Stories
“Congratulations on your bundle of joy.” That’s what researchers at the New England Aquarium are saying to a North Atlantic right whale just spotted off the South Carolina coast with her sixth calf. The 39-year-old mom named Slalom has at least four grand-offspring — making her a pillar of the surviving right whale population, which…
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Nitrogen from septic systems has been disrupting local waterways for years, causing fish kills and blooms of toxic algae. Now, field testing on Cape Cod is playing a national role in the development of technology to monitor nitrogen — even in individual backyards — as a step toward keeping the excess out of our waters.…
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Tucked away in the New Bedford Whaling Museum is a room full of records. It holds manuscripts, manifests, banking records and crew accounts from New England’s storied whaling industry. It also contains the largest collection of whaling logbooks in the world. Logbooks were a legal record of each voyage, in which first mates documented…
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Energy is essential to our lives. It keeps us warm, powers the ventilators in our hospitals, runs the machines that package our food and helps us see through the darkness of a winter night. But our energy system carries costs — costs that are driving climate change. The energy system is complicated. And as we…
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A federal appeals court is reinstating restrictions on fishing gear in a nearly 1,000-square-mile swathe of ocean off Maine’s coast. It’s a blow to Maine’s lobstermen and a victory for advocates for the endangered North Atlantic right whale. In October, in an effort to protect the roughly 340 right whales remaining on the planet from…
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New research on the combined threat of rising sea levels and extreme weather focuses on coastal areas in New England. By simulating hazards like flooding with computer models, the researchers say their findings could help prepare communities that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. “We’re particularly interested in looking at close to the…
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Marshes have been called the “kidneys of the landscape” because they clean pollutants from water. They also protect communities against storm surges and erosion, and are better than forests at capturing carbon, so are considered critical in the fight against climate change. But when they’re under stress, they degrade, and actually release carbon into the…
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Sea level rise is accelerating along Maine’s coast. This year, record high water levels have been documented in Bar Harbor, Cutler and Wells. For coastal communities it means threats to buildings and infrastructure, the loss of beaches and intrusion of salt water into private wells. A modest 1.6 foot rise, which is expected by the year 2050, will…
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A mid-sized project in York County that’s part of the state’s new “community solar” program is just about to go live. It’s happening as the state’s capacity for generating low-polluting electricity from the sun has surged in the last two years by more than 300% — and that’s expected to grow as the state moves…
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On a sunny day in August, environmental scientist Kellie Merrell scans the shoreline from a motorboat in the shallows on Lake Fairlee. There are lots of cottages. White pine trees tower over the water, reaching out from a few rocky points. Merrell is here with a team of scientists from the state to do a…
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