Marine Life - Biodiversity for a Livable Climate

Featured Creature: Greenland Shark

What creature has a lifespan of over 250 years and catches prey by suction?

The Greenland Shark (Somniosus microcephalus) is one of the oldest and largest sharks in the world. It is the biggest of its superorder, Squalomorphii (one of the two groups of sharks). They can get up to 21 feet and 2,255 pounds, and have an average lifespan of 272 years. The oldest recorded Greenland Shark was almost 400 years old; that shark was alive during the Scientific Revolution! When I first came across these sharks and their longevity, I was fascinated. There are so many interesting things about this creature, so let’s take a look!

Amazing Adaptations

Unlike most other sharks, Greenland Sharks like cold, deep water, and are usually found near the Arctic or Atlantic Oceans. Greenland Sharks have special adaptations that help them thrive, and allow them to survive near-freezing water temperatures and high water pressure.

For one, they’re big animals, and larger animals tend to have slower metabolisms and therefore age slower. Their slow metabolisms also mean they move almost lethargically. This gives them part of their scientific name, Somniosus microcephalus; “Somniosus” comes from “somnum”, the latin word for sleep! That’s why they’re also called sleeper sharks.

If they’re so slow, how do they catch prey so fast? Greenland Sharks are known to eat seals, fish, and other fast aquatic animals, but they can only reach a maximum of around 1.6 miles per hour (one of the slowest animals of their size!). They primarily catch food by ambushing prey while they’re asleep, and by targeting injured animals. Since there’s little to no light at the depths these sharks are found at, and they’re usually dark colors, they can sneak up and surprise other creatures. They also have a special method of actually “grabbing” their targets. They open their mouths fast, creating a suction force that draws water (and the animal) into their large mouths, allowing them to swallow some prey whole.

Image: The open mouth of a dead Greenland Shark, showing off the teeth; Audun Eriksen (CC BY-NC 4.0 via iNaturalist)

Another example of Greenland Sharks’ adaptations to their environment is the fact that they have specific chemical compounds in their bodies that help them in different ways. The two common ones are urea and TMAO (trimethylamine N-oxide). Since these sharks are constantly surrounded by saltwater at high pressure, lots of urea in their body helps the shark’s cells keep their shape. This is why they’re classified as osmoconformers: they have high concentrations of urea in their body to match high concentrations of salt in the outside water, keeping a balance. Also, both urea and TMAO help the shark be less dense, allowing it to float better.

Urea does also have some negative side effects: too much of it can destabilize enzymes within the shark, hurting them and keeping proteins in their body from functioning correctly. TMAO counteracts this, stabilizing proteins even when there’s a lot of urea. This process allows Greenland Sharks to survive without trouble in the Arctic Ocean.

While these chemicals are helpful to sharks, they’re absolutely not for humans. TMAO in particular is extremely toxic to mammals, and can lead to extreme sickness or death. People do eat them, though! These sharks are a delicacy in some places: Hákarl, cubes of fermented Greenland Shark meat, is the national dish of Iceland. Because of the TMAO and urea, the meat has to be dried for weeks or months, and fermented in a certain way so it becomes safe for human consumption.

Image: Hákarl (fermented Greenland Shark meat, cubed); Wikimedia user Holapaco77 (CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia)

Deep water usually doesn’t get much light, so these sharks adapted by also evolving other ways to “see”. They have an incredible sense of smell and rely heavily on it for navigation. They also have the ability to sense electric fields through special gel-filled pores all over their snout and face! This sixth sense lets them detect small movements and even heartbeats, allowing them to navigate both on a small scale (their immediate surroundings) and a large scale (Earth’s magnetic field).

In fact, their other senses are so well-developed that they don’t need sight at all. Many Greenland Sharks’ eyes become infected by a copepod called Ommatokoita elongata. This parasitic crustacean gets permanently attached to the corneas of the shark, injuring their eyes and sometimes rendering them completely blind (though the sharks don’t notice or care!). These creatures can sometimes have bioluminescence, making the shark look as if it has glowing eyes. It’s been theorized that, in the darkness of the water, this spot of light may help the shark attract prey.

Image: A Greenland Shark, eyes infected with *Ommatokoita elongata* parasites; Wikimedia user Hemming1952 (CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia)

Important interactions

Greenland Sharks have been around for a long time, and lots of different people have interacted with them in various ways. Because of their niche habitat range, accidental encounters are rare, and there haven’t been any recorded human attacks. These sharks aren’t aggressive (like most sharks, even though they get a bad reputation). Since they’ve been around for over a million years, different cultures have had different peaceful interactions with Greenland Sharks.

Sightings of these sharks may be behind the legends of the Loch Ness monster (although other creatures might contribute, too). There are also Inuit legends involving these sharks. Since they have such a high urea content, they smell like ammonia, or urine. One legend involves the sea goddess Sedna throwing a urine-soaked rag into the ocean, where it transformed into the first shark, a Greenland Shark. The nordic dish hákarl originally got so famous because when the meat isn’t fully fermented, it’s mostly non-toxic but has inebriating effects, which was thought to help people connect to and communicate with Sedna.

Image: A figurine of Sedna from the National Museum of Finland; Wikimedia user Sailko (CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia)

These sharks have had plenty of negative interactions with people, too. They used to be purposely hunted for the production of certain oils. This doesn’t happen as much anymore, but they are still a frequent bycatch species. This means that they’re often accidentally captured or killed in the process of trying to catch some other animal. Modern fishing methods make bycatch more and more common, and this results in overhunting of many fish species around the world. Trawls are one of the most problematic examples of this.

A trawl net is a large, basket-like net that’s weighted to drag along the sea floor. Boats pull the nets along the ground at high speeds, and any animal in the way gets scooped up and trapped. This is terrible for sea life; imagine if you were a little sea creature at the bottom of the ocean, and out of nowhere an almost-invisible net grabs and traps you along with everyone else nearby. Entire populations of animals get captured in these nets, and most of them end up getting thrown away! Bottom feeders, or species that spend their time on the ocean floor (like Greenland Sharks), are typically deemed undesirable for selling. The targeted fish species only end up being a tiny fraction of the total catch, and the rest often gets discarded.

Image: Model representation of a trawl fishing technique; Andreas Praefcke (CC0 via Wikimedia)

Not only is this fishing method inefficient and wasteful, the nets damage homes of ocean animals by breaking or smashing everything in their path. Annually, around 3,500 Greenland Sharks are caught and killed as bycatch. Fishing methods like these have resulted in a decline in Greenland Shark populations, as well as many other aquatic animals.

Image: A mountain of dead dogfish being emptied from a trawl net; Wikimedia user Citron (CC0 via Wikimedia)

Other factors relate to the well-being of Greenland Sharks, and global warming is a big one. Since these sharks love cold water, they usually stay around the Arctic circle. Global warming is making this water a little warmer than it used to be, and a lot of the sea ice is melting.

Greenland Sharks have extremely long lifespans, but they also have low fertility rates and long gestation periods (how long it takes a baby to develop). Greenland Sharks have gestation periods of around 8 to 18 years. This means that it takes them a long time to replace population members. If too many die at once, baby sharks might not be born fast enough to save the population.

All of these factors influence the rarity and vulnerability of these sharks.

The IUCN Red List is a list that keeps track of vulnerable or endangered species. In 2020, Greenland Sharks got reclassified from near threatened to vulnerable. Unfortunately, since they have such a slow recovery time, their status will probably continue to get worse. This is bad news for a very strong reason: Greenland Sharks are incredibly important to their ecosystems.

As apex predators, they eat pretty much everything, including fishes and seals. They’re able to do this by ambushing prey, as described above. This helps them keep those populations in check by controlling how many of their prey species there are. If Greenland Sharks went extinct today, those other species would multiply. They would quickly take over ecosystems, destabilizing them, interrupting food chains, and overall harming everyone. Greenland Sharks prevent this by acting as a neutralizing force on population sizes of other fish. These sharks are important for maintaining balance in their environments.

Image: A Greenland Shark caught as trawl bycatch; Claude Nozères (CC BY-NC 4.0 via iNaturalist)

Greenland Sharks are scavengers; they eat carrion and other dead matter. They can eat large carcasses of animals that fall to the bottom of the oceans (like whales; have you ever heard of a whalefall?). Greenland Sharks actually have very unique, specialized teeth to let them do this; their upper teeth are small, thin, and pointy. Their lower teeth are chunkier with complex shapes that point away from the top teeth. This lets them tear off large chunks of meat when they roll their jaw. Teeth like this are another incredible example of Greenland Sharks’ specialized evolution! Eating already-dead animals lets them get energy and nutrients from other sources, “recycling” it and putting it back into the ecosystem.

Overall, Greenland Sharks are very important to their environments, and their removal would have disastrous effects on surrounding sea life.

Image: A dead Greenland Shark; Claude Nozères (CC BY-NC 4.0 via iNaturalist)

To me, these weird, fascinating sharks are incredible. They have strange and unique adaptations that help them survive their extreme environments, and they’re important to those environments because of their interactions with other species. Because of the specificity of their Arctic circle deepwater habitat, they’re relatively poorly studied. There isn’t that much recorded information on them; we still have a lot of unanswered questions. After learning more about them, I’m personally interested in how they’re able to survive for centuries (some genetic research implies it’s related to transposons, or “jumping genes” that can move around the chromosome!).

And while I tried, there’s also a lot about these sharks I didn’t mention. You can read more about their genetics here, about their longevity here, and about the harms of overfishing and trawling here.

Anya Reddy is a high school student at Blue Valley North. She loves biology and biochemistry, as well as entomology, ecology, and environmental science in general. Some of Anya’s non-science passions include archery and all kinds of 2D and 3D art. She enjoys learning about all kinds of organisms and how they connect and interact with others in their environment; she hopes to use writing to help share fascinating details about them, helping others like the weird and interesting organisms she loves.

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Featured Creature: Siberian Taimen

What creature is nicknamed the “river wolf?”

The guide pulls back on the oars, straining with effort to stay in place against the current. The angler leans back in a similar manner, his rod bowed under pressure.

A fish erupts from the water, scales glimmering with the evening light.

Just as quickly as it broke the surface, it disappears from view, still engaged in its titanic struggle at the end of the line. After fifteen minutes of unpredictable splashes, tension, and shouts of excitement, I was introduced to the most charismatic creature I’ve ever met: the Siberian Taimen.

This particular Taimen was four feet of silvery power. We stood in awe as the bright red tail slipped through the angler’s hand, disappearing once more into a dark pool. Not to be held by another human for years, if ever again. I sighed with relief, thankful our good practice led to a healthy release.

I remember reflecting on how much needed to happen to reach this moment. The client had to take 3-4 flights to get across the world, followed by 8 hours crammed in a Jeep from the 20th century, navigating dirt roads.

They did this all for just the opportunity to catch a taimen — a creature notorious for being incredibly difficult to catch.

But that singular moment makes it all worthwhile.

The exact fish described above. Unfortunately, my hand was shaking so much that I couldn’t capture the vibrant red tail.
Cyrus Kiely

This was my first week on the job at Mongolia River Outfitters — a premier fly fishing outfitter and conservation organization. Throughout the rest of the season, I learned how this awe-inspiring creature holds its entire ecosystem in balance, a balance threatened by the fragility of the species.

Taimen are the largest Salmonids (the trout and salmon family) in the world. They can live up to 30 to 50 years, reach sizes greater than SIX FEET, and weigh more than 100 pounds! Ecologically speaking, they are slow growing, apex predators, feasting on trout, ducklings, and small mammals that find themselves at the mercy of the river.

The landscape of a wild taimen river.
Cyrus Kiely

Taimen epitomizes the term “keystone”.

They keep their river’s ecosystem in delicate balance, regulate prey populations, cycle nutrients, and occupy an indispensable niche.

By regulating prey populations, smaller fish species such as lenok or arctic grayling are unable to outcompete the rest and establish a hegemony within the river. In turn, these rivers remain rich in biodiversity!

In fact, thanks to the Taimen, these rivers grow even more nutrient rich and biodiverse. In parts of Russia, they have been known to regularly prey on adult Pacific salmon. These salmon (averaging around 20 lbs) run up freshwater rivers from the ocean, bringing the nutrients from the Pacific along with them. Thanks to the Taimen, these nutrients get passed from individual to individual, benefitting the entire ecosystem with their presence.

Taimen truly are facilitators of interconnectedness, maintaining population structures and promoting the flow of nutrients. While this importance often goes unnoticed and underappreciated, it’s only when they disappear that everyone sees just how integral these fish are.

When Taimen disappear from their historic waters, their absence can lead to a domino effect in the structure of the ecosystem.

Without the Taimen to keep them in check, prey populations such as lenok and grayling explode. In this exponential growth, the aquatic invertebrate (water bugs) populations they feed on plummet due to overpredation. Because of this, algae and plants are no longer kept in check by these aquatic invertebrates ,which feed on them.

So far, in this theoretical event, we have a lot of small fish, not too many bugs, and way too much algae in the river. But, over time, the situation will grow more dire. As the fish lose insects to feed on, they begin to experience massive die-offs. The insect populations vary wildly, as predator pressure shifts unpredictably, and algae blooms become a real issue. They suck up an incredible share of oxygen from the water, a vital element of a trout’s ideal habitat.

The simple absence of Taimen causes a cascade of domino effects, ending in low trout numbers and a less suitable environment due to lower oxygen levels. Luckily, this is the worst case scenario. Today, taimen continue to thrive in many protected areas, maintaining the delicate balance of these ecosystems. As conservationists, environmentalists, and people who really like cool creatures, it’s our job to investigate what threatens this delicate balance.

Poaching: A Threat to a Delicate Balance

If Taimen are so integral to the ecosystems they live in, don’t we understand that we need to protect them? Yes, but when an unexpected threat hits Taimen, it hits them hard.

Due to their large size, old age, and voracious appetite, Taimen have a very low population density within rivers. This fact means the death of a single mature Taimen is a significant ecological shift in population dynamics.

As humans, we have struggled to comprehend this fact. Individual deaths may seem insignificant when compared to the abundance of smaller fish, but for the Taimen, each loss represents decades of growth, reproduction, and ecological importance within an ecosystem.

Today, the threat of poaching looms over many of these protected fish with the very real issue of local extinction.

Over three months on the river, I witnessed countless poaching related incidents. I saw the head and carcass of what was a 20 year-old fish filleted and carelessly tossed away on the bank. Another time, a dead Taimen washed up on the shore with a barbed treble hook lodged down its throat, shredding its stomach and causing a slow and painful death.

Lenok
Book Talk, The Dawn Patrol Diaries, James Card

How much poaching and loss are we willing to put up with?

I hope for a future where I can relive that magical summer evening. I hope to one day lean back, straining with effort as I reel in, physically and spiritually connected to one of nature’s most remarkable creatures. I hope we have enough foresight to prevent such a loss, so the world can continue to marvel at the charisma of such an ancient and inspiring animal.

Cyrus Kiely is an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, studying Quantitative Social Science and Environmental Studies. He is an avid skier, hunter, and lifelong outdoorsman with a passion for biodiversity conservation. His experiences growing up in Montana, combined with environmentally focused opportunities abroad in Mongolia and Namibia ,have shaped his commitment to fighting environmental challenges. Particularly the importance of large landscape conservation in the face of rapid development.

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Mongolia Rivers, Conservation Work

Featured Creature: Yangtze River Dolphin

What river-dwelling goddess could navigate by sound alone, survived twenty million years of environmental change, yet disappeared within a few decades of human industrial expansion?

According to Chinese legend, the story of the baiji begins with a beautiful young girl who lived along the Yangtze River with her evil stepfather. One day he took her out by boat, with hopes to sell her at the local market. During this journey, he attempted to take advantage of the girl, and she dove into the welcoming arms of the Yangtze river to escape. Suddenly, a storm rose, capsizing the boat and drowning him. When the water calmed, a white dolphin appeared gliding across the current. The locals believed this to be the girl reborn as the baiji: Goddess of the Yangtze and guardian of fishermen.

For centuries, the baiji was more than a dolphin. She was deeply embedded in Chinese mythology, and fishermen considered encountering the baiji a good sign. The baiji embodied the river itself and served as a reminder of the river’s generosity, as well as the dangers. Unfortunately, in 2006, experts declared the baiji as functionally extinct.

The baiji fell victim to the one force she could not outswim: human industrial expansion.

A Living Fossil

The baiji, Lipotes vexillifer, was one of only five freshwater dolphin species in the world. Nicknamed the “living fossil,” the baiji was a subspecies that diverged about sixteen million years ago from two South American species: La Plata dolphins and the Amazonian river dolphin. The baiji was the only member of the mammal family called Lipotidae since they carried unique traits such as a single stomach rather than two and small eyes adapted to the Yangtze’s murky waters.

