On a blustery March morning, I crouch at the Pacific’s edge to inspect a delicate white disc tossed onto the beach by the surging tide. Suddenly a passer-by shouts:
“They call them ‘dollars,’ but they aren’t worth anything!”
The naturalist in me bristles. I want to run after the stranger and make him look—really look—at the remarkable creature in my hand. Even in death, the intricate skeleton of a Pacific sand dollar (Dendraster excentricus) retains its elegance and beauty.
In the galaxy of shimmering sea stars, none shone brighter than the spectacular sunflower star. Bigger, bolder and hungrier than any of its kin, Pycnopodia helianthoides could unfurl as many as two dozen arms, rocket across the ocean floor and devour a purple sea urchin in moments. As an apex predator—dubbed the “Death Star” by awed divers—it feared none and was feared by all.
Then, almost overnight, it vanished.
“Do you think whales ever walked the earth?”I thought the captain of a whale watch boat in Monterey Bay was asking a trick question. But it’s no riddle—it’s a scientifically documented, evolutionary fact.
The largest creatures on the planet, whales are classified, along with dolphins and porpoises, as cetaceans, from an ancient Greek word for sea monster. However, they descended from rather humble four-legged mammals that hunted and fished along the riverbanks of what is now Pakistan and India.
In one of evolution’s most dramatic U-turns, these land dwellers returned to the ocean from which their ancestors had emerged. In a geological blink—roughly 10 million years—they reshaped their bodies for an aquatic life. Fur thinned. Limbs flattened. Tails strengthened. Nostrils began their slow migration to the top of the head. Hooves gave way to flukes
A deluge struck California over the holidays. With almost daily downpours, my rain gauge recorded thirteen inches in less than two weeks. Trees fell. Cables snapped. Thousands lost power. For a while, our neighborhood became an island, with roads flooded in every direction. During a typical winter, rain collects in shallow depressions in the land, called vernal ponds. This year entire fields turned to lakes.
It’s snow time in the Northern Hemisphere, the season of winter wonderlands and skiers’ delight. But most landlubbers don’t realize—as I didn’t until recently—that it’s always snowing in the sea.
This underwater snowfall, known as marine snow, drifts through every ocean on the planet. The term was coined in the early 1950s by Japanese researchers who described “snowflakes” swirling in waters stirred by their submersible. Invisible from shore and rarely noticed even by sailors, the silent drizzle helps keep the oceans productive and the planet healthy.
The kings are coming. As the new year begins, the highest tides of the year along the Northern California coast surge ashore—swirling across jetties, smashing against cliffs, engulfing beaches, inundating mudflats, pummeling piers. Their watery domain extends so far inland that it seems, for a moment, as if the world is being remade.
When the tide retreats, logs lie tossed like twigs along the shore. Tangles of kelp cling to rocks. The sand where the sea pranced just hours before shimmers like a vast mirror reflecting a silvery sky. In newly exposed tidepools, an underwater realm rarely touched by air or light opens–a window into the secrets of the deep.
As I jog along a local beach, a raucous skirmish brings me to a full stop. In a furious duel for possession, two squawking gulls are tugging a Dungeness crab into the air. When their grip loosens, the hapless victim plummets—upside down, legs flailing---onto the sand....
In this season of gratitude, when we hold our loved ones close, blue marbles remind us of our wider home — the blue world that underpins our lives, joys, sorrows, dreams and aspirations. As we struggle to keep our balance in a whirl of social, political and environmental upheaval, a blue marble, shining with the grace of gratitude, can serve as a powerful anchor.
The chartered fishing boat plows through the swells due west from the Sonoma coast with nary an angler on board. Birders—sheathed in slickers, binoculars slung around their necks—line the railing. As my maiden voyage begins, cryptic cries erupt around me.
Mud sucks—literally. On land, it squishes underfoot and slimes your shoes. In seaside shallows, it clutches your feet and tugs with the ferocity of an angry alligator.
I know. Wading back to shore after fieldwork with Bodega Marine Lab scientists in Tomales Bay, I lost my balance and plunged into what felt like slow-hardening concrete. Every time I tried to pry my foot loose, I lurched back into the sludge. A graduate student reached out to help—only to skid into the ooze next to me.
