In the Arctic north of Norway, the beach at Gåshamna, Svalbard is strewn with the debris of old whalers, and the bigger-than-dinosaur bones of the great whales. We pick our footing carefully around the wood and iron, around the shacks. We don’t want to damage the ruins. We walk around whale jawbones the size of [...]
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 [...]
Blog previously posted on Huffington Post on Feb 7, 2012: How naive I was to have thought, back in my relative youth, that the 1986 global ban on whaling was, well—a global ban on whaling. Whaling not only continues, it’s intensifying. Each year now, Japan, Norway, and Iceland kill about 1,600 whales (mostly Finback and [...]
In the morning our ship, National Geographic Explorer, dropped us off at a place called Maiviken, affording us a spectacular several-mile hike to a place called Grytviken. Grytviken is the site of another abandoned whaling station. And the site of Ernest Shackleton’s grave. It’s also got a small museum. No one really lives here, but [...]
Halloween found us in Fortuna Bay; dawn revealed a fog-shrouded South Georgia Island. Probably the scariest thing about this Halloween was news that the world’s human population is now 7 billion. The implications of this encompass everything. And while pundits and bloggers argue over whether rich or poor people are worst for the planet, I [...]
Last evening we left the Falklands with its pleasing person-to-sheep ratio (only 3,000 people live in the Falklands; we toured one person’s sheep ranch that occupies a mere 15,000 acres.). Before we were entirely clear of the islands, we crossed a commuter highway for thousands of Sooty Shearwaters that were headed back to their nesting [...]
We landed at Puerto Madryn, inside the protected waters of Peninsula Valdez. This is Patagonia. Dry, windswept, scrubby. We’ve seen the strange little mammals called Maras that look like a cross between small antelope and rabbits—but are rodents. And Guanacos, one of the llama-like South American members of the camel family. Then on to the [...]
Day 3. Began with another kayaking trip. Good morning exercise in exquisite light surrounded by mountain forests mirrored in glass-calm water. I saw a Red-necked Grebe and a female Common Merganser ferrying ducklings on her back. We weighed anchor and soon found a Humpback Whale whom we stayed with for several hours as it rose [...]
Day 2. In the morning we spent an hour kayaking Welcome Harbour. I paddled along the shore. Rocks grew rockweed and hosted periwinkle-like snails and limpets. I was looking mainly for birds, which were remarkably few, but heard an unseen thrush, likely a Hermit, and a wren, and saw kingfishers, several Townsend’s Warblers, several immature [...]
Blue Ocean Institute