The Yangtze: Lifeline and Powerhouse

Stretching over 6,300 kilometres from the Tibetan Plateau to the East China Sea, the Yangtze is Asia’s longest river and the third longest in the world. Today it supports mega dams like the Three Gorges, shipping routes carrying millions of tonnes of cargo, and over 400 million people living in cities along its banks. Alongside this, it generates about $2 trillion annually, nearly 40% of China’s GDP and sustains hundreds of fish, mammal, amphibian and reptile species.
The baiji was perfectly adapted to this environment, with a long, narrow beak and echolocation ideal for shifting through silt and mud in search of carp and catfish. She often fed near sandbars, where nutrient-rich deposits attracted fish and fishermen alike. But even these adaptations could not save her against escalating industrialisation.

Sadly this is not the only extinction story from the Yangtze. The Chinese paddlefish, and last member of its genus Psephurus, was last seen in 2003. This species survived for at least two hundred million years, and was killed, with overfishing and dam construction to blame.

When Growth Outpaces Nature

Before China’s industrialisation in the 1950s, there were an estimated six thousand baiji living in the Yangtze’s thriving ecosystem. By the 1980s, only a few hundred remained, and by 1997, fewer than twenty were left. The baiji’s collapse reflects what can happen when economic growth is expedited at the expense of ecologies, both human and non-human.

China’s proto-industrialisation began in 1978, and while the baiji were initially hunted for meat, oil and leather, the greater threats came later from dredging, untreated waste, and the Three Gorges, which permanently altered the Yangtze’s flow. Studies suggest that it was not simply the changes to the river flow, but the relentless pursuit of artisanal fishing that posed a major threat to the baiji. Many small-scale fishers, trapped in poverty, ignored restrictions and turned to destructive methods such as electric shocks and dynamite. In 1981, extreme poverty affected 70% of urban and 97% of rural Chinese populations, thus leaving fishermen little choice but to prioritise survival over sustainability.

The baiji were not deliberately hunted to extinction but perished as bycatch, a concept economics call a ‘negative externality’ which reflects the hidden costs of rapid industrialisation. These costs include habitat destruction, pollution, and biodiversity loss; all of which were not factored into economic calculations that drove further development along the Yangtze. Each of these costs matter individually, yet when collectively overlooked they do not only lead to environmental damage, but also result in missed opportunities for intervention that could have prevented irreversible loss.

Missed Chances

The Yangtze can be described as a social-ecological system due to its interconnected importance for humanity and nature alike, thus making its management complex and politically charged. As baiji populations declined alongside other species, Chinese lawmakers implemented protective legislation in the late 1970s banning harmful fishing practices and creating reserves along the main channel. The issue of how to save the baiji was debated internationally, including in two IUCN reports, but the existence of differing opinions led to minimal financial or logistical support ever materialising. In-situ reserves (on-site conservation efforts) proved inadequate, and the later ex-situ (controlled preservation of a species outside of its natural habitat) programme at the Tian’e-Zhou oxbow lake came too late. In 1995, one baiji was successfully transferred, but perished due to summer flooding and thus the initiative collapsed.

Arguably, only a total fishing ban could have offered real protection, however given that the majority of Chinese households lived in extreme poverty in the 1980s, this would have been economically and socially unfeasible. Families depended on the river for survival, and there would have been a need to provide alternative income sources and livelihoods for river communities. It seems almost impossible for a developing nation to shoulder this economic burden. In 2021, China finally implemented a 10-year fishing ban. By 2020, studies show that the share of people living in extreme poverty in both urban and rural areas was below 1%, and now as the world’s second-largest economy China could absorb the financial cost of such policies.

Sadly, it was too late for the baiji. This case is illustrated by the ‘environmental Kuznets curve’ (EKC), shown below, which describes the relationship between economic development and environmental degradation. EKC suggests that environmental degradation initially increases with economic growth in poorer countries, then decreases after reaching a certain income level. The idea is that countries often cannot afford environmental protection until a certain level of development is reached. But, by that point, often too much damage has been done to the most vulnerable species.

Beyond the Tragedy of the Commons

What happens when everyone has access to an abundant public resource? American ecologist and microbiologist, Garrett Hardin, considered this very question with his concept of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons.’ He describes a situation in which individuals with access to a finite public resource, such as the Yangtze, will all act in their own interest and thus overuse it, even possibly destroying the resource altogether. This concept links well to artisanal fishing. The regulation of common resources is a widely discussed concept, as it focuses on creating incentives to change individuals’ behaviour and use of shared resources, rather than relying on government ownership and direct control.

Yet Hardin’s model captures only one part of the baiji’s story. As mentioned earlier, much of the destructive fishing stemmed from economic desperation with families choosing to provide for themselves no matter the cost. Even those aware of the damage often continued because others did, a dynamic known as conditional cooperations. This reflects a wider reality that many of the ‘tragedies of the commoners’ are at heart, tragedies of inadequate social policy, where poverty traps leave communities without viable alternatives.

For the case of the baiji, the Yangtze required not only stronger top-down regulation, but also community-level institutions that Noble-prize winner Elinor Ostrom described within the concept of ‘polycentric governance.’ This governance system requires multiple, independent decision-making centres to interact and coordinate, rather than relying on a single, centralised authority. In the context of the Yangtze, this method requires not just regulation from Beijing, but also local fishing cooperatives collaborating and collectively developing economic incentives for conservation and alternative livelihoods for river-dependent communities. Economists now promote a scheme called ‘Payments for Ecosystem Services’, where communities are paid to conserve biodiversity. Had such frameworks been in place in the 1980s, fishermen might have been given both the means and the incentives to protect the baiji. Unfortunately, the absence of these mechanisms left short-term survival and extraction as the only rational choice.

Moving forward

All six river dolphin species in the world are classified as Endangered or Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. In South Asia, the Ganges River Dolphin, scientifically known as Platanista gangetica, is officially endangered. Like the baiji, the Ganges River Dolphin holds significant cultural importance in Hinduism, but is struggling under mounting pressures from industrial runoff and accidental bycatch. Meanwhile, in South America, the Amazon River Dolphin faces mercury contamination from gold mining, entanglement in fishing gear, and deliberate killing for use as bait. It seems that the baiji’s extinction is not an isolated tragedy, but part of a global pattern for other river dolphins.

Despite these challenges, there are signs of hope for river dolphins around the world. Studies show that China’s 10-year ban has shown promising results for biodiversity recovery. Fish eggs and fry counts in 2023 from the Jianli monitoring section reached six billion in total which is 4.4 times higher than those in 2020. However, scholars debate whether the ban alone is enough to reverse the situation, particularly since overfishing contributed only 30% of the total fish decline, with human activities contributing more heavily. Globally, there is a clear increase in integrating ecological resilience into economic frameworks. For instance, Costa Rica’s Payments for Environmental Services Program (PES) is the first scheme of its type in the region. This program is designed to promote forest ecosystem conservation and combat land degradation In which landowners receive payments for adopting sustainable land-use and forest-management techniques. Additionally, WWF’s River Dolphin Initiative acts as a global knowledge hub of the best practices for river dolphin conservation and management.

The baiji’s extinction illustrates the cost of delayed regulation, undervalued ecosystem services tied together with short-term economic thinking. Extinction is final, and the baiji’s story reminds us that we must embed biodiversity into policy before it is too late.

Once revered as the Goddess of the Yangtze and guardian of fishermen, the baiji now endures as a warning, that treating rivers as merely resources erodes not just ecosystems but the very myths that bound us to them.

Marija Trendafiloska is a final-year BSc (Hons) Economics and Management student at King’s College London with a keen interest in environmental economics and climate policy. Her research experience has focused on turning complex economic concepts into clear, actionable policy insights, something she is motivated to deepen through postgraduate study. As the Co-President of KCL Green Finance Society, she also explores the intersection of sustainable finance, policy, and real-world impact. Beyond her academic commitments, Marija is passionate about reading, painting, and playing the piano, alongside being an avid gym-goer.

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Featured Creature: Common Loon

What species is an expert diver and well known for its haunting wail?

On the fringes of my mind, there lies a lake. I can’t recall what it looks like, now just a fragmented memory, but I know it’s there. I imagine that it’s shimmering, with small ripples that echo and a deep blue that beckons, brightened by the sun. I imagine how time passed through this landscape, with the basin painstakingly carved out by a glacier, then pooling with the tears of retreat and the cry of melting snow. I imagine the lake resting, a wooded mountain towering above. Here, I am at peace.

A bird emerges from the water. It peers down, neck craned, to gaze into the depths of the lake. In a flash, the creature dives. Beneath the surface, the bird’s black and white feathers glimmer, and its stark, red eyes skillfully search the darkness. Under the bird’s sleek exterior lies a solid bone structure, allowing it to swim deeper and deeper, reaching depths of 250 ft as it races through the dim waters. The water is clear, allowing the bird to spot a small fish swimming, just a few feet below. Five minutes pass before the bird re-emerges, a small fish tucked in its beak.

The bird may be diving for fish in a faint memory, but it continues to swim at the forefront of my mind. Meet the common loon.

Mirror Lake, Thornton, NH
(Photo credit: Adrianna Drindak)

Growing up, my grandparents spent one week of each summer along Blue Mountain Lake, nestled within the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. I remember going up to visit with my parents. We would sit outside and chat for hours, dipping in the lake to cool down and cooking meals for our small, close family. The details of these visits are now hazy. After all this time, it’s not the smell of the lake or a stunning evening sunset that lingers. It’s a sound that we cherished, a beckoning that would dance in our ears, a noise that both chilled and calmed my spirit – the call of the loon.

Even now, the loon calls to me. The common loon has four distinctive calls, with its voice most likely to be heard from May to June.

The hoot is a terse call that often allows for family units to converse over small distances.

A male loon might produce a yodel when defending its territory from nearby males, predators, and other threats.

The tremolo is a sound often released over water, as the loon flies over lakes inhabited by other loons.

But, of all the loon’s calls, there is one that settles in your bones, demanding you to listen – the wail. Often a call into the night, the wail serves as a way for mated loons to communicate over the expanse of a large lake. The sound haunts you. It is a cry that mourns, a cry that beckons, a cry that celebrates all that is living and has lived.

…

It is a few days after my grandmother’s funeral.

I hold a small, carved loon in the palm of my hand. This wooden loon is just one of the many objects remaining in my grandparents’ empty home. I hold the loon, and I’m pulled back to Blue Mountain Lake. Even if years separate me from the memory, I can still imagine the gentle whispers of my grandparents as a loon calls.

Now I hear the loon and I feel its own mourning. There is a raw grief, as watersheds are polluted and habitats are destroyed, but there is also the need to communicate and seek partnership. A yearning for what is lost and what is loved. If grief is an expression of love, maybe the loon’s call is one for the world, a call to the wild, to the marshlands and lakes, to the ecosystems that once were, to the future and what our world can be.

Our planet has so much to share, and it’s up to us to listen.

Adrianna Drindak is a rising senior at Dartmouth College studying Environmental Earth Sciences and Environmental Studies. Prior to interning at Bio4Climate, she worked as a field technician studying ovenbirds at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest and as a laboratory technician in an ecology lab. Adrianna is currently an undergraduate researcher in the Quaternary Geology Lab at Dartmouth, with a specific focus on documenting climate history and past glaciations in the northeast region of the United States. This summer, Adrianna is looking forward to applying her science background to an outreach role, and is excited to brainstorm ways to make science more accessible. In her free time, Adrianna enjoys reading, baking gluten free treats, hiking, and backpacking.

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Common Loon – Life History

Spirit of the North: the Common Loon, Marie Read

Featured Creature: Black Capped Petrel

Which charismatic seabird is famed for its aerial agility and the illusion that it can walk on water?

Image credit: Patrick Coin (cc-by-sa-2.5)

Alone on a rolling sea, I scan the waves for life and find comfort in the company of seabirds. While gannets and shearwaters soar, it is the little storm petrels that make me smile the widest. They are like ocean butterflies, fluttering the valleys between waves to pluck at invisible animals in the neuston. Because so much of the world is covered by the ocean, the most numerous bird species is the Wilson’s petrel, found in all oceans. In New England and Newfoundland, Leach’s petrel nests on rocky outlying islands. Storm petrels can be distinguished by their foot color, shape of the “usual” white rump patch, and tail shape. I cannot tell them apart, and that does not lessen my enjoyment of being with individual petrels.

The black-capped petrel feeds on squid, tiny fish, and zooplankton. Named “petrel” after the fisherman Saint Peter because the spritely birds stirring the sea surface with their feet for food looked like they were walking on water.

These elegant little birds, dressed in black and white feathers, spend most of their lives in the Caribbean Sea, returning to land in fading light to nest in burrows among the mountains of Hispaniola and Dominica.

Sadly, the black-capped petrel is currently threatened due to human activity.

The mountains where they nest are being cleared for agriculture and development, which is destroying the petrel’s nesting habitat, making it increasingly difficult for the population to survive.

During their nesting period, black-capped petrel chicks fall prey to human-introduced species such as rats and mongooses. These invasive predators have had a devastating impact on the petrel population.

From mountains to the sea, our environment is all connected. Our actions high on land are harming petrels and marine life below.

The good news is that local actions, when taken together, have a meaningful impact. We have passed a tipping point where vegetation is being removed, and soils are being replaced by hardscapes and heat islands. Although annual rainfall has not increased, water that once seeped into the ground now runs off as stormwater, causing flooding. When water cascades over hot hardscapes, it absorbs and transports heat to the ocean, along with harmful pollutants that reduce the productivity of phytoplankton and lower the nutritional value of copepods, a petrel’s favored food.

To better understand what’s happening, try warming a cup of water with a hair dryer. You’ll find that the only way to heat water above the air temperature is to place it on a hot plate. The solution to the petrel’s plight is to remove the hot plates, to cover heat islands with vegetation and soil, such as potted plants and raised gardens. Enabling properties to retain rainwater that falls on them will allow plants and rivers to survive dry periods, reduce municipal stormwater management costs, and alleviate suffering for people living in low-lying areas.

Our collective action to green our neighborhoods can turn the tide on the climate crisis and save charming little birds like the black-capped petrel from extinction.

I like to take the power of the wind to propel a sailboat into the wind. For the sails to fill and drive the boat forward, the wind must be about 40 degrees to the side. Too close to the wind, the sails lose the wind, luff, and the boat stalls. Sail for a while on a tack with the wind coming over one rail and then turn the boat before the wind, to fill the sails on the other side. Progress is a zigzag. Sometimes, when going through the narrows, no matter how expertly the boat is brought about and sails sheeted in, the windward mark cannot be fetched due to wind, tide, and weather.

I take the same approach to advancing environmental legislation. The course is set, sails trimmed, and you go as far as you can, against the wind, before conditions change and obstacles appear. Then, quickly shift the effort onto a new tack. Sometimes, despite everyone’s best efforts, the legislation does not pass. Like going for an afternoon sail, win or lose, you still go sailing the next day because it’s not the destination; it’s the thrill of the voyage with a capable crew pulling together when the helmsman cries:

“Ready about, hard to lee,” fill the sails with wind and move forward once more.

Rob Moir, PhD, is the Executive Director of the Ocean River Institute. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with a population density of 19,000 people per square mile, making it the most densely populated city in the Northeast. He enjoys sailing from Boston Harbor to see the Harbor Islands give way to open ocean with no land on the horizon, humbled by our smallness and the vast power of the ocean. For more information, please visit www.oceanriver.org. Rob’s Clam Chowdah Narratives are on Substack https://robmoir469011.substack.com/

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Ocean River Institute

Featured Creature: Right Whale

What species fights climate change, creates “surface-active groups,” and shares a home with the Maine lobster?

North Atlantic Right Whale
Image credit: NOAA

That would be the North Atlantic right whale. Hardly an unsung species, this large marine mammal is one of the most critically endangered in the world, with approximately 372 members remaining. Unfortunately for the whale, its story is inexplicably intertwined with that of North Atlantic fishermen, in particular the Maine lobster industry. On the surface, this is a battle between said industry and whale conservationists. But must this story be a zero-sum game?

A Deep Dive

As one of the largest species on the planet, the North Atlantic right whale can grow up to 14-17 meters long and weigh up to 154,000 pounds. During my research, I was surprised to find that there are three subspecies of right whale, which appear very similar but have lived in genetic isolation for millions of years. In addition to the North Atlantic right whale, there are the North Pacific and South Atlantic right whale species. All three are listed as “Endangered” under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA), a designation that triggers various types of protective legislation. While the North Pacific right whale fares about as well as the North Atlantic under these conditions, estimates of the South Pacific right whale population are as high as 4,000.

Despite their formidable size, the right whale is a gentle giant. They are incredibly slow swimmers, and can reach swimming speeds of

They also use their baleen to filter their food and have diets mainly consisting of copepods. This diet is also part of the whale’s role as a “nutrient cycler” in the ocean ecosystem: by feeding and defecating, the whales provide crucial nutrients to phytoplankton, which helps sequester atmospheric carbon– hence their role as a climate change fighter!

