Egad, it’s been a month again. Just thought I’d drop a note to let concerned readers know that I am indeed still alive. For the last two weeks, I’ve been pedal-to-the-metal doing field research in the Caribbean, around the island of Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles to be specific (the previous three weeks, and for that matter the last several months, require a more prosaic excuse, with which I will not bore you). For some reason, it’s always very difficult to convince people that I have been working my you-know-what off on a tropical island. They invariably jump to the conclusion that we’re sitting around drinking fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them. Which is not true at all — we never use those little umbrellas. I do realize that this does not qualify me for hardship pay. Hence the title of this post.
Don’t misunderstand me — I’m not complaining. If you’re going to be working somewhere, a tropical island is a favorable place to do it. Our team was on Curacao as part of a research project, supported by the National Geographic Society, studying the ecology and biogeography of symbiotic Caribbean shrimp, which I have alluded to before. This may sound a bit obscure (OK, it is obscure) but we argue that the high diversity and clearly definable habitats of these shrimp, which inhabit living coral-reef sponges, makes them an ideal group for studying general questions about the origin and maintenance of coral-reef biodiversity. And, since the Carmabi Research Station where we set up shop is surrounded by hotel beaches and tiki bars, we got a lot of practice honing this argument for the constant stream of mildly amused random passers-by who were wondering what on earth we were doing so intently while they lay all day in a state of sun-and umbrella-drink-induced torpor. I hope I don’t sound like an ingrate.
So (as the old explorers’ tales go): there we were. Very interesting place, Curacao. Quite different than anywhere else I’ve been in the Caribbean. Looks more like Texas. I’m told that the name Curacao derives from a Portugese term that translates roughly as “wasteland”. And it surely must have seemed so to exhausted 16th century sailors looking for decent food, water, and precious metals. The island is very arid, with a negligible layer of debris that passes for soil covering the limestone rock and supporting a burnt-looking vegetation of vicious thorn scrub (Acacia of some sort) and saguaro-like cacti. Not much good for anything other than goats. And lizards of several sorts, which are ubiquitous. Those enterprising colonialists did manage to find a use for the place as a hub of the slave trade, which they would no doubt be happy to forget. Nowadays, however, it’s a bustling place with a population of 150,000 people supported mainly by the massive oil refinery that processes the fruits of Venezuela’s wells a few miles away on the South American mainland.
For our specific purposes it was an equally interesting place. Great diving: clear water, and lots of the magic coral rubble that produces shrimp, in relatively shallow water. Indeed, the reef at Eastpunt, at the windward eastern end of the island removed from much human influence, had without a doubt the highest coral cover and diversity of any place I’ve seen in the Caribbean in the last few decades. Easily 80-90% cover of live coral. And small but healthy thickets of the formerly dominant shallow-water Caribbean corals Acropora cervicornis and Acropora palmata, which have long since succumbed to disease and various other stresses elsewhere. Very strange — like a visit several decades back in time. A rare and much valued ray of hope in a bleak outlook for Caribbean reefs. It is a tremendous relief to know that these reefs exist at least somewhere. Hope springs eternal.
To be continued . . .









The National Wildlife Federation has just released an important new report “Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Habitats of the Chesapeake Bay“, which provides the most detailed and comprehensive view yet of the likely impacts of climate change on specific habitats within the Chesapeake Bay region. The full report , as well as a 12-page summary are available
Chesapeake wetlands have been declining fast in recent decades. The classic example is the 
Consider the impact that this single unsung man (so unsung, in fact, that the pixelated snapshot above is the only one I could find of him online!) has had on the environmental awareness of an entire generation — perhaps even two or three generations — of American citizens. Who can say how many kids in the 50s and 60s and 70s decided, while browsing through one of these little books, to spend the afternoon outside hunting for caterpillars instead of yielding to the seductive stupor of the cathode ray tube? Who can say how many of today’s alternative energy entrepeneurs and scientists and educators and conservationists caught fire as a result of a spark generated by one of these books? I can’t, but I know one: me.
