Carl Safina

Today was the first day of abalone season. These mitt-sized snails cling to rocks in water from the high-tide zone down to about 60 feet deep. We accompanied several fishermen who dive among the sea lions and kelp to find them. They contend with water in the 50s, Fahrenheit, and strong surges from open-ocean rollers. [...]

Today Javier took us to a gorgeous estuary called Estero Coyote. There’s a little tourist place here called Camp Rene that has very cheap accommodations and was almost empty when we were there. But beautiful! The fishermen here grow oysters (they’re delicious and cost about 25 cents apiece). The estuary is filled with migratory and [...]

Punta Abreojos (Point Open-eyes) lies about 50 miles north of Laguna San Ignacio. Eddie Kisfaludy flew us up from the lagoon. It’s a small, dusty town, bookended by desert and sea. Coyotes walk the streets with some frequency, and ospreys’ huge stick nests adorn many of the utility poles. The draw here is a 60-year-old [...]

Shortly after breakfasting in a sand-floored adobe dining hall whose thick walls are made of old car tires, we boarded 2 outboard-powered open boats called pangas.  Our boats were captained by Pachico Mayoral and his son Jesus, who started guiding visitors to the whales here when he was 14 (pachicosecotours.com). Pachico told us that after [...]

Our PBS television series Saving the Ocean has brought me to the best place I’ve ever awoken on St. Patrick’s Day—Laguna San Ignacio, Baja, Mexico. We’re on the Pacific side, south of central on this extraordinarily rugged 800-mile peninsula. It’s a pretty bare place, sere and severe. The wind seems never to cease. And everything [...]

Monday, I had the pleasure of taking Peter Matthiessen (not only an iconic writer but also a personal hero of mine) out fishing off Montauk, New York, to witness the truly incredible spectacle of the autumn striped bass migration.  My sister Lydia also joined us and is in one of the photos. The striped bass [...]

Are cod beginning a recovery in New England? That’s a question we’re looking at for an episode of our PBS series Saving The Ocean. For centuries, cod were a major economic driver in New England and Atlantic Canada. They spurred settling of the New World and sent food everywhere from Europe to the Caribbean. They [...]

Salmon have lots of problems in many places. But some places have solutions. One is the Nisqually River in Washington State. There, wild Chinook Salmon were eliminated decades ago by overfishing and habitat loss. Now, an unusual coalition of politicians, civic planners, wildlife managers, farmers, fishing folks, and the Nisqually Indians are engaged in a [...]

For the next episode of our PBS television series Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina, we visited the National Archives outside Boston with noted marine historians Bill Leavenworth and Karen Alexander. Seeing the stacks and stacks of information was bewildering. But our guides for this expedition led us directly to 150-year-old fishing logbooks that they [...]

Netflix now offers Carl Safina’s PBS series Saving the Ocean. Join host Carl Safina as he chronicles the unsung heroes who are hard at work inventing and implementing solutions to save the world’s oceans. Most of us have heard about the effects overfishing, pollution and industry are having on the world’s oceans. It’s time for [...]