Right whales are also incredibly social creatures and are often seen vocally interacting on the surface of the ocean in both mating and social settings. These interactions are called surface active groups (SAG), and make for great whale watching. Analogously, the speed, size, and behavior of the right whale led to its persecution by whale hunters for centuries. These actors even named the species, as they were the so-called “right whale” to hunt. The slow-moving, blubber-rich, and surface-active North Atlantic right whale was thus hunted to near extinction several times in history. The first concrete step toward whale protection at an international level occurred in 1946, when the United Nations established the still-active International Whaling Commission.

The North Atlantic right whale commonly resides on the east coast of the United States and the west coast of Europe. In the states, the whale is known for feeding in the north (especially by Cape Cod and the Gulf of Maine) and calving in the south near Georgia. Afterward, the mothers herd their calves north so they can benefit from the plentiful copepods off the coast of Massachusetts.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that right whales are entirely bound to such human-mapped migration patterns. This was pointed out to me by Rob Moir of the Ocean River Institute (ORI), who showed me examples of whales breaking these patterns. Notably, the ORI reported an instance of two female right whales, Curlew and Koala, migrating as far south as the Bahamas and as far north as Prince Edward Island.

This outlier displaying whale intelligence reminded me of a larger point that my professors often make, that discourse around environmental protection sometimes falls into the trap of framing such actions as benevolence on our part. In reality, we share this planet with complex, intelligent species and natural processes, and it is in our best interest to preserve them. I believe wholeheartedly in the importance of functional natural systems. As someone born and raised in Maine, my public school education was full of cautionary tales of how anthropogenic changes can destabilize human lives.

In Maine, we have a long history of learning from unsustainable economic systems the hard way.For better or worse, many livelihoods here are tied to the functionality of our natural resources. In the early 1990s, Atlantic cod stocks virtually collapsed after decades of overfishing. Similar results in the shrimp, halibut, and numerous other populations led many to move into the lobstering industry. Beyond massive job losses, these shifts were particularly painful in a state whose cultural identity rests on continuing these ways of

Lobster vs. Whale

The Maine lobster industry faces numerous threats to its well-being, including legal gains in right whale conservation. In many ways, the continuance of the Maine lobster industry is a bit of a miracle: it is a vintage way of life, an occupation only made possible by stringent and consensual regulations designed to limit overfishing. The catching of egg-laying female lobsters is prohibited, and limits on the minimum size allowed for a harvested lobster are routinely updated. Hauling times are also limited during the summer months, and hauling is prohibited after sunset from November through May. These efforts become more important in the face of lobster northward migration to the Bay of Fundy. The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world’s oceans, creating increasingly less suitable lobster conditions.

When you look at the numbers, the importance of the lobster industry in Maine becomes clear. Estimates from a 2019 Middlebury College study report that the seafood sector provided as many as 33,000 Maine jobs and $3.2 billion in revenue in Maine annually. Although these numbers have since decreased, they stand to represent the strong presence of moneyed interests in the fight against right whale conservation, but also that the livelihoods of ordinary Mainers and New Englanders are at stake. Under these pressures, lawmakers are undoubtedly tempted to side with economic progress over conservation, which begs the question…

What Rights Do Whales Have?

In 1973, the United States government passed the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which holds the federal government responsible for the conservation of species classified as threatened or endangered by the US agencies. In article (a)(1)of Section II, the ESA asserts that species loss is a “consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation.” Thus, the framers of this document intended this law to empower the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and successful plaintiffs to defend endangered animals against economic interests.

But what, exactly, is the monetary value of a given species on this planet? The 1978 court case Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) v. Hill, which was the Supreme Court’s first exercise in interpreting the ESA, explored this question. The plaintiff was second-year Tennessee University Law student Hiram Hill, who sued the TVA to halt the construction of the Tellico Dam. The dam was set to bring immense economic benefits to the area, but would also render the snail darter, a small, endangered fish residing in the ESA-designated critical habitat of the Tennessee River, extinct.

Tellico Dam, mid-construction.
Courtesy Tennessee Valley Authority

Initially, the courts sided with the TVA. The District Court claimed that protecting the snail darter would create “an unreasonable result,” essentially, that the existence of the snail darter was not worth the price of halting the dam’s construction. Unfortunately for the TVA, such an exemption is not provided for in the ESA. SCOTUS saw this and reversed earlier rulings, siding with Hill. This ruling was not obeyed by Congress, however. A few years later, a small amendment authorizing the TVA to complete the Tellico Dam was thrown into an unrelated bill, which became law. This was illegal and violated SCOTUS’s authority.

At this point, you may be asking what a fifty-year-old court case about a freshwater fish (which did not go extinct, by the way) has to do with the right whale. The answer is quite a bit. In court, the snail darter faced off with the Tellico Dam for the right to exist, with the former providing no major economic benefit and the latter with grand claims that it would. In the end, the fight was not defined by this metric- instead, the highest court in the United States ruled that all species have a right to exist that is monetarily immeasurable.

North Atlantic Right Whale and Fishing Line
Source: NOAA

The Blame Game

The necessary solutions for right whale survival will be disruptive. Organizations such as Oceana name the two biggest threats to right whales as vessel strikes and entanglements with ropes used in fishing equipment (despite decades-old Maine laws mandating weak links and sinking lines to limit whale entanglements). Regarding the latter, the most productive lobster season in Maine and Massachusetts coincides with the right whale’s food-motivated pilgrimage to the same waters. NOAA first officially connected the lobster industry to right whale deaths in 1996 and recommended seasonal prohibitions on fishing.

In 2017, NOAA recorded an “Unusual Mortality Event” where 17 right whales died, many due to fishing gear entanglements. This event spurred many of the modern “whale versus lobster” legal battles and debates we see today. In 2022, U.S. representatives in Congress secured a six-year pause on legislating the lobstering industry in the way of whale conservation, citing a history of sustainable practices in the industry. As a compromise, the bill featured forensic gear-marking requirements and authorized funding for whale-safe ropeless traps. These trap technologies today remain unreliable, despite extra funding.

The Right Way Forward

What elements define a sustainable policy? In this case, the answer isn’t black and white: it’s not pro-whale or pro-lobster industry. On one hand, the ESA asserts that the North Atlantic right whale has the right to live. On the other hand, the hardships that the lobster industry currently faces are not the result of poor choices made by the industry itself. Climate change is the fault of larger societal processes and decisions, and the lobster fishermen of Maine have long been careful to maintain the size of the local lobster population. As for sustainability in the way of right whales, ropeless traps aren’t currently reliable enough for commercial use: fortunately, the industry has until 2028 to make them so.

In the meantime, whale conservationists see other solutions to protect the North Atlantic right whale populations. For example, the Ocean River Institute advocates for a designated right whale sanctuary off the coast of Massachusetts. This area, which is already a desirable feeding area for right whales, would be administered by a diverse advisory council of interested parties, including scientists and representatives of the fishing industry. If the area in question were to become designated under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, fishing of any kind would include restrictions on commercial fishing and types of gear.

Proposed Right Whale National Marine Sanctuary
Ocean River Institute

Furthermore, the ORI sees the planting of Miyawaki forests in Massachusetts coastal towns as a tool to improve the lives of right whales. Beyond causes of mortality, whales suffer when polluted stormwater enters their habitat. This process can lead them to ingest pollutants that cause illness and infections. Additionally, contaminated stormwater can cause algae blooms and deplete the nutritional quality and availability of copepods. One way to limit stormwater runoff into the ocean is to create land conditions where water can be absorbed. Miyawaki forests are excellent at this task: their loose soil and dense vegetation (which is meant to mimic an old-growth forest for rapid plant growth) is perfectly suited to absorb large amounts of water. This could improve conditions for right whales off the coast of Massachusetts and beyond.

As a self proclaimed “policy person,” the lack of legislative progress on climate and conservation issues is incredibly frustrating. I also believe that the government owes a fair solution to the lobster industry. Delivering justice in this situation would therefore be a complex process- fortunately, we can initiate and foster change at an individual level.

**Special thanks to Rob Moir (Ocean River Institute) and Taylor Mann (Oceana) for providing information for this piece!

Alexa Hankins is a student at Boston University, where she is pursuing a degree in International Relations with a concentration in environment and development policy. She discovered Bio4Climate through her research to develop a Miyawaki forest bike tour in greater Boston. Alexa is passionate about accessible climate education, environmental justice, and climate resilience initiatives. In her free time, she likes to read, develop her skills with houseplants, and explore the Boston area!

Dig Deeper

Featured Creature: Penguins

What creature is able to control blood flow to their extremities, has eyes adapted for underwater vision, and spends 75% of its life at sea?

Adélie penguins, *Pygoscelis adeliae*
Image Credit: Nidhin Cyril Joseph via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC)

Now that I’ve been writing for Biodiversity for a Livable Climate for a while, I’ve received several requests from friends and family for creatures to feature. This piece is the result of a request from my close friend’s two children, who, after listening to their parents read my feature on sloths, emphatically asked if I could write about penguins next.

Who am I to deny such an impassioned request?

While many penguins live in more temperate climates, today we’re putting the spotlight on the species that live in Antarctica and its surrounding islands.

When people share their ideas with me, it always gives me inspiration and prompts me to ask myself:

“What does this creature have to teach me about its life on Earth?” If you’re a penguin, the answer is, “quite a lot!”

Meet Our Flightless Friends

Chinstrap penguin, *Pygoscelis antarcticus*
Image Credit: Greg Lasley via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC)

If you play charades and act out the word “penguin,” you will probably start waddling, right? While the tendency to teeter back and forth on land is one of penguins’ most widely known (and adorable) characteristics, there is a lot more to them than that. Their countershaded plumage, flippers, and underwater vision are all features that make life as a penguin possible – and unique. But before we get to that, let me introduce you to our flightless friends.

Out of the 18 species of penguins, only eight of them live in the Antarctic. Out of those eight, only two species, Emperor and Adélie penguins, live exclusively on the ice shelves of the Antarctic continent. The rest of these cold climate birds – Macaroni, Gentoo, Chinstrap, Southern and Northern Rockhopper, and King penguins – live on the Antarctic Peninsula and surrounding sub-Antarctic islands.

In addition to their typical black and white feathers, many have distinctive features like red-orange beaks, or pale pink feet. Red eyes and yellow crests identify species like Macaroni penguins, and King and Emperor penguins can be recognized by the orange and yellow plumage on their chests and cheeks.

Here’s something you might not know: one in every 50,000 penguins are born with brown, cream-colored feathers rather than with black plumage. This washed-out look is called isabelline. While it’s not the same as albinism (which is defined by a complete lack of pigmentation) isabellinism is the partial loss of pigment.

Isabelline King penguin, *Aptenodytes patagonicus*
Image Credit: Sebastian Traclet via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC)

The Birds that Swim

Penguins are highly specialized for life in ocean water, and have many adaptations that suit their lifestyle in their environment. These beautiful birds have streamlined bodies that are equipped with a well-developed rib cage, wings that have evolved into flippers with shorter and stouter bones, and a pronounced keel, or breastbone, which provides an anchor for the pectoral muscles that move the flippers. Penguins might not be able to fly in the air, but they propel themselves with incredible agility into “flight” underwater with their flippers. In the water, Gentoo penguins (pictured below) are the fastest of all penguins, and of all swimming birds. While searching for food or escaping predators, they reach speeds up to 36 km (22 miles) per hour.

Their eyes, which are their primary means of locating evasive prey and avoiding predators and fishing nets, are adapted for underwater vision. And these aren’t the only traits that make penguins incredibly well-fit for aquatic life. Their short feathers, which minimize friction and turbulence as they swim, are denser than most other birds, with up to 100 feathers per square inch in some species, such as the Emperor penguin. This close spacing helps keep penguins warm, preserving a layer of air under their plumage that not only insulates them from the cold water, but also provides them with buoyancy.

Gentoo penguins, *Pygoscelis papua*
Image Credit: Laura Babahekian via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC)

Penguins also conserve heat in other ways. They possess this remarkable vascular countercurrent heat exchanger called a humeral arterial plexus – a system of heat exchange between opposing flows of blood. This allows cold blood to absorb heat from outflowing blood that has already been warmed, limiting heat loss in their flippers and feet, ultimately helping these small animals survive in such cold.

What Else Do Penguins Have to Teach Us?

We already know that most penguins have darker feathers on their backs and wings, and lighter-colored feathers on their bellies, but why? Called countershading, it’s actually a form of camouflage. For predators like orcas, it is difficult to look up from below and distinguish the white belly of a penguin from the water’s surface and sky above it. Similarly, from above, the bird’s dark back blends into the darker ocean depths. It’s speculated that birds with extreme plumage irregularity, like isabelline penguins that don’t have the advantage of camouflage, have a decreased life expectancy as a result of increased predation. However, research shows that isabelline individuals have survived for many years.

Young Gentoo penguin, *Pygoscelis papua*
Image Credit: Hugo Hulsberg via iNaturalist (CC0)

While most penguins share incubation duties (one parent broods while the other forages at sea, switching when the other returns) species like the Emperor and King penguins have unique strategies where the males take on greater, or even sole, responsibility. But, the parents’ warm bodies are not the only thing protecting their babies: the eggs of cold-climate penguins are well-adapted to their adverse nesting environment too, with thick shells that reduce the chick’s dehydration and the risk of breakage. Once a clutch hatches and the parents go out to hunt, on their way back to their colony, some penguins use the sun as a directional aid while others rely on landmarks or even the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate, like a built-in gps. Once safely on land, parents use unique vocal calls to locate and reunite with their baby.

Did you know that even though a group of penguins is called a colony, they can also be called a “waddle” on land, and a “raft” in the water? Still, penguins don’t waddle all the time. Besides their awkward and amusing side to side rock, penguins also jump with both feet together to move more quickly across steep or rocky terrain. Can you guess what the Southern and Northern Rockhopper penguins were named for? If penguins want to conserve energy while moving quickly, they’ll do something called tobogganing, sliding on their bellies across the snow while using their feet to propel and steer themselves.

Northern Rockhopper penguin, *Eudyptes moseleyi*
Image Credit: whale_nerd via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC)

What is the Penguin’s Role in its Ecosystem?

Regardless of which ecosystem a creature calls home, Earth’s organisms always have a more significant role in their environment than we first realize. Penguins are an important part of land and ocean ecosystems. Adult penguins are prey for sharks, orcas, and leopard seals, and penguin eggs/chicks serve to sustain other land predators like pumas, mongooses, and many seabirds like skuas, petrels, and sheathbills. Our aquatic fliers use their powerful jaws and spiny tongues to grip their quarry, eating krill, small fish, crabs, and squid, and getting nutrients from the rich, well-oxygenated waters of their ecosystem. Penguins then in turn fertilize the landscape with the nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic carbon from their ocean foraging.

Penguins also play a key role in their colony’s survival. They are incredibly social creatures, and as a result of the extreme Antarctic conditions they live in, huddle together to stay warm during violent winter storms, even rotating so each penguin gets a turn at the center of the heat pack. Many penguin species form long-term pair bonds, fostering better collaboration, sharing of responsibilities, and improving the success of breeding over time. But, some have high divorce rates, switching mates in different breeding seasons.

Emperor penguins, *Aptenodytes forsteri*
Image Credit: Greg Lasley via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC)

Threats

Most penguin specie populations are declining, with nine out of the 18 species classified as endangered or vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.

While the Antarctic Treaty has provided some legal protections for penguins, these birds are still at risk. You might have already guessed one of the reasons why: climate change. The rapid increase in temperature around the globe is altering oceanic conditions and melting sea ice, threatening penguins’ food supply, breeding grounds, and the delicate natural infrastructure of water and ice that sustains their way of life. In fact, we’ve recorded a correlation between record low sea ice in 2022 and the first-ever known large-scale breeding failure of Emperor penguins, an episode in which few (or nearly none at all) chicks are born.

Penguins are also at risk from pollution, caused by the usual suspects: littering and ecological disasters like oil spills. Development projects threaten nesting sites, and unsustainable and irresponsible fishing practices increase competition for available food in the sea.

And just last year, H5N1, so-called “bird flu,” was detected in the Antarctic region. Due to their dense breeding practice, the looming threat to penguin colonies is significant if the virus continues to spread around the region and continent.

Life on Earth

Some of these risks are more dangerous or difficult to combat than others, but doing our part to help protect penguins is not a hopeless cause. We can support marine protected areas that provide refuge for vulnerable species like penguins and conservation organizations that focus on preserving penguin populations and their habitats. We can spread awareness about the threats they face, advocate for the nature-based solutions that keep the Antarctic cool, and do our part to keep our oceans clean.

I’ve come to understand that these penguins that dwell in some of the coldest places on Earth are some of most resilient animal species on Earth. Despite the challenges their environment throws at them, they are strong and patient, and work together to survive and thrive.

Now, join me if you will in taking a deep, collective breath before I present this to some tough critics, my friend’s children. 🙂

Abigail Gipson is an environmental advocate with a bachelor’s degree in humanitarian studies from Fordham University. Working to protect the natural world and its inhabitants, Abigail is specifically interested in environmental protection, ecosystem-based adaptation, and the intersection of climate change with human rights and animal welfare. She loves autumn, reading, and gardening.