When I was a kid, my family drove cross-country (in a van without air-conditioning that was prone to overheating in the desert and climbed the Rockies at about 18 mph, etc.), from Arlington, Virginia to LA, every three years, where we spent the bulk of three weeks visiting my aunt and her family. When I tell people this they think my parents were crazy. But it was a the adventure of a lifetime and an incomparable learning experience for kids. We saw a lot of the country, did a lot of camping, and my parents occasionally allowed us to visit the cheesy fake Indian trinket shops that were common along the dustier stretches of Route 66 in the olden days. One day when I was probably about seven (this would have been the late 1960s), we were visiting Walnut Canyon, which is somewhere in the southwest, and I convinced my parents to buy me the Golden Nature Guide to Rocks and Minerals. I felt so grown up to have a real book instead of a kid’s book. It was an early watershed moment in my life as a bookworm and naturalist.
Nevertheless, I was not destined to be a geologist. For one thing, rocks are dead. Or so they seemed to me. I found animals much more interesting. Second anecdote: Around the same time, in second grade, I became obsessed with turtles. I take this herpetophilia to be a common, though poorly understood, genetic trait located somewhere on the Y chromosome, since it is so commonly expressed among young boys. This is despite the fact that my white-bread suburban neighborhood turned out, to my dismay, to be nearly devoid of reptiles. I saw maybe two or three box turtles, and no snakes at all, in the wild while I was growing up despite frequent expeditions mounted for that purpose to the local park where I spent much of my youth. But I can remember sitting rapt with the pocket-sized Golden Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians, studying the pictures, memorizing what they ate, looking at the ingenious maps that showed purple where the summer (pink) and winter (blue) ranges overlapped. This genetic propensity has in fact been transferred to my son, who latched on to my antique Reptile guide in an uncannily similar way and spent a lot of time with it (it is now bound with duct tape).
It appears that I’m not the only one with such fond memories. Evidently the original versions of the Guides have recently become “
OK, not exactly live – It’s a day after the fact. But who would have paid attention if this read: Yesterday from EarthFest!

See also
Interesting editorial in
I suppose we should have known it was all too good to be true. What could be wrong with using plants for fuel? They take carbon out of the air, so burning them up in the tank just puts it back up there — no net change, right?
Tired of sifting through the virtual world for interesting stuff?
. . . and your green at
As the evidence for ongoing climate change has grown incontrovertible, there is increasing urgency to the question of what these changes hold in store for us.
The Figure at left shows the northern hemisphere temperature variation (as anomalies from the long-term average, panel A), war frequency, and rate of change in human population from 1400 to approximately the beginning of the industrial revolution in 1900. The number of wars is shown for the northern hemisphere as a whole (bright green line, and right axis scale), Asia (pink), Europe (turquoise), and arid areas of the northern hemisphere (orange). Panel C shows number of wars worldwide as recorded by three different authors using different thresholds for defining war — as can be seen, the trends are roughly similar. Finally, panel D shows the 20-year population growth rate in Europe (turquoise), Asia (pink), and the northern hemisphere as a whole (blue), as well as the 50-year fatality index in the region (bright green). Cold phases of history are shaded in gray. The bright green curves correspond to the right axis. 
The figure at right summarizes in diagrammatic form the pathways by which long-term climate variation influenced frequency of war and human population dynamics in China and Europe during preindustrial times (i.e. up to 1900). Solid lines indicate direct effects, and dotted lines indirect feedbacks. Thicker arrows indicates stronger correlations. There are several inrerrelated impacts of climate change mediated by the interactions of humans with our food supply and with each other, but food supply is central.
Top ten list - Excellent!
An honor such as this comes with responsibility of course. And in the characteristic pyramid-scheme modus operandi of the blogosphere, mine is to finger ten more blogs that I deem “excellent!” I am of course delighted to do so. Thus, in no particular order: