basin Redwoods State Park , along California’s central coast, just south of San Francisco and north of Monterey Bay. Though ignited by an unusual lightn
Aug 14, 20244 min read


A CORAL PREDICT-AMENT
You’ve heard about the devastations to the world’s reef ecosystems. Most notably, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia’s east coast saw...
Aug 10, 20245 min read


“THIS IS HOW IT IS”
I imagine that it is as true for you as it is me that almost everything I thought I understood from prior education turned out to be far from the whole story or even entirely wrong. Occasionally this occurrence is innocent and happens because we’ve learned more over time or because the author or teacher felt they needed to simplify for their learners. At other times the person who wrote the book or taught the lesson simply didn’t know what they were talking about or never loo
Aug 17, 20236 min read


GIANT SADISTIC MURDER-DOLPHINS
The killer whale is the largest known species of dolphin. This exposes its common name as a rather silly one. ( Silly, just like so many others, such as the: mantis shrimp [not a shrimp or a mantis], electric eel [not an eel], starfish or cuttlefish [not fish], sea cucumber [not a vegetable, though it sure looks like a disembodied rectum], king cobra [not a cobra], horny toad [not a toad, maybe horny], red panda [not a panda], koala bear [not a bear], maned wolf [not a wolf]
May 27, 20234 min read


HOW ARE SEA STARS DOING?
You may have heard something about the Sea Star Wasting Disease (SSWD) epidemic that came to the Pacific coast of North America in 2013....
Jan 8, 20236 min read


WHY YOU TRANSMIT
Twenty-nine months into this pandemic I'm still running into folks who think that being immunized means they're immune to infection and...
May 13, 20224 min read


A DIET FOR THE 21st CENTURY?
Food and nutrition fads come and go all the time. We often hear folks excited about learnings they've had around what to eat and what to...
Feb 14, 20227 min read


NO SENSE OF PLACE or HOW TO ERASE HISTORY AND CULTURE
In one of our final courses we were asked for an analysis and reflection of major course projects and themes. Here was mine: The Local...
Apr 30, 202111 min read


EVERYTHING SPEAKS: MEDITATIONS ON THE ANIMISM OF LANGUAGE
David Abram and Robin Wall Kimmerer write of the tremendous power of language to shape perception and, therefore, our relationships and...
Aug 16, 202014 min read











































