Sources and Further Reading

Featured Creature: Seahorse

What animal swims upright and is one of the few where males carry the pregnancy?

The seahorse (Hippocampus)!

West Australian Seahorse, *Hippocampus subelongatus*
Image Credit: J. Martin Crossley via iNaturalist

Introducing Our Spiny Friends

In celebration of my niece’s first birthday, my family and I visited the The New England Aquarium in Boston. As I watched her stare in awe through the glass, taking in all the colors and shapes of various plants and animals, I couldn’t help but tap into my own wonder. Together we brushed the smooth backs of Cownose rays, took in the loud calls of the African penguins, and spent quite a bit of time trying to find the seahorses in their habitats. Eventually we did find them, at the bottom, with their tails curled around bits of seagrass. Now, I already knew a couple details about seahorses: that they were named that way because of their equine appearance, and that they swam vertically. But, crouching there next to my niece, who was looking at them in such curiosity (and confusion), I began to feel…the same way. Why do they curl their tails around plants? Are they tired? How exactly do they eat if they don’t swim around? So when I got home that day I did what any curious person in the 21st century would do, I took to the internet and started learning more about them.

The Small Horses of the Sea

With a long-snouted head and a flexible, well-defined neck reminiscent of that of a horse, the seahorse is aptly named. Its scientific name, Hippocampus, comes from Ancient Greek: hippos, meaning “horse,” and kampos, meaning “sea monster.” In fact, the hippocampus in our brains is named that way because its shape resembles the seahorse.

These creatures can be as small as the nail on your thumb or up to more than a foot long. Out of all 46 species, the smallest seahorse in the world is Satomi’s pygmy seahorse, Hippocampus satomiae. Found in Southeast Asia, it grows to be just over half an inch long. The world’s largest is the Big-belly seahorse, Hippocampus abdominalis, which can reach 35 centimeters long (more than a foot), and is found in the waters off South Australia and New Zealand.

Big-belly Seahorse, *H. abdominalis*
(Image Credit: Paul Sorensen via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC))

Instead of scales like other fish, seahorses have skin stretched over an exoskeleton of bony plates, arranged in rings throughout their bodies. Each species has a crown-like structure on top of its head called a coronet, which acts like a unique identifier, similar to how humans can be distinguished from each other by their fingerprints.

A well-known characteristic of seahorses is that they swim upright. Since they don’t have a caudal (tail) fin, they are particularly poor swimmers, only able to propel themselves with the dorsal fin on their back, and steer with the pectoral fins on either side of their head behind their eyes. Would you have guessed that the slowest moving fish in the world is a seahorse? The dwarf seahorse, Hippocampus zosterae, which grows to an average of 2 to 2.5 centimeters (0.8-1 in.) has a top speed of about 1.5 meters (5 ft.) per hour. Due to their poor swimming capability, seahorses are more likely to be found resting with their tails wound around something stationary like coral, or linking themselves to floating vegetation or (sadly) marine debris to travel long distances. Seahorses are the only type of fish that have these prehensile tails, ones that can grasp or wrap around things.

Dwarf seahorses in their tank at The New England Aquarium (Photo by author)

How Do Seahorses Eat? By Suction!

Most seahorse species live in the shallow, temperate and tropical waters of seaweed or seagrass beds, mangroves, coral reefs, and estuaries around the world. They are important predators of bottom-dwelling organisms like small crustaceans, tiny fish, and copepods, and they have a particularly excellent strategy to catch and eat prey. As less-than-stellar swimmers, seahorses rely on stealth and camouflage. The shape of their heads helps them move through the water almost silently, which allows them to get really close to their prey.

Denise’s pygmy seahorse, *Hippocampus denise*
(Jack McKee via iNaturalist

Can you find the seahorse in the picture above? As one of the many creatures that have chromatophores, pigment-containing cells that allow them to change color, seahorses mimic the patterns of their surroundings and ambush tiny organisms that come within striking range. They do what’s called pivot-feeding, rotating their trumpet-like snouts at high speed and sucking in their prey. With a predatory kill rate of 90%, I’d say this strategy works. Check out this video below to watch seahorses in action!

Mr. Mom

One of the most interesting characteristics of seahorses is that they flip the script of nature: males are the ones who get pregnant and give birth instead of the females! Before mating, seahorses form pair bonds, swimming alongside each other holding tails, wheeling around in unison, and changing color. They dance with each other for several minutes daily to confirm their partner is alive and well, to reinforce their bond, and to synchronize their reproductive states. When it’s time, the seahorses drift upward snout to snout and mate in the middle of the water, where the female deposits her eggs in the male’s brood pouch.

After carrying them for anywhere between 14-45 days (depending on the species) the eggs hatch in the pouch where the salinity of water is regulated, preparing newborns for life in the sea. Once they’re fully developed (but very small) the male seahorse gives birth to an average of 100-1,000 babies, releasing them into the water to fend for themselves. While the survival rate of seahorse fry is fairly high in comparison to other fish because they’re protected during gestation, less than 0.5% of infants survive to adulthood, explaining the extremely large brood.

White’s seahorse, *Hippocampus whitei*
(Image Credit: David Harasti via iNaturalist (CC-BY-NC))

A Flagship Species

Alongside sea turtles, seahorses are considered a flagship species: well-known organisms that represent ecosystems, used to raise awareness and support for conservation and helping to protect the habitats they’re found in. As one of the many creatures that generate public interest and support for various conservation efforts in habitats around the world, seahorses have a significant role.

Not only do these creatures act as a symbol for marine conservation, but seahorses also provide us with a unique chance to learn more about reproductive ecology. They are important predators of small crustaceans, tiny fish, and copepods while being crucial prey for invertebrates, fish, sea turtles, seabirds, and marine mammals.

How Are Seahorses Threatened?

Climate change and pollution are deteriorating coral reefs and seagrass beds and reducing seahorse habitats, but the biggest threat to seahorses is human activities. Overfishing and habitat destruction has reduced seahorse populations significantly. Bycatch in many areas has high cumulative effects on seahorses, with an estimated 37 million creatures being removed annually over 21 countries. Bottom trawling, fisheries, and illegal wildlife trade are all threats to seahorse populations. The removal of seahorses from their habitat alters the food web and disrupts the entire ecosystem, but seahorses are still dried and sold to tourists as street food or keepsakes, or even for pseudo-medicinal purposes in China, Japan, and Korea. They are also illegally caught for the pet trade and home aquariums (even though they fare poorly in captivity, often dying quickly).

Supporting environmentally responsible fishers and marine protected areas is a great way to start advocating for the ocean and its creatures. Avoiding non-sustainably caught seafood and avoiding purchasing seahorses or products made from them are ways to protect them too.

Project Seahorse, a marine conservation organization, is working to control illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and wildlife trade for sustainability and legality, end bottom trawling and harmful subsidies, and expand protected areas. The organization also consistently urges the implementation and fulfillment of laws and promises to advance conservation for our global ocean.

The Life We Share

All creatures on this Earth rely on us to make sure the ecosystems they call home are healthy and protected. The ocean is not just an empty expanse of featureless water, but a highly configured biome rich in plants and animals, many of them at risk. So the next time you go to the aquarium and see those little seahorses with their tails wrapped around a piece of grass, remember that we are all part of the same world. Just as these creatures rely on us, we rely on them too.

Abigail

Sources and Further Reading:

Featured Creature: Kingfisher

What creature often looks blue, but isn’t, is found on every continent but Antarctica, and inspired a train’s design?

Kingfishers! (Alcedinidae)

Patagonian Ringed Kingfisher, *Megaceryle torquata ssp. stellata*
(Image Credit: Amelia Ryan via iNaturalist)

Kingfishers are kind of like snowflakes. They both float and fly through the air, and no two are really alike. It’s what I love so much about them. Each kingfisher presents characteristics unique to their own lifestyle. They make me think of people. Like kingfishers, we live almost everywhere on Earth and we’ve all adapted a little differently to our diverse environments. I hope as you get to know the kingfisher, you’ll start to feel a small connection to these birds as I have.

Kingfishers are bright, colorful birds with small bodies, large heads, and long bills. They’re highly adaptable to different climates and environmental conditions, making them present in a variety of habitats worldwide. Many call wetland environments like rivers, lakes, marshes, and mangroves home. Now, their name might lead you to think all kingfishers live near these bodies of water, but more than half the world’s species are found in forests, near only calm ponds or small streams. Others live high in mountains, in open woodlands, on tropical coral atolls, or have adapted to human-modified habitats like parks, gardens, and agricultural areas.

Common Kingfisher, *Alcedo atthis* (Image Credit: Alexis Lours via iNaturalist)

Even so, you’re most likely to spot them in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Oceania, but they can also be found in more temperate regions in Europe and the Americas. Some species have large populations and massive geographic ranges, like the Common Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis), pictured above, which resides from Ireland across Europe, North Africa and Asia, as far as the Solomon Islands in the Pacific. Other kingfishers (typically insular species that evolved on islands) have smaller ranges, like the Indigo-banded Kingfisher (Ceyx cyanopectus), which is only found in the Philippines.

Birds of a Feather

Kingfishers are small to medium sized birds averaging about 16-17 cm (a little over 6 inches) in length. They have compact bodies with short necks and legs, stubby tails and small feet, especially in comparison to their large heads and long, pointed bills. While many species are proportioned the same way, some are quite distinct. Paradise Kingfishers (Tanysiptera), which are found in the Maluku Islands and New Guinea like the one pictured below, are known for their long tail streamers. The African Dwarf Kingfisher (Ispidina lecontei) is the world’s smallest kingfisher at just 10 cm (barely 4 inches) long, and is found in Central and West Africa. The largest is the Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), coming in at a whopping 41-46 cm (15-18 inches) long, and is native to Australia.

Buff-Breasted Paradise Kingfisher, *Tanysiptera sylvia*
(Image Credit: Peter and Shelly Watts via iNaturalist)

Now, I know what you’re thinking: ‘Wait, are kookaburras and kingfishers the same thing? Sometime. Out of all 118 species, only four go by the name kookaburra: the Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), the Blue-winged Kookaburra (Dacelo leachii), the Spangled Kookaburra (Dacelo tyro), and the Rufous-bellied Kookaburra (Dacelo gaudichaud). Native to Australia and New Guinea, the kookaburra are named for their loud and distinctive call that sounds like laughter. Sometimes their cackles can even be mistaken for monkeys!

So, are they as colorful as everyone says?

Yes! If you ask anyone who has seen a kingfisher to describe what it looks like, they will most likely go on and on about its color. Kingfishers are bright and vividly colored in green, blue, red, orange, and white feathers, and depending on the species, can be marked by a single, bold stripe of color. These features all accent the bird’s most recognizable feature, which is the blue plumage on their wings, back, and head. But here’s where things get interesting: Kingfishers don’t actually have any blue pigment in their feathers.

Laughing Kookaburra, *Dacelo novaeguineae* (Image Credit: Angela Quinn via Pixabay)

So, what gives? It’s something called the Tyndall effect. What’s happening is that tiny, microscopic keratin deposits on the birds’ feathers (yes, the same keratin that’s in your hair and nails) scatter light in such a way that short wavelengths of light, like (you guessed it) blue, bounce off the surface while all others are absorbed into the feather.

It sounds a little strange, but you see it every day. It’s why we see the sky as blue, too.

Azure Kingfisher, *Ceyx azureus* (Image Credit: David White via iNaturalist)

Are kingfishers Really Kings of Fishing?

Yes! And no. Kingfisher species are split into three subfamilies based on their feeding habits and habitats: the Tree Kingfishers (Halcyoninae), the River Kingfishers (Alcedininae), and the Water Kingfishers (Cerylinae). Despite their name, many of these birds primarily prefer insects, taking their prey from the air, the foliage, and the ground. They also eat reptiles (like skinks and snakes), amphibians, mollusks, non-insect arthropods (like crabs, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and millipedes), and even small mammals like mice.

Tree Kingfishers reside in forests and open woodlands, hunting on the ground for small vertebrates and invertebrates. River Kingfishers are more often found eating fish and insects in forest and freshwater habitats. Water Kingfishers, the birds found near lakes, marshes, and other still bodies of water, are the fishing pros, specialize in catching and eating fish, and are actually the smallest subfamily of kingfishers, with only nine species.

New Zealand Sacred Kingfisher, *Todiramphus sanctus* ssp. vagans, eating a crustacean
(Image Credit: Ben Ackerley via iNaturalist)

Because the diets of kingfishers vary, so does the size and shape of their bills. Even though all species have long, dagger-like bills for the purpose of catching and holding prey, those of fishing species are longer and more compressed while ground feeders have shorter and broader bills that help them dig to find prey. The Shovel-billed Kookaburra (Clytoceyx rex) has the most atypical bill because it uses it to plow through the earth looking for lizards, grubs, snails, and earthworms.

Shovel-billed Kookaburra, *(Clytoceyx rex)*
(Image Credit: Mehd Halaouate via iNaturalist)

Can the blue-but-not-really-blue kingfisher get any more interesting?

Oh yes, yes it can. Ready for another physics lesson? Kingfishers have excellent binocular vision, which means they’re able to see with both eyes simultaneously to create a single three-dimensional image, like humans. Not only that, but they can see in color too! But what makes them so adept at catching fish is their capability to compensate for the refraction of light off water.

When light travels from one material into another (in this case, air into water), that light will refract, or bend, because the densities of air and water are different. This makes objects look as though they are slightly displaced when viewed through the water surface. Kingfishers are not only able to compensate for that optical illusion while hunting, but they also can accurately judge the depth of their prey as well.

But, triangulating underwater prey is only half the battle. Then you’ve got to catch it.

Fishing species of kingfishers dive no more than 25 cm (10 inches) into the water, anticipating the movements of their prey up until impact. Again, what happens next differs depending on which kingfisher we’re talking about. Many have translucent nictitating membranes that slide across their eyes just before impact to protect them while maintaining limited vision. Others, like the Pied Kingfisher (Ceryle rudis leucomelanurus), actually have a more robust bony plate that slides out across its eye when it hits the water—giving greater protection while sacrificing vision.

Pied Kingfisher in action

Kingfishers usually hunt from an exposed vantage point, diving rapidly into the water to snatch prey and return to their perch. If the prey is large (or still alive), kingfishers will kill it by beating it against the perch, dislodging and breaking protective spines and bones and removing legs and wings of insects. The Ruddy Kingfisher (Halcyon coromanda) native to south and southeast Asia, removes land snails from their shells by smashing them against stones on the forest floor.

Typically, kingfishers have eyes so dark brown they’re nearly black. In this photograph, however, you can see these Common Kingfishers’ nictitating membranes, most likely activated on land to remove sand or any other debris that may be hindering their vision. Image Credit: misooksun via iNaturalist

Learning from kingfishers

Occupying a place fairly high in their environments’ pecking orders (trophic level) makes kingfishers susceptible to effects of bioaccumulation, or the increasing concentration of pollutants found in living things as you climb the food chain. This phenomenon, coupled with the kingfisher’s sensitivity to toxins, makes the bird a fairly reliable environmental indicator of ecosystem health. If a kingfisher population is strong, that can indicate their habitat is healthy because the small aquatic animals they feed on aren’t intaking poisons or pollutants. When problems are detected in a kingfisher population, it can serve as an early warning system that something more systemic is wrong.

But that’s not the only thing we can, or have learned, from kingfishers. In 1989, Japan was looking for a way to redesign its Shinkansen Bullet Train to make it both faster and quieter. As the train flew through tunnels at 275 km/h, massive amounts of pressure would build up, reigned in by the front of the train and the tunnels’ walls. Upon exiting the tunnels, that pressure would release, sending roaring booms through the homes of those living nearby. Engineer Eiji Nakatsu was not only the project’s lead, but birdwatcher as well. Noting the kingfisher’s ability to plunge into dense water at incredible speeds with hardly a splash, Nakatsu and his team remodeled the front of the train with the bird’s beak in mind. The result not only solved the problem of the boom, but also allowed the train to travel faster while using less energy.

Kingfishers: A Little More Like You Than You Think

In learning about the kingfisher, I saw a little bit of us. We all come from the same family, even if we each do things a little differently. I think for me, this gets to the root of why finding our connections with all living things matters, not just because they give us inspiration to solve human problems or because we depend on them to keep natural systems in balance, but because this is just as much their Earth as ours.

Let’s do our part,

Abigail

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Featured Creature: Moon Snail

What seemingly cute, small creature is, in fact, a terrifying killer that drills a hole into their prey, liquifies it, and then sucks it out like a smoothie?

The moon snail (Naticidae)!

Lewis’s Moon Snail, *Neverita lewisii* (Image Credit: Siobhan O’Neill via iNaturalist)

Have you ever noticed those shells at the beach with perfectly round holes in them? I’ve always wondered how they end up like that. I thought, “surely it is not a coincidence that jewelry-ready shells are left in the sand for a craft-lover like me.” Amazingly, the neat holes are the work of the moon snail.

Take a look at holes made by the moon snail; maybe you’ve seen them before too.

The Small Snowplows of the Ocean

The moon snail is a predatory sea snail from the Naticidae family, named for the half-moon shaped opening on the underside of its globular shell. They are smooth and shiny and come in a variety of colors and patterns depending on the species: white, gray, brown, blue, or orange, with different spiral bands or waves. The size of moon snails also varies by species, ranging from as small as a marble to as large as a baseball. To traverse the ocean floor, moon snails use a big, fleshy foot to burrow through the sand. They pump water into the foot’s hollow sinuses to expand it in front of and over the shell, making it easier to travel along the ocean floor, like a snowplow. (Or should we call it a sand plow?)

Northern Moonsnail, *Euspira heros* (Image Credit: Cassidy Best via iNaturalist)

Moon snails live in various saltwater habitats along the coast of North America. A diversity of species can be found along both the Atlantic Coast between Canada down to North Carolina, and the Pacific Coast from British Columbia down to Baja California, Mexico. They live on silty, sandy substrates at a variety of depths depending on the species, from the intertidal zone and shallow waters below the tidemark to muddy bottoms off the coast 500 meters deep (about 1640 feet, which is greater than the height of the Empire State Building!). You might find a moon snail during a full moon, when the tide is higher and more seashells wash up on shore, plowing through the sand looking for its next meal.

Northern Moonsnail, *Euspira heros* (Image Credit: Ian Manning via iNaturalist)

When a moon snail fills its muscular foot with water, it can almost cover its entire shell!

Lewis’s Moon Snail, *Neverita lewisii* (Image Credit: Ed Bierman via Wikimedia Commons)

The moon snail is part of a taxonomic class called Gastropoda, which describes a group of animals that includes snails, slugs, and nudibranchs. The word gastropod comes from Greek and translates to “stomach foot.” The moon snail is a part of this belly-crawler club because it has a foot that runs along the underside of its belly that it uses to get around!

What’s on the menu? Clam chowder!

What does the moon snail eat? These ocean invertebrates prey primarily on other mollusks that share their habitat, like clams and mussels. They use chemoreception (a process by which organisms respond to chemical stimuli in their environment) to locate a mollusk and envelop it in their inflated foot, dragging it farther into the sand.

Nearly all gastropods have a radula (think of a tongue with a lot of tiny, sharp teeth) that they use to consume smaller pieces of food or scrape algae off rocks. Moon snails are different. After their prey is captured, moon snails use their radula to grind away at a spot on their prey’s shell. With the help of enzymes and acids secreted from glands on the bottom of their foot, they drill completely through the shell of their victim at a rate of half a millimeter per day. Once the drilling is complete, moon snails inject digestive fluids into the mollusk, liquefying its innards, and slurp up the chowder inside with their tubular proboscis. The entire process takes about four to five days. Vicious, right? And what is even more brutal is that sometimes, moon snails are cannibalistic!

What role does the moon snail play in its environment?

Phytoplankton and algae form the foundation of the marine food web, providing food and energy to the entire ecosystem of sea creatures. Organisms that fall prey to moon snails, like clams and mussels, consume this microscopic algae, as well as other bacteria and plant detritus. The moon snail is a vital link in this interconnected food chain because not only is it important prey for predators like crabs, lobsters, and shorebirds, but it also provides these organisms with energy and key nutrients. Through decomposition, moon snails’ feces, dead bodies, and shells become nutrients for producers like phytoplankton and algae.

Unfortunately, many things can harm moon snails and their habitats. Meteorological events like hurricanes can cause fluctuations in the species’ abundance. During heatwaves, when record high temperatures combine with extreme low tides like the one in the Pacific Northwest in 2021, moon snails can become extended from their shells, leading to desiccation and death.

The Earth’s temperature has risen at a rate of approximately 0.2°C per decade since 1982, making 2023 the warmest year since global records began in 1850. If yearly greenhouse gas emissions continue to rapidly increase, the global temperature will be at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer and possibly as much as 10.2 degrees warmer by 2100. This continuous increase in temperature puts not just moon snails but humans and the Earth’s biodiversity at large at risk, not only because of more frequent heat waves, but because oceans are becoming more acidic as the water absorbs excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As reporter Hari Sreenivasan explained in the PBS NewsHour report, Acidifying Waters Corrode Northwest Shellfish, ocean acidification affects shellfish a lot like how osteoporosis causes bones to become brittle in humans. The increasing acidity in the ocean reduces the amount of carbonate in the seawater, making it more difficult for moon snails and other shellfish to build and maintain strong calcium carbonate shells.

Colorful Moon Snail, *Naticarius canrena* (Image Credit: Joe Tomoleoni via iNaturalist)

Human activities also threaten marine creatures like moon snails. Shoreline hardening, aquaculture operations, and water management disturbs the food web and drives species towards extinction. Building structures on the shore to protect against erosion, storm surge, and sea level rise; projects such as geoduck farming; and creating dams and other water diversions disrupts animal communities and results in considerable habitat change. Fortunately, there are environmentally friendly alternatives, like living shorelines. These use plants and other natural features like rocks and shells to stabilize sediments, absorb wave energy, and protect against erosion.

What can you do to protect these clam-chowing sand plows and the biodiversity of the marine sediment?

One thing you can do to help moon snails is protect their egg casings. In the summer, more moon snails emerge in the shallow, intertidal habitats because it’s time for them to breed. To lay eggs, the female moon snail covers her entire foot in a thick layer of sand that she cements together with mucus. After laying tiny eggs on top, she sandwiches them between another layer of sand and detaches herself from the firm, gelatinous egg mass and leaves them to hatch in a few weeks. These collar-shaped egg casings can sometimes look like pieces of plastic or trash, so make sure you don’t pick them up and throw them away!

Moon snails can be found washed up on dry parts of the beach as well as in submerged parts of sand flats during low tide. If you pick up a moon snail, remember to put it back in the water so it doesn’t dry out in the sun.

The biodiversity in the marine sediment rivals even coral reefs and tropical rainforests. The organisms that live in this part of the ocean and the services they provide are essential for life on Earth. They cycle nutrients, break down pollutants, filter water, and feed commercial species like cod and scallop that humans eat all the time. Historical fishing activities, bottom trawling, habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, food web modification, and invasive species threaten biodiversity, functions, and services of marine sedimentary habitats. While there are many unknowns and ongoing threats to ocean life, that also means there are more opportunities for research and discovery that can inform effective ocean conservation policies. Supporting these policies that protect oceans and marine life is a way to protect moon snails too.

In ecology, there is a principle that suggests that each ecological niche is occupied by a distinct organism uniquely suited to it. This means organisms exist everywhere, and they have evolved to exist in these places in specific ways. The moon snail’s unique characteristics – notably the way it uses its radula to drill into its prey – shows us that in almost any niche, the organism which occupies it has similarly adapted to optimize its place in that habitat. I’m curious to learn what other unique traits organisms have evolved to adapt to their unique niche.

Off to shell-ebrate the beauty of our oceans and their creatures,

Abigail

Abigail Gipson is an environmental advocate with a bachelor’s degree in humanitarian studies from Fordham University. Working to protect the natural world and its inhabitants, Abigail is specifically interested in environmental protection, ecosystem-based adaptation, and the intersection of climate change with human rights and animal welfare. She loves autumn, reading, and gardening.

Sources and Further Reading:

Conservation Organizations

Articles & Papers

Featured Creature: Eastern Emerald Elysia

What creature steals photosynthesis, can go a year without eating, and blurs the animal-plant boundary?

The Eastern Emerald Elysia (Elysia chlorotica)!

“It’s a leaf,” my friend said when I showed her the photograph.

“Look closely. It’s not a leaf,” I replied.

“What is it then? Some insect camouflaged as a leaf?” she asked, still staring at the photo.

“It’s a slug. A sea slug. It starts as an animal and then… becomes plant-like. It steals chloroplasts. It can photosynthesize,” I almost yelled in excitement.

“What do you mean, it steals chloroplasts? Is there some symbiotic relationship with bacteria that allows it to photosynthesize?” my friend asked—she’s a nature nerd.

“No, not at all,” I said, feeling overwhelmed. “I don’t quite understand how it works yet. I am not sure anyone truly does.”

It had only been a few hours since I learned about the Eastern Emerald Elysia (Elysia chlorotica). Since then, I haven’t been able to stop sharing this incredible discovery with anyone who crosses my path—whether they’re interested or not—I’ll share anyway.

At first glance, *Elysia chlorotica* might seem relatively modest. Image Credit: bow_brown_brook via iNaturalist via Maryland Biodiversity

Photosynthesis in Nature through Symbiosis

Days later, as I write, I contemplate my friend’s first instinct. In nature, if you’re not a plant and want to photosynthesize, you usually rely on symbiosis. The first thing that comes to mind are corals. Corals host tiny algae called zooxanthellae within their tissues. The algae photosynthesize, providing the coral with food and energy in exchange for protection and access to sunlight.

But I became curious — What other species in nature photosynthesize through symbiosis?

I learned that some sea anemones, sponges, giant clams, hydras and, surprisingly, yellow-spotted salamanders—the only known vertebrate that photosynthesizes—also rely on similar symbiotic relationships, though that’s a story for another time.

And … lichens, too.

In his book Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, biologist and author Merlin Sheldrake describes lichens as “places where an organism unravels into an ecosystem, and where an ecosystem congeals into an organism. They flicker between ‘wholes’ and ‘collections of parts’. Shuttling between the two perspectives is a confusing experience.”

Indeed, it is a confusing experience. There’s this consistent thread of life forms rejecting the categories we impose on them. Lichens blur the lines between fungi and plants, comprising fungi, algae, and bacteria—organisms from three kingdoms of life, each with a specific ecological role crucial to the whole—a miniature ecosystem.

But the Eastern Emerald Elysia (Elysia chlorotica) once more challenges categorization, blurring the lines between the animal and plant world.

Where does the animal stop and the plant begin?

Upon a closer look, *Elysia chlorotica* proves to be more than ordinary. Transformation in color from brown-reddish to green upon stealing chloroplasts from the *Vaucheria litorea* algae. The transformation occurs in about 48 hours. Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons 1, 2, 3)

Elysia Chlorotica’s Way of Being: Living In Between Worlds

I am learning that Elysia chlorotica can be found very close to where I live on the eastern coast of the United States. My friend noted several sightings of them on iNaturalist in states like Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut. In fact, the highest concentration of Elysia Chloratica is on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

Their preferred habitat is shallow tidal marshes and pools with water less than 1.5 feet deep.

They are shy, flat, and between 1 and 2 inches long.

And although they belong to the clade Sacoglossans, they are often mistaken for Nudibranchs. What differentiates the two is their diet. Nudibranchs are carnivorous, while the Sacoglossans are herbivores.

Sacoglossans are also known as sap-sucking slugs due to their feeding behavior. Elysia chlorotica feeds exclusively on the yellow-green macroalga Vaucheria litorea, the two living in close proximity.

Selected quote from the video: “It then lives on the food made by these chloroplasts.
It is a fascinating story of endosymbiosis.”

The term “feeding” might be a bit misleading. Elysia chlorotica does eat the algae, yet it uses its radula, a specialized set of piercing teeth, to puncture it and suck out all of its contents – “kinda” like a straw. In the process of feeding, it begins to digest everything else, except it leaves the chloroplasts intact – the tiny organelles responsible for photosynthesis in plants.

The undigested chloroplasts become incorporated into the slug’s digestive tract, visible on its back as a branching pattern that resembles the venation found on a leaf or the structure of our lungs. This process is known as kleptoplasty, derived from the Greek word “klepto,” meaning thief. As chloroplasts accumulate, the slug’s color changes from reddish-brown to green due to the chlorophyll in about 48 hours.

Karen N. Pelletreau et al., (CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

When I read this, I engage in a thought exercise—I imagine I am eating a salad. The salad is composed of cucumbers, sesame seeds, and dill (my favorite!) with a bit of olive oil, vinegar, and salt. In the process of eating, I digest everything except the dill, which I leave intact within me. Once the dill gets to my digestive tract, within a matter of 48 hours, I start turning green and gain the ability to photosynthesize—to eat light, to fix CO₂, and emit oxygen in return.

Of course, this is impossible (or doesn’t yet happen) for humans and animals. Repurposing chloroplasts into one’s physiology, even without digesting them, is a feat that is far from straightforward. It involves complex genes, proteins, and mechanisms—thousands of them—ensuring that this process functions correctly. There’s a precise interaction, akin to a lock-and-key mechanism, that makes this extraordinary adaptation possible. It is more of a dialogue, an evolutionary dialogue—an activation.

What is even more extraordinary is that Elysia chlorotica can maintain functioning chloroplasts for its entire life cycle, approximately 12 months. It only needs to eat once. Normally, chloroplasts need a lot of support from the plant’s own genes to keep functioning. When they are inside an animal cell, they are far from their original plant environment. And one cannot ignore the immune system, which upon sensing a foreign body, should initiate an attack.

This intrigues scientists. For example, there are many other species that are kleptoplasts, including a few other Sacoglossans sea slugs. I learned that some ciliates and foraminiferans are, too. And there’s a marine flatworm that can steal chloroplasts from diatoms.

However, none of them can maintain intact chloroplasts as long as Elysia chlorotica.

At first you might have been surprised by just how it incorporates plant-like processes into an animal body. But then the question transforms into how it maintains these processes. Maintenance, it seems, is still a mystery. And for what?

For a more in-depth exploration of Elysia chlorotica, watch this video and
refer to its description for scientific papers and additional readings.

Yet What is This Chloroplast Maintenance For? Does It Need Photosynthesis to Survive?

From the video above that does an excellent job summarizing various scientific discoveries and Ed Yong’s article “Solar-Powered Slugs Are Not Solar-Powered,” I was able to understand the development of a mental model and the nature of scientific inquiry through experimentation and challenging assumptions surrounding the sea slug.

Initially: It was believed that Elysia chlorotica stole chloroplasts and relied entirely on photosynthesis for survival.

Then: It was found that sunlight isn’t crucial for its survival—starvation, light or darkness–it doesn’t matter.

Finally: Research on other species of sea slugs Elysia timida and Plakobranchus ocellatus showed that while these slugs convert CO₂ into sugars in the presence of light, they don’t need photosynthesis to survive. They concluded that chloroplasts might act as a food reserve, hoarded for future needs.

However: The mystery remains of how chloroplasts perform photosynthesis in an animal body. The hypothesis that chloroplasts function due to gene theft was disproven. Chloroplasts need thousands of genes, mostly from the host cell’s nucleus, but that is left behind during chloroplast theft. Nobody truly understands how the chloroplasts continue to function under these conditions.

I’m left confused, moving from thinking photosynthesis was essential to realizing it’s not required for survival, yet chloroplasts still perform photosynthesis.

If you also feel confused, please know, this uncertainty and surrendering to the unknown is crucial when studying and learning from the natural world. Questions like ‘why they need photosynthesis at all’ and ‘how it happens’ remain unanswered.

Due to the difficulty of raising Elysia chlorotica in the lab, and the need to carefully limit their collection to protect wild populations, research on them is highly challenging. Climate change and habitat fragmentation make this task even more difficult.

I look forward to following the progress of this research and am grateful to the scientists who continue to push boundaries and deepen our understanding of these remarkable creatures. This is one more example of why it is so important to protect and restore the Earth’s ecosystems.

The Genesis of Symbiosis. The Origin of The Chloroplast. The Becoming of the Earth.

Researching Elysia chlorotica took me on an entirely different path. I have always been interested in the origin of things, how something emerges, and the question of what is the origin of the chloroplasts intuitively unfolded.

I tried to understand symbiosis as defined by evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis. At the recommendation of Bio4Climate staff biologist Jim Laurie, I watched (and then re-watched) the documentary Symbiotic Earth: How Lynn Margulis Rocked The Boat and Started a Scientific Revolution.

It led me to Symbiogenesis. Symbiogenesis, as defined by Lynn Margulis, is the theory that new organisms and complex features evolve through symbiotic relationships, where one organism engulfs and integrates another.

In a moment of serendipity, I was surprised to see in one of the scenes in the documentary that the Elysia chlorotica was on the cover of the book titled “Symbiogenesis: A New Principle of Evolution” by Boris Mikhaylovich Kozo-Polyanksy. One of its editors is Lynn Margulis.

Photograph I took of a projected scene from the documentary *Symbiotic Earth: How Lynn Margulis Rocked the Boat and Started a Scientific Revolution.*

I never considered the genesis of symbiosis before–its connection with the genesis of life on Earth as we know it and with the biogeochemical cycles, fundamental processes that make our planet habitable.

This serendipitous moment, coupled with my learning process of Elysia chlorotica feels like some sort of beginning for me–a new understanding of how to perceive the becoming of the Earth.

Lynn Margulis, through her Serial Endosymbiotic Theory (SET), proposed that chloroplasts and mitochondria were originally free-living bacteria that entered into symbiotic relationships.

I am becoming aware that these primordial organelles have been integral to life’s evolution, part of a biological legacy that has shaped the Earth’s emergence of life for billions of years. And it all started with bacteria!

Elysia chlorotica, with its ability to steal chloroplasts, has reminded me that when studying the natural world, there is always something that doesn’t quite fit into our predetermined categories of knowledge and that life inevitably discovers a way to persist through new configurations of interacting and being.

We now understand that classifying nature goes beyond just physical appearances. There are hidden processes at play—molecular, genetic, and biogeochemical—that allow us to trace the origins of life and understand it in ways that extend beyond mere morphology. Nature, ultimately, defies rules—this seems to be the only rule. The once-ordered tree of life gives way to fluid boundaries and intricate entanglements. This emerging complexity reflects the true essence of life: dynamic, interconnected, ever-evolving, filled with irregular rhythms.

And now, I have a new category, a new lens through which to perceive nature: “Animals That Can Photosynthesize.” (hear Lynn Margulis talk about this topic in the first 10 minutes of the podcast).

Left: Chloroplasts. Photo Credit: Kristian Peters-Fabelfroh (CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)
Right: Project Apollo Archive (Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Without chloroplasts, there would be no plants, sea slugs, and oxygen-rich Earth. And without cyanobacteria—the believed progenitors of chloroplasts—much of the life we know of today, and perhaps countless other forms yet to be discovered, would not exist.

I hope you can look beyond the form of living systems and envision how life emerged through symbiosis.

Picture this emergence on various scales, from the microscopic chloroplast to the scale of an entire planet.

With gratitude, yet green with chloroplast envy,

Alexandra

Alexandra Ionescu is an Ecological Artist and Certified Biomimicry Professional. She currently works at Bio4Climate as the Associate Director of Regenerative Projects, focusing on the Miyawaki Forest Program. Her aim is to inspire learning from and about diverse non-human intelligences, cultivating propensities for ecosystem regeneration through co-existence, collaboration and by making the invisible visible. She hopes to motivate others to ask “How can humans give back to the web of life?” by raising awareness of biodiversity and natural cycles to challenge human-centric infrastructures. In her spare time, Alexandra is part of the Below and Above Collective, an interdisciplinary group that combines art with ecological functionality to construct floating wetlands and is a 2024 Curatorial Fellow with Creature Conserve where she organized a webinar and “Read/Reflect/Create” club centered on beavers.

Sources and Further Reading:

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Mollusc-Algal Chloroplast Endosymbiosis. Photosynthesis, Thylakoid Protein Maintenance, and Chloroplast Gene Expression Continue for Many Months in the Absence of the Algal Nucleu (Brian J. Green et al., 2000)
Horizontal gene transfer of the algal nuclear gene psbO to the photosynthetic sea slug Elysia chlorotica (Rumpho et., al 2008)
Chloroplast symbiosis in a marine ciliate: ecophysiology and the risks and rewards of hosting foreign organelles (McManus et al., 2012)
Genome Analysis of Elysia chlorotica Egg DNA Provides No Evidence for Horizontal Gene Transfer into the Germ Line of This Kleptoplastic Mollusc (Bhattacharya et al., 2013)
Plastid-bearing sea slugs fix CO2 in the light but do not require photosynthesis to survive (Christa et al., 2014)
Switching off photosynthesis (Christa et al., 2014)
Photophysiology of kleptoplasts: photosynthetic use of light by chloroplasts living in animal cells (Serôdio et al., 2014)
Lipid Accumulation during the Establishment of Kleptoplasty in Elysia chlorotica (Pelletreau et al., 2014)
A new case of kleptoplasty in animals: Marine flatworms steal functional plastids from diatoms (Van Steenkiste et al., 2019)
Photosynthetic sea slugs induce protective changes to the light reactions of the chloroplasts they steal from algae (Havurinne and Tyystjärvi 2020)
Shared ancestry of algal symbiosis and chloroplast sequestration in foraminifera (Pinko et al., 2023)

Featured Creature: Coelacanth

What 200-pound nocturnal sea creature, thought to be extinct for millions of years, has one of the longest gestation periods among vertebrates?

The Coelacanth!

Bruce A.S. Henderson (Wikimedia Commons)

This sea creature was thought to be extinct for 65 million years before it was rediscovered in 1938. Ancient and rare, the coelacanth is a fish so named from its fossil. Scientists knew this fish once existed but never expected to find it alive in the depths of the ocean. The coelacanth (pronounced seel-a-canth) is about 200 pounds and can grow to over 6.5 feet in length. Two species exist today – the Indonesian coelacanth (Latimeria menadoensis) and the African coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae).

Anatomy

Coelacanth is derived from Latin and means “hollow spine” due to their hollow caudal fin rays. They have thick scales giving them an ancient appearance.These fish lack boney vertebrae. Instead, they have a notochord which is a fluid-filled rod beneath the spinal cord. Coelacanths also use a rostral organ to detect the electrical impulses of nearby prey much like stingrays and sharks. Most distinctive is the coelacanth’s limb-like pectoral fins that appear more like an arm than a fin. The coelacanth has a very unique anatomy. No other fish on Earth possesses these special features.

Ji-Elle (CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

Diet

The next discovery of a live coelacanth came in 1952 – 14 years after the first revelation. But why did it take so long for another fish to be caught? Coelacanths live at great very deep depths, often over 500 feet beneath the surface of the ocean. When they venture into shallower waters, they tend to do so at night. Coelacanths are nocturnal predators.They hide under rock formations and in caves until nightfall when they emerge to hunt other fish, crabs, eels, and squid.They use their hinged skull which enlarges their gape to swallow prey.

Population

The IUCN has listed the coelacanth as critically endangered. It is estimated that only 500 coelacanths exist today. Although not considered an edible fish, as its meat is too oily for consumption, the coelacanth still falls prey to deep-sea fishing nets. If caught as by-catch, coelacanths can die from the stress. These threats can deeply affect the population because coelacanths have an unusually long gestation period of three years – the longest of any vertebrate species. Such factors make coelacanths extremely vulnerable to extinction.

Dean Falk Schnabel (CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

The story of the coelacanth proves there is always more to discover. Biodiversity fosters a sense of curiosity about the endless possibilities of the natural world.

I wonder, if a creature like this still exists, what other species remain unknown to humanity?

Swimming away for now, Joely

Joely Hart is a wildlife enthusiast writing to inspire curiosity about Earth’s creatures. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of Central Florida and has a special interest in obscure, lesser-known species.

Sources and Further Reading:
https://a-z-animals.com/animals/mouse-deer-chevrotain
https://www.khaosok.com/national-park/mouse-deer
https://www.ultimateungulate.com/Artiodactyla/Hyemoschus_aquaticus.html
https://factanimal.com/chevrotain/
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/11/778312670/silver-backed-chevrotain-with-fangs-and-hooves-photographed-in-wild-for-first-ti

Featured Creature: Blue Whale

Which creature who helps fight climate change has newborns the size of an adult elephant and is not a fan of boats?

The Blue Whale!

Photo from National Marine Sanctuaries (via Wikimedia Commons)

Big, bigger, and biggest

Blue whales are the largest creature to ever grace this Earth. They can grow to around 100 ft (33 meters), which is more than twice the size of a T-Rex dinosaur! Newborn calves are around the same size as an adult African elephant – about 23 ft (7 meters). To get more of an idea of how huge these animals are, picture this: a blue whale’s heart is the size of a car, and their blood vessels are so wide a person can swim through them!

Despite their large size, blue whales eat tiny organisms. Their favorite food is krill, small shrimp-like creatures. They can eat up to 40 million of these every day. They do so by opening their mouths really wide, and after getting a mouthful, they’ll close their mouths and force out the swallowed water with their tongue, while trapping the krill behind their baleen plates – this method is known as filter feeding.

Photo by Don Ramey Logan (CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

From coast to coast

Blue whales live in every ocean except the Arctic. They usually travel alone or in small groups of up to four, but when there are plenty of krill to go around, more than 60 of these mega-creatures will gather around and feast.

Blue whales can communicate across 1,000 miles (over 1600 km)! Their calls are loud and deep, reaching up to 188 decibels – so loud that it would be too painful for human ears to bear. Scientists believe that these calls produce sonar – helping the whales navigate through dark ocean depths.

Climate Regulator

All that krill has to go somewhere, meaning out the other end. Whale poop helps maintain the health of oceans by fertilizing microscopic plankton. Plankton is the bedrock of all sea life, as it feeds the smallest of critters, and these critters then feed larger creatures (and on goes the food chain). Plankton include algae and cyanobacteria that get their energy through photosynthesis, and they are abundant throughout Earth’s oceans. These microorganisms contribute to carbon storage by promoting the cycling of carbon in the ocean, rather than its emission in the form of carbon dioxide. Without whales, we wouldn’t have as much plankton, and without plankton, the food cycle would collapse, and more gas would rise to the atmosphere. Therefore, whale poop acts as a climate stabilizer.

Learn more about this whale-based nutrient cycle here:

Size doesn’t equal protection

Unfortunately, the sheer size of blue whales isn’t enough to prevent them from harm. Blue whales were heavily hunted until last century, and although a global ban was imposed in 1966, they are still considered endangered.

Today, blue whales must navigate large and cumbersome fishing gear. When they get entangled, the gear attached to them can cause severe injury. Dragging all that gear adds a lot of weight, so this also zaps their energy sources. Since blue whales communicate through calls intended to travel long distances, increased ocean noise either from ships or underwater military tests can also disrupt their natural behaviors.

Another threat blue whales face are vessel strikes. They can swim up to 20 miles an hour, but only for short bursts. Usually, blue whales travel at a steady pace of 5 miles per hour. This means that they aren’t fast enough to dodge incoming vessels, and these collisions can lead to injuries or even death for the whales. In areas where traffic is high, such as ports and shipping lanes, this threat becomes even more prominent.

To protect blue whales, and our oceans, we can implement sustainable fishing practices that use marine mammal-friendly gear. We can also reduce man-made noise, and utilize precautionary measures when venturing out to sea. That way we avoid vessel strikes and have a higher chance of witnessing the largest creature to ever grace our planet.

For creatures big, bigger, and biggest,
Tania

Tania graduated from Tufts University with a Master of Science in Animals and Public Policy. Her academic research projects focused on wildlife conservation efforts, and the impacts that human activities have on wild habitats. As a writer and activist, Tania emphasizes the connections between planet, human, and animal health. She is a co-founder of the podcast Closing the Gap, and works on outreach and communications for Sustainable Harvest International. She loves hiking, snorkeling, and advocating for social justice.

Sources and Further Reading:
https://us.whales.org/whales-dolphins/facts-about-blue-whales/
https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/animals/sea-life/10-blue-whale-facts/
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/blue-whale
https://www.greatwhaleconservancy.org/how-whales-help-the-ocean

Featured Creature: Banded Sea Krait

What semiaquatic creature has a paddle-like tail, swims through crevices, and can even climb trees?

The banded sea krait!

Photo by Bernard Dupont, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Did you know that some snakes can swim? Beyond the legends of mighty and fearsome sea serpents, sea snakes exist, and swim through waters around the world, not just the pages of myth and folklore.

The banded sea krait is a type of sea snake that inhabits the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Males are about 30 inches long, while females can be up to 50 inches long. As the name may hint, the banded sea krait’s bluish-gray body is scored by thick, dark blue bands numbering from 20 to 65. The top half of its body is colored more darkly than its underside, a kind of pigmentation called countershading unique to many sea creatures. Countershading is a type of aquatic camouflage that helps the sea krait blend in with its environment, an adaptation that contributes to these creatures’ survival.

By appearing dark from above, the sea krait becomes challenging to differentiate from the water. By appearing lighter from below, it melds with the sunlight of shallow water. This makes it difficult for predatory birds to spot the sea krait from the sky and conceals the reptile from prey watching below.

The banded sea krait boasts a specialized tail shaped like a paddle that enables it to swim quickly through the water. These creatures also have valved nostrils to keep out water when diving. Despite spending most of its life in the ocean, the banded sea krait lacks gills and must breathe air. However, it can hold its breath for up to 30 minutes. A unique organ called the saccular lung helps banded sea kraits take in more oxygen when they come up for air. This lung acts like a diver’s oxygen tank.

Photo by Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Formidable Feeding Habits

The banded sea krait hunts fish and eels. Its cylindrical body easily weaves through coral reefs and mangrove roots to reach the hiding spots of its prey. Females are up to three times larger than males and prefer to hunt Conger eels due to their size while males often select the smaller Moray eel. Like terrestrial snakes, banded sea kraits swallow their prey whole and can consume eels much larger than themselves. Such a massive meal hinders the ability to swim properly, so the krait must come ashore to digest. This digestion process can take weeks to finish. Talk about a satisfying meal!

Amphibious Nature

Banded sea kraits venture on land to digest food, shed skin, drink freshwater, and lay eggs. They spend about 25% of their time on islands, mangrove forests, or rocky inlets and the rest in the sea. Despite their paddle-like tail better suited for swimming, they travel remarkably well on land, and have even been observed climbing trees.

Banded sea kraits use rocks to shelter beneath while waiting to digest their food and to rub against to help shed their skin. These reptiles must consume freshwater to survive and find lakes, streams, or puddles of rainwater on land to drink. When it comes to reproduction, eggs are laid under the sand by female banded sea kraits.

Venom

Banded sea kraits are highly venomous. They inject venom through their fangs, and itis 10 times more potent than a rattlesnake’s! This comes in handy when it’s time to hunt. A banded sea krait may hide among coral crevices and wait to strike a passing eel. Its venom works quickly to paralyze the prey.

Don’t be alarmed – humans are rarely bitten by these kraits, as they have a very docile and non-confrontational nature. Some people, mostly fishermen hauling up nets, have been bitten in the past (symptoms include seizures, muscle paralysis, and respiratory failure).

Life Cycle

Aside from their other land-based activities, female banded sea kraits come ashore to lay eggs. They may lay between 5 – 20 eggs, which then hatch in about 4 months. Babies emerge fully capable of surviving the ocean environment and appear as miniature versions of the adult banded sea krait. They will hunt smaller prey until they grow larger enough to take on eels. Banded sea kraits are estimated to live for 20 years in the wild.

Take a look at some of their activities in action:

And if you’re wondering how a sea krait can swallow an eel whole, watch this video:

From well-recognized animals like the humpback whale and dolphin to the lesser known banded sea krait, the ocean is a haven rich in biodiversity.

Swimming away for now,
Joely

Sources and Further Reading:
https://earthsky.org/earth/lifeform-of-the-week-banded-sea-krait-is-a-two-headed-swimming-snake/
https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Laticauda_colubrina
https://oceana.org/marine-life/banded-sea-krait/
https://www.dovemed.com/diseases-conditions/common-yellow-lipped-sea-krait-bite

Featured Creature: Atlantic Puffin

What striking seabird is a master of adaptability in the ocean and the air?

The Atlantic Puffin!

Image by Anne-Ed C. from Pixabay

Nestled around the edges of the North Atlantic, the Atlantic Puffin, or Fratercula arctica, is a seabird of great charm and adaptability. Resembling a penguin in its coloration, yet distinguished by its multicolored and uniquely shaped bill, this captivating creature is often affectionately dubbed the “sea parrot.”

Atlantic puffins have also been known as “sea clowns” because of that funky flattened bill, but make no mistake – these are some seriously impressive seabirds. With sophisticated burrows, skillful hunting, and dedication to raising families with determined care, these bright birds are marvels of the ocean.

Aquatic Aviators

Atlantic puffins spend the majority of their lives navigating the vast expanse of the North Atlantic, where they are found on islands and coastal shores from North America to Scandinavia. With wings that double as paddles, they can “fly” through the water, propelled by powerful flippers and webbed feet.

These adept swimmers dive to impressive depths of up to 200 feet, hunting small fish like sand eels and herring with remarkable precision. In addition to their aquatic prowess, puffins can also fly, though they are unable to soar like other broad winged seabirds. Instead, using wings that can flap up to 400 times per minute, Atlantic puffins are able to reach speeds of up to 55 miles per hour (88.5 km/h).

Family Life

During the breeding season, thousands of puffins gather in colonies along the coasts and islands of the North Atlantic. These colonies provide safety in numbers, shielding the birds from larger predators like skuas and gulls that patrol the skies above. The breeding season sees puffins at their most colorful, with those distinctive bills featuring their blue-gray triangles accented in bright yellow. When the season is over, the bills’ outermost layers actually molt, and revert to a partly gray and partly orange color combination.

Puffins exhibit strong pair bonds, often forming lifelong partnerships with their mates. They engage in affectionate behaviors such as rubbing and tapping beaks, reinforcing their bond year after year. Remarkably, these avian couples frequently return to the same burrow to raise their young each season.

Using their beaks and claws, they construct deep burrows that nestle between rocky crags and crevices. These generally feature separate tunnels that are used as a bathroom area, and a main nesting chamber that serves as a safe haven for incubating eggs, which hatch after a period of 42 days.

Pufflings, as these chicks are called, are adorned with fluffy feathers that will eventually facilitate their ability to swim and fly. Both parents play an active role in incubating the egg and caring for their offspring once it has hatched, fetching food for the young puffling with skill and dedication. They make use of a unique adaptation of small spines along their bills, tongues, and the roofs of their mouths that allow them to hold bunches of fish in place as they fly from their hunts on open waters back to the nests where their young ones wait. It is estimated that during the time a puffling stays in its burrow dependent on this care, its parents will make close to 12,400 dives total to keep up the steady supply of food.

Persevering Under Threat

Despite their remarkable adaptability, Atlantic puffins face a number of challenges in the modern world. From habitat loss and predation to climate change and human disturbances, these beloved seabirds are confronted with an uncertain future, and they are currently classified as Vulnerable by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). In particular, as ocean temperatures rise and fish populations decline or shift their habitat, puffins struggle to find food with enough frequency and reliability to get by. Conservation and restoration measures can help ease these pressures by preventing overfishing, ensuring abundant marine ecosystems, and allowing all forms of ocean life, from underwater critters to seabirds, to survive and adapt. While the intersecting challenges of a warming and increasingly chaotic planet may be complex, modifying human behaviors has made a tremendous difference for these colorful creatures before.

Take a look at the story of their bounce back from near extinction in the 20th century:

May we take hope in our power to shape our planet’s future for the better, and show the same love and dedication to these sweet seabirds as they do to their young pufflings.

Flapping away now,

Maya

Maya Dutta is an environmental advocate and ecosystem restorer working to spread understanding on the key role of biodiversity in shaping the climate and the water, carbon, nutrient and energy cycles we rely on. She is passionate about climate change adaptation and mitigation and the ways that community-led ecosystem restoration can fight global climate change while improving the livelihood and equity of human communities. Having grown up in New York City and lived in cities all her life, Maya is interested in creating more natural infrastructure, biodiversity, and access to nature and ecological connection in urban areas.

Sources and Further Reading:
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Atlantic_Puffin/overview#
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/facts/atlantic-puffin
https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/facts/atlantic-puffin
https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/atlantic-puffin
https://abcbirds.org/bird/atlantic-puffin/
https://www.science.org/content/article/watch-puffin-use-tool-scratch-itch
Recent changes in the diet and survival of Atlantic puffin chicks in the face of climate change and commercial fishing in midcoast Maine, USA. Stephen W. Kress, Paula Shannon, Christopher O’Neal. FACETS 21 April 2016. https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2015-0009

Featured Creature: Flamingo

What long-legged creatures are known for their beauty, social habits, and fabulous flamboyance?

Flamingos!

Flamingos are among the most recognizable birds in the world. These long-legged wading birds are known for their vibrant pink plumage and distinctive S-shaped necks, and rank among the most iconic inhabitants of wetlands across the globe.

They are known to congregate in large flocks, standing (often perched on one leg) in the shallows of their habitat. Given their unmistakably flashy appearance, it is apt that a group of flamingos is known as a “flamboyance.”

Flamingos boast a slender body, stilt-like legs, and a characteristic downward-bending bill, making them instantly recognizable. Though they are most often depicted as a bright pink, their plumage ranges from a subtle pink to crimson. This hue is actually derived from carotenoid pigments found in their diet of algae, crustaceans, and small invertebrates. So as flamingos’ range and available food sources vary, so too might their color. Interestingly, this same pigment responsible for the flamingo’s iconic pink is also what makes carrots orange and ripened tomatoes red.

Flamingos thrive in saline or alkaline lakes, mudflats, and shallow lagoons, where they feed on algae, invertebrates, larvae, small seeds, and crustaceans like brine shrimp. Their long legs enable them to wade into deeper waters, utilizing their uniquely adapted bills to filter food from the mud and water. In fact, though the term usually calls to mind creatures like oysters or whales, flamingos are also considered “filter feeders” in their behavior and diet.

While most flamingo species are not endangered, habitat loss and human activities pose significant threats to their populations. Conservation initiatives, such as the establishment of protected reserves and the monitoring of wild populations, are crucial for safeguarding these charismatic birds and their habitats. As indicators of environmental health and key feeders in the wetlands, flamingos play a vital role in maintaining the delicate balance of their ecosystems.

Lifestyle and relationships

Flamingos are highly social creatures, forming large flocks that can number in the thousands. They engage in intricate mating displays and rituals, characterized by synchronized movements and vocalizations. Once a couple has chosen to mate, breeding pairs construct simple mud nests, where they raise their offspring, feeding them a specialized “crop milk” produced in their upper digestive tract.

With a lifespan of 20 to 30 years in the wild, and up to 50 years in captivity, flamingos exhibit remarkable longevity. They typically lay a single chalky-white egg, which both parents incubate and care for until hatching. Young flamingos, born with gray downy feathers, gradually develop their iconic pink plumage over time.

Over time, these bright birds form strong social bonds that characterize their lives and behaviors. Remarkably, it has been observed that some flamingos will make friends for decades. Researchers have speculated that the bonds, which are influenced by factors such as personality traits and physical characteristics, may aid survival.

This long lasting affinity has led to comparisons and speculations about different forms of love in the animal kingdom. Though we see lots of courtship, pairing, and even mating for life in different species, friendship is one of those underrated forms of love well worth celebrating. And while these social relationships may indeed help with survival, it also might just be true that life is better with friends by your side.

Feeling the love,

Maya

Sources and Further Reading:
https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/flamingo
https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/facts/flamingo
https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/american-flamingo
https://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america/american-flamingo
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/flamingos-make-friends-for-life
https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/news/why-are-flamingos-pink-and-other-flamingo-facts

Featured Creature: Humpback Whale

What species of tremendous size and grace undertakes the largest mammal migration on Earth?

The humpback whale!

In the vast expanses of the world’s oceans, a symphony of moans, cries, and howls fills the water, echoing across great distances. This stunning serenade is the song of the humpback whale, one of the most majestic creatures to grace the seas.

Scientifically known as Megaptera novaeangliae, the humpback whale derives its common name from the distinctive hump on its back. With dark backs, light bellies, and long pectoral fins that resemble wings, these whales are a sight to behold. Their Latin name, signifying “big wing of New England,” pays homage to those impressive pectoral fins and early encounters European whalers had with these graceful giants off the coast of New England.

Humpback whales are renowned for their enchanting songs, which echo through the ocean depths for great distances. These compositions, which consist of moans, howls, and cries, are among the longest and most complex in the animal kingdom. Scientists speculate that these melodic masterpieces serve as a means of communication and courtship, with male humpbacks serenading potential mates during the breeding season for minutes to hours at a time. Songs have also been observed during coastal migrations and hunts. Many artists have taken inspiration from these songs, and you can even listen to eight-hour mixes of them to help you get to sleep. Check it out:

Another marvel of the humpback are their awe-inspiring displays of acrobatics, from flipper slapping to full-body breaching. Despite their colossal size, these creatures display remarkable agility and grace. With lengths of up to 62.5 feet (19m, or one school bus!) and weights of 40 tons (40,000 kg), humpback whales are true behemoths of the ocean.

Life on the move

Life for a humpback whale is a tale of two halves—a perpetual journey between polar feeding grounds and tropical breeding waters. These remarkable migrations span thousands of miles and rank as one of the longest animal migrations on the planet, and the longest among mammals.

Feasting on plankton, krill, and small schooling fish, humpback whales are skilled hunters, capable of consuming up to 1,360 kilograms of food per day. Employing innovative techniques such as bubble-netting and kick-feeding, they ensnare their prey with precision and efficiency. Generally these whales stay in small and dynamic groups, and they use their social intelligence and coordination to orchestrate these group hunting mechanisms.

Ecological powerhouses

Humpback whales’ feeding and movement contributes to more than just their own wellbeing. As these majestic creatures feed on zooplankton, copepods, and other food sources in the oceans’ depths, and subsequently ascend to the surface, they disrupt the thermocline—a boundary between surface and deep waters—facilitating greater mixing of ocean layers. This enhanced mixing fosters increased nutrient availability, benefiting a myriad of marine organisms.

They also cycle nutrients through their own consumption and excretion, contributing to a phenomenon known as the “biological pump.” These whales ingest biomass and nutrients from microscopic and small macroscopic organisms in deeper waters, digest it, and excrete their own waste in large macroscopic fecal plumes on the ocean’s surface. This cyclical process effectively transports nutrients from the ocean depths back to the surface, replenishing vital elements such as nitrogen for algae and phytoplankton growth. In regions like the Gulf of Maine, the nitrogen influx from whale feces surpasses that of all nearby rivers combined, underscoring the profound impact of these marine giants on nutrient cycling. Finally, when a whale’s life has come to an end, its own massive body sinks to the ocean floor and countless organisms are nourished by it in the decomposition process.

Conservation and Resurgence

Understanding the multifaceted lives and roles of humpback whales underscores the urgency of their conservation. Historically valued solely for commercial exploitation, these majestic creatures now emerge as essential components of oceanic ecosystems. Though humpback whales have faced centuries of exploitation and habitat degradation, concerted conservation efforts offer hope for their survival, not only safeguarding whales themselves but also preserving the intricate ecological processes that sustain marine life and biodiversity.

Whales continue to face threats from ship collisions, entanglement in fishing gear, noise pollution, and the disruption of habitat for their food sources due to trawling, pollution, and encroachment. But strong advocacy has brought these creatures back from the brink before, and our conservation and restoration work can safeguard the future of these enchanting giants and ensure that their songs continue to echo through the seas for generations to come.

Take a look at Sir David Attenborough’s tale of their resurgence and beauty:

May we steward the ocean with love and care,

Maya

Sources and Further Reading:
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/humpback-whale
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/humpback-whale
https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Mammals/Humpback-Whale
https://us.whales.org/whales-dolphins/species-guide/humpback-whale/
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/humpback-whale-fact-sheet/
https://conservationconnections.blogspot.com/2012/05/importance-of-whale-poop-interview-with.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRY9giOUTrI (Whales as Keystone Species – Cycling Nutrients, Carbon and Heat with Joe Roman at Bio4Climate’s Restoring Oceans conference)

Featured Creature: Fishing Cat

What fascinating feline with unique adaptations roams the aquatic ecosystems of Southeast Asia?

The fishing cat, otherwise known as Prionailurus viverrinus!

One Clever Cat

Venturing into the world of fishing cats unveils a marvel of feline prowess and adaptability. These incredible creatures, found across 11 countries in Southeast Asia, possess a unique combination of features that defy conventional feline stereotypes.

Their distinct traits include a squat, stocky build, equipped with short, webbed feet, and an olive-gray coat adorned with black spots and stripes. Contrary to the belief that cats avoid water at all costs, fishing cats exhibit an unparalleled affinity for aquatic habitats. Indeed, these exceptional swimmers and adept hunters inhabit wetlands, marshes, and mangrove forests.

One of the most striking features aiding the waterborne adventures of the fishing cat is the webbing between their toes, facilitating seamless navigation through muddy wetlands without sinking. Additionally, their fur boasts a dual-layered composition: a short, dense undercoat shields their skin from the elements while swimming, while longer guard hairs contribute to their distinctive coloration, providing ideal camouflage for hunting in varied terrains.

Hunting primarily near water bodies, fishing cats display remarkable adaptability in their diet, feasting not only on fish but also on crustaceans, amphibians, and various aquatic creatures. These agile predators employ ingenious techniques, using their paws to scoop fish from shallow waters or even diving headfirst into deeper areas to secure a meal with their teeth. Their versatile diets extend to snakes, rodents, and even larger prey like young deer and wild pigs, but fish comprise about three quarters of their food.

Watch a juvenile try to learn the process:

Fishing cats navigate diverse ecosystems with ease, forging their existence in habitats ranging from freshwater landscapes to coastal regions. While much of their behavior in the wild has eluded observation, fishing cats, which are nocturnal animals, are thought to have no natural predators besides humans. They tend to roam wetlands and areas that larger cats and predators aren’t well suited to inhabit. However, humans provide plenty of issues to contend with, and due to the pressures of habitat encroachment, development, and poaching, fishing cats are classified as a vulnerable species.

Smithsonian’s National Zoo, Jessie Cohen

Human and Habitat Pressures

In India, conservationists and researchers have embarked on a pivotal journey to safeguard these elusive creatures. The country’s many wetland ecosystems, integral to the fishing cat’s survival, face mounting threats from human encroachment, urbanization, and environmental degradation. Increasing development comes with issues of draining wetlands, polluting them, or altering their composition and natural salinity of the soil due to aquaculture operations.

Many organizations, like the Wildlife Institute of India and the Eastern Ghats Wildlife Society, have sprung up to champion the cause of fishing cats and understand more about these creatures. Studies conducted in sanctuaries and wildlife reserves have shed light on the behavior, habitat preferences, and dietary patterns of fishing cats in captivity. Initiatives to map their territories and understand their population dynamics have proven more challenging, yet vital for conservation strategies. Camera trap surveys in regions like the Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary and the Krishna Wildlife Sanctuary have uncovered pockets of fishing cat populations, offering valuable insights into their distribution across diverse landscapes.

Juvenile Fishing Cat on a Branch (Photo by Michael Bentley from Wikipedia, CC 2.0)

The evolving understanding of fishing cats has inspired conservation campaigns aimed at raising awareness among local communities. Educational programs, including the “Children for Fishing Cats” initiative, have empowered younger generations to become advocates for wildlife conservation, fostering harmony between human activities and the preservation of vital ecosystems.

Amidst the growing threats posed by habitat loss, human-wildlife conflicts, and climate change, conservationists advocate for stronger legislation and reinforced protection measures for wetlands and associated habitats. Efforts to mitigate conflict situations, prevent retaliatory killings, and promote sustainable practices among fishing communities stand as cornerstones in safeguarding these resilient creatures and their fragile environments.

As researchers navigate the delicate balance between human activities and wildlife conservation, the overarching goal remains clear: preserving the wetlands that sustain the extraordinary fishing cats is indispensable for safeguarding biodiversity, ensuring ecological resilience, and fostering coexistence between humans and these remarkable felines. More people and organizations are also coming to appreciate the benefits of healthy wetland ecosystems for buffering against storm surges, protecting water quality, contributing to the water cycle, and helping fight climate change.

As we protect and restore our wetlands, we can safeguard the future for fishing cats, the ecosystems they regulate, and the web of life that connects us.

For my fellow water lovers everywhere,

Maya

Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210416-the-fight-to-save-indias-most-elusive-cat
https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/fishing-cat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishing_cat
https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/fishing-cat

Featured Creature: Whale Shark

What creature is the largest of its kind, sports beautiful patterns, and holds a reputation for being a ‘gentle giant’?

The whale shark!

Photo by Shiyam ElkCloner (CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

Filter feeding for giants

The majestic whale shark is famed for being the largest fish in existence. With a length of up to 33 feet and weight up to 20 tons, they are not only the largest living fish, but thought to be the largest fish that ever lived on this planet. Though their name might suggest otherwise, whale sharks are not a type of whale at all, but instead a member of the shark family. It is their enormous size (akin to a school bus) that led them to be compared with whales.

Like their other shark relatives, these creatures are excellent swimmers and true masters of the deep. People are coming to recognize that all sharks, even carnivorous species that hunt marine mammals, fish, or other invertebrates, have been unfairly mischaracterized as threatening, and whale sharks are another species you need not be afraid of.

In fact, one of the most fascinating traits of the whale shark is its diet. Despite their own large size, whale sharks subsist on some of the smallest ocean inhabitants, plankton. Much like the enormous blue whale, whale sharks are a living example of one of the most interesting links in the food chain, where nutrients are cycled from microscopic life to macroscopic organisms.

They filter-feed by opening their mouths and letting plankton-rich waters pass through, as well as ingesting other small fish or unlucky invertebrates along the way. But even in this habit they are unique. Whale sharks use a technique called “cross-flow filtration,” in which particles do not actually catch on the filter (the way it works when we drain pasta through a strainer or breathe through an N95 mask). Instead, water is directed away through the gills while particles move towards the back of the mouth. A bolus (or a spinning ball of food) grows in size as more particles are concentrated, finally triggering a swallowing reflex in the throat. This avoids clogging any filters in the process and is a particularly efficient method of filter feeding.

Because they are so large, whale sharks need a lot of food to sustain themselves, and so they journey long distances in order to eat enough for their great big appetites. They can be observed throughout the world in warm tropical waters and tend to lead solitary lives. Where there is an abundance of plankton, however, whale sharks are sure to follow. For example, in the Springtime many whale sharks migrate to the continental shelf of the Central West Coast of Australia, where Ningaloo Reef is the site of a great coral spawning that produces water rich with plankton for our giant fishy friends to enjoy.

Big fish in a complex sea

The whale shark contributes to nutrient cycling throughout its lifespan, providing important benefits to the ecosystems they are a part of. Some of the warm tropical waters that whale sharks call home tend to be low in nutrients and productivity, and in these areas whale sharks can make a big difference due to their size and force. As they undertake migrations or even as they go about daily swimming and feeding activities, their motion stimulates small ocean currents that can help nutrients travel from areas of high productivity to waters where they are much less concentrated.

Their own eating habits rely on an abundance of microscopic creatures and the nutrients they metabolize, and eventually each mighty whale shark passes on and becomes food itself, returning those nutrients to the ocean food web. After death, whale sharks sink to the ocean floor and the benthic organisms that reside there find food and shelter in the great carcasses. It can take decades for this decomposition to occur, and in the meantime hundreds of creatures benefit from the habitat and nutrients left behind.

In life as well, whale sharks can provide refuge to smaller species of fish that travel around their great bodies, taking advantage of the shelter these gentle giants create. As largely docile creatures, whale sharks can be quite approachable and playful with divers who are also interested in tagging along:

In a couple of instances, humans have even pushed their luck so far as to ride along on a whale shark’s back! Such close contact is discouraged by conservationists to protect the personal space of these beautiful animals, but whale sharks’ friendly reputation remains.

Though they may be steady, generous members of the ocean community, whale sharks are struggling to survive in changing conditions. They are an endangered species, and while some protections for these creatures have been enacted across the coastal waters of the world, they are still hunted for meat, fins, and oil, or captured or killed as bycatch in industrial fishing operations. Whale sharks also suffer from the plastic pollution in our oceans, as microplastics mingle with the food they rely on. Like the rest of us, whale sharks need clean, healthy, abundant environments in which to live and co-create.

Whale shark in the Maldives (Photo by Sebastian Pena Lambarri from Unsplash)

Unique beauties

Whale sharks may be known for their size, but that’s not the only special thing about their anatomy and appearance. Each whale shark sports a beautiful pattern of white markings on its dark gray back. Not only does this make these creatures look like giant mobile modern art pieces, but the patterns also uniquely identify whale shark individuals.

It is not conclusively determined why whale sharks carry these unique signatures, their own version of the human fingerprint. Some scientists speculate that the patterns, which tend to be common among carpet sharks and other species that find such markings useful for camouflage as they traverse the ocean floor, indicate a close evolutionary link among these organisms.

The World Wildlife Fund has used these markings to identify individuals in the waters around the Philippines and keep track of whale shark population numbers there, so that humans can make the interventions needed to mindfully coexist with our marine friends. Whatever its distant origin or function today, this feature makes it clear that each whale shark is a special and irreplaceable member of our blue planet.

For gentle giants and filtering friends,
Maya

Sources and Further Reading:
https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/whale-shark
https://www.georgiaaquarium.org/animal/whale-shark/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/facts/whale-shark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_shark
https://earth.org/endangered-species/whale-sharks/
https://www.4ocean.com/pages/whale-shark-cause-of-the-month

Featured Creature: Clamworm

Photo by Alexander Semenov

What sort of worm is festooned with sensitive tentacles all the way down its sides and – though it can’t bark – has a nasty bite?

That would be the “clam worm” or alitta succinea, a denizen of estuarial waters.

Alternative names

I’ve always called them “seaworms” but they are normally known as “clam worms,” “ragworms,” “sand worms” or “pile worms”, and they are a species of annelid, the phylum of segmented worms.

Size and habitat

The clam worm can reach up to 15 cm (almost 6 inches) but most are smaller. This worm is reddish-brown in color, and has four eyes, tentacles or flaps all the way down its sides which can also function as gills, and sensory feelers at its head.

When hungry, it uses a long internal mouthpart called a proboscis, along with two hooks that unfold to capture and then draw prey into a mouth at its front end. These worms are themselves an important food source for fish and crustaceans, and are widely used as fishing bait. Their typical habitat is rocks, vegetation, reefs, and mud. They burrow into the mud or sand, or hide under rocks, to be safe from many potential predators.

My own first encounter

In my early teens, my father and I used to fish for striped bass with a flashy lure with a seaworm strung on a hook behind it. “Here’s how you do it,” my father counseled me. “Just poke the worm in its mouth and, as soon as it opens, insert the hook point.”

“Owww!!!” I exclaimed. “This worm bit me!” My father laughed, almost as hard as during one of my earlier ‘learning moments’ in a Maine field, when halfway over an electric fence I got shocked! On neither occasion did I expect the bite, but I eventually learned to be more careful. Those pincers were sharp!

The pincers’ zinc content makes them strong while keeping them very lightweight. They certainly drew my blood that first time! The fish surely liked these worms, but eventually I gave them up for flies (less messy and easier on the worms).

Spawning behavior

During the full and new moon tides in the late spring and early summer, these clam worms undergo a process called epigamy, which enlarges their parapodia (tentacles) so they can swim more easily to the surface to release their eggs and sperm, at which point their bodies rupture and disintegrate. Talk about dying to reproduce! One hopes at least they have fun on their way out. Their fertilized eggs then settle to the bottom and hatch into a new generation.

Replacement parts

These worms can replace various body parts, and make new worms from broken pieces, such as when their tails are pulled off by a predator. But rear body segments are more readily repaired than heads, which are much harder to replace – those of us our heads still on can probably relate!

Check out a short video on clam worms and their special properties:

Their role in marine ecosystems

The tunneling and boring of marine worms irrigate and oxygenate the shallow water pools encouraging beneficial plant and algae growth. Whether it’s in tide pools, lowland waters or oceanic reefs, the marine worm’s primary ecological contribution is as sustenance for aquatic animals further up the food chain. Species of these worms respond quickly to increased amounts of pollution in the water and on the ocean bottom. Their presence or absence may indicate important changes in the marine environment.

Some subspecies are at risk, but clam worms are OK

Most of this species is doing just fine, at least when not being used for bait or eaten by humans. However, you might just want to think twice before skinny dipping on May-June new or full moon tides!

By Fred Jennings

Featured Creature: Giant Barrel Sponge

What creature grows tall and sturdy, cleans up its neighborhood, and defends itself from predators – all without moving a muscle?

The Giant Barrel Sponge, or Xestospongia muta!

Photo By Twilight Zone Expedition Team 2007, NOAA-OE – NOAA Photo Library (Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

A Giant Barrel by any other name…

Giant barrel sponges are aptly named for their shape and great size. They grow over 1 m tall, but only grow an average of about 1.5 cm a year. After all, good things take time!

Giant barrel sponges come in a range of colors, depending on the presence of the cyanobacteria that they work with in symbiosis. They can be pink, purple, brown, reddish brown, and gray, and tend to be different colors at different depths.

You may be wondering why this “giant barrel” doesn’t look very much like Spongebob Squarepants, or the sponge you use to clean up in the kitchen. Well sponges, or animals of the phylum Porifera, come in all shapes and sizes, and there is great diversity among the 8,550 species of them. Sponges are quite ancient, with their oldest fossil records dating back 600 million years, so they’ve had time to differentiate and find their own ecological niches.

The giant barrel sponge is known as the “Redwood of the Sea.” The phrase comes from the fact that giant barrel sponges share the tendency for individuals to live long lives, from a few hundred to thousands of years old. In fact, the oldest known giant barrel sponge is over 2000 years old.

Old age isn’t the only thing they have in common with their counterparts on land. Like the magnificent redwoods, they do wonders to clean up and support the environment around them. Giant barrel sponges can filter up to 50,000 times their own volume in water in a single day. They also provide habitat to several small fish and other invertebrates that can be found living inside or on the surface of the sponge.

Photo by Andre Oortgijs (CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

How does such a giant creature sustain itself?

Although giant barrel sponges are, well, giant, their diet is anything but. These creatures, like many species of whales, sustain their size not by eating very large sources of food, but by eating large volumes of it. Giant barrel sponges are filter feeders, and consume microorganisms from the water around them that they pump through their bodies. The sponges have special cells along their inner cavities called choanocytes, which work to facilitate the movement of water and the capture of food from it.

In their ocean food chain, giant barrel sponges take their place above their symbiotic partners cyanobacteria, and are consumed in turn by macroorganisms like fishes, turtles, and sea urchin. They try to defend themselves by releasing chemicals to repel their predators, but there’s only so much they can do when stuck in one place, waiting to be ingested by so many types of marine life. Like other filter feeders, giant barrel sponges ultimately form an important branch in the transfer of nutrients from very small to much larger life forms.

They don’t even have tissues, let alone organs, but their simple structure is more than enough to ensure their survival and proliferation. Giant barrel sponges reproduce by spawning, and are one of the few species of sponge that undertake sexual reproduction. Males and females release sperm and egg cells into the ocean synchronously, so that when the time comes, they have a chance of contributing to a fertilized egg that grows into a larva and, after being carried by currents to a new spot of the ocean floor, establishes itself as an independent sponge.

Check out this short video of the spawning phenomenon:

A valued community member

Giant barrel sponges are native to the oceans of the Americas, found primarily in the Caribbean Sea, and observed as far south as the coasts of Venezuela.

Due to their filtration capabilities, giant barrel sponges are real assets to the ecosystems they are a part of, but boosting water quality is not the only ecological role they play. As mentioned, many other creatures live in and around the cavernous sponges, and giant barrel sponges are one of the largest organisms in the coral reef environments where they are found. They are thought to help coral anchor to substrate (the mix of mineral, rock, and skeleton that binds reefs together), and themselves make up about 9% of coral reef substrate in certain areas where they are found. By helping in this binding process, giant barrel sponges can play an important role in reef regeneration.

Though the giant barrel sponge is not currently classified as threatened, like all of us, it is living in vulnerable times, as reef habitats are weakened in warming, acidifying waters. It is susceptible to a disease called Sponge Orange Band disease that afflicts all kinds of sponges. They can also be damaged or killed by human activities that disturb reefs and break sponges off from their surroundings.

On the flip side, when these great creatures are doing well, they enable the thriving of life all around them. May all of us aspire to say the same.

With one giant smile,
Maya

Sources and Further Reading:
https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Xestospongia_muta
https://oceana.org/marine-life/corals-and-other-invertebrates/giant-barrel-sponge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_barrel_sponge
https://www.americanoceans.org/species/giant-barrel-sponge
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sponge.html

Featured Creature: Pacific Salmon

This week we ask,

What creatures navigate oceans, climb mountains, feed forests, and motivate us to destroy renewable energy infrastructure?

The Pacific Salmon!

USEPA Environmental Protection Agency (Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

How do salmon find their way home?

Pacific salmon are famous for their migrations from the saltwater habitats they live in as mature adults to the freshwater rivers and streams where they were born and return to spawn. Salmon have two means of finding their way back to where they first hatched, often to the very same patch of gravel.

In the open ocean, they have a GPS system based on the earth’s magnetic fields sensed through their lateral line (a highly-sensitive line of nerves running down each side of their bodies). When they get near shore, they then follow smells that they imprinted from their natal river up to where they originally hatched, to spawn again and continue this cycle.

How do salmon manage to get back upstream?

Salmon make their way back home against the current of streams and rivers, even climbing mountains in the process. As they go, they feed upland forests by transporting ocean nutrients into the headwaters of their natal streams, supporting all kinds of life in the process (and not just hungry bears)!

Istvan Banyai (CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

What happens to Pacific salmon after they successfully spawn?

Spawned-out Pacific salmon all die after completing their journey. In late fall, on a salmon river, rotting corpses and dying fish appear everywhere, white with mold and stinking with decay. In doing so, they feed forests and the aquatic life that sustains the next generation of fish when they hatch in the spring. We don’t really know why they all die after spawning, unlike the Atlantic salmon, which live after the process is complete.

Bears also increase the ecological reach of these salmon by catching them in rivers and streams and carrying them deep into the forest to feast. This brings their helpful nutrients, particularly nitrogen, into dense stretches of forest where they can fertilize the ecosystem and help trees grow. In fact, it is estimated that eighty percent of the nitrogen in the trees of the Great Bear Forest in Canada comes from salmon. Learn about the interdependent links of salmon, bears, and forest health here.

Where do we find Pacific salmon?

Pacific salmon are an anadromous species, which means they live in seawater but spawn in freshwater. They hatch from eggs in gravel and spend their early years in freshwater rivers up high in the mountains and forests along the Pacific coast. Then, once they reach about 6-8 inches in length, they move down through the estuarial waters to spend several years in the open ocean, feeding and growing large, before they journey upstream to spawn and die.

What is the cultural significance of these fish?

Pacific salmon are part of a religious cycle of life for Indigenous peoples on the American and Canadian West coasts as well as across the planet. Their annual return is celebrated as part of a natural process in which Autumn brings a bountiful harvest of fish to add to other stores of food to last through a long cold winter. Salmon are objects of worship by coastal native inhabitants, human and nonhuman alike, who depend on the annual return of these salmon in the fall to help them get through a long cold winter.

A Shoshone-Paiute tribal member during the reintroduction of the Chinook Salmon
into the East Fork Owyhee River by the Shosone-Paiute Tribe (May 28, 2015)
(Photo by Jeff Allen, Northwest Power and Conservation Council)

We want renewable energy sources! So why are we destroying them for these salmon?

From the 18th into the 20th centuries, our human thirst for factory power had us constructing many dams on our rivers, with little attention to their harmful ecological impact. Many of our anadromous fish species – adapted to the specific conditions of their river watersheds – were lost forever when dams left them unable to complete their journeys upstream.

It is only in recent decades that a powerful movement for dam removal and habitat restoration has been gaining momentum as a means of saving these precious species. The beneficial effects of removing these barriers have been spectacular, as rivers – freed from their shackles – blossom with new life. Along with the salmon have come a revival of other runs, including steelhead, herring, eels, shad and other diadromous fish (ones that transition between freshwater and saltwater environments), as well as birds and wildlife previously not seen in these areas. Our rivers are showing us all that we had lost and all the flourishing that is possible once we get out of their way.

How are human activities impacting these salmon?

Pacific salmon are in serious trouble. A thirst for hydropower has placed them at dire risk of extinction. We are removing dams, building fish ladders on existing dams (since their proper design is crucial), making sure culverts and other means of fish passage stay open and unhindered. But salmon are cold water species, so a warming planet puts them in peril.

However, there is much we can do to protect them, and restore them once they are threatened or lost. Several short but informative videos on salmon restoration efforts can be found here and here.

May we keep supporting the Pacific Salmon,

Fred

Fred is from Ipswich, MA, where he has spent most of his life. He is an ecological economist with a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Stanford, both in economics. Fred is also an avid conservationist and fly fisherman. He enjoys the outdoors, and has written about natural processes and about economic theory. He has 40 years of teaching and research experience, first in academics and then in economic litigation. He also enjoys his seasonal practice as a saltwater fly fishing guide in Ipswich, MA. Fred joined Biodiversity for a Livable Climate in 2016.

Important interactions

Dig Deeper

Poaching: A Threat to a Delicate Balance

Dig Deeper

A Living Fossil

The Yangtze: Lifeline and Powerhouse

When Growth Outpaces Nature

Missed Chances

Beyond the Tragedy of the Commons

Moving forward

Dig Deeper

Dig Deeper

Sadly, the black-capped petrel is currently threatened due to human activity.

Our collective action to green our neighborhoods can turn the tide on the climate crisis and save charming little birds like the black-capped petrel from extinction.

Dig Deeper

A Deep Dive

Lobster vs. Whale

What Rights Do Whales Have?

The Blame Game

The Right Way Forward

Dig Deeper

Meet Our Flightless Friends

The Birds that Swim

What Else Do Penguins Have to Teach Us?

What is the Penguin’s Role in its Ecosystem?

Threats

Life on Earth

Sources and Further Reading

Birds of a Feather

So, are they as colorful as everyone says?

Are kingfishers Really Kings of Fishing?

Can the blue-but-not-really-blue kingfisher get any more interesting?

Learning from kingfishers

Kingfishers: A Little More Like You Than You Think

The Small Snowplows of the Ocean

What’s on the menu? Clam chowder!

What role does the moon snail play in its environment?

What can you do to protect these clam-chowing sand plows and the biodiversity of the marine sediment?

Photosynthesis in Nature through Symbiosis

Elysia Chlorotica’s Way of Being: Living In Between Worlds

Yet What is This Chloroplast Maintenance For? Does It Need Photosynthesis to Survive?

The Genesis of Symbiosis. The Origin of The Chloroplast. The Becoming of the Earth.

Anatomy

Diet

Population

Big, bigger, and biggest

From coast to coast

Climate Regulator

Size doesn’t equal protection

Formidable Feeding Habits

Amphibious Nature

Venom

Life Cycle

Aquatic Aviators

Family Life

Persevering Under Threat

Lifestyle and relationships

Life on the move

Ecological powerhouses

Conservation and Resurgence

One Clever Cat

Human and Habitat Pressures

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