Earth to Sea News, Issue No. 27
A sea otter in a kelp bed, the same species that is back in Clayoquot Sound. Photo: Mike Baird, CC BY 2.
Author
Nicole McMahon
Conservation
Under the water off Tofino, a First Nation is growing a forest
In Tla-o-qui-aht waters off Tofino, guardians, scientists and a kelp grower are raising baby kelp on four long lines under the sea and planting it out so young salmon and herring have a forest again. About 1,500 sea otters, back after the fur trade, are helping.
Conservation
On Fiji's Coral Coast, a village of 150 people planted 18,000 corals
Naidiri is 32 households on Fiji's Coral Coast. Since 2009 it has kept a stretch of its own sea closed to fishing, and in one year planted 18,000 corals and 10,000 mangroves. Now its youth group wants the protected line pushed further out.
Global Good News
Blue, the size of a golf ball, and brand new to science
In 2015 a robot camera 1,773 metres down beside Darwin Island caught a small blue octopus crossing the sand, and the scientists watching live could not believe their eyes. This year it got its name, and was described whole, in thousands of X ray slices.
Global Good News
On a volcanic island reached twice a week by ferry, Japan found a bird it never knew it had
Between Yakushima and Amami, the Tokara Islands are twelve specks of volcanic rock with a ferry twice a week. A small olive warbler that sings there every spring is now its own species, Japan's first new bird in 45 years, told apart by its genes and its song.
Innovations
A phone scan, an hour of design, and a new arm made close to home
Fitting a prosthetic arm begins with the socket, and that is slow, skilled work. Laura Echeverri Giraldo of Pereira has won Colombia's James Dyson Award for a system that does it from a phone scan, cuts eight hours of design to one, and prints it in the person's own town.
Conservation
On a Northumberland beach, England's smallest seabird doubled a record that stood since 1994
At Long Nanny on the Northumberland coast, National Trust rangers kept watch over the dunes day and night all summer, and 126 pairs of little terns nested there, more than double the 1994 record. At Blakeney Point, a thousand pairs of sandwich terns came back after two years away.
Global Good News
Helper, the Utah town that says beavers saved it
Helper is an old railway town in the Utah desert, and the Price River through it used to shrink to a trickle. In 2019 a Utah State University student began moving beavers there. Six years on the river runs all year, the fish are back, and the town floats down it all summer.
Global Good News
On Maupiti, the breadfruit tells you which fish to eat
West of Bora Bora, a small island paired every fish with a breadfruit variety so each one got the rest of the year off, and a geographer and a Tahitian researcher have just written down what the islanders carved in stone.
Global Good News
An island of two hundred people paid for its own dig, and found a monastery to rival Iona
On Lios Mor, a limestone island in Loch Linnhe on Scotland's west coast, the historical society paid for the excavation, islanders dug beside the archaeologists, and a paper out this week says their monastery was melting gold and silver thirteen centuries ago.
Conservation
A ladybird, a glow worm and a fly with eyes on stalks: Australia picks its insect of the year
Voting is open in the ABC's Australian Insect of the Year, a tortoise shelled ladybird is in the final six, and the reigning champion is a dragonfly with painted wings.
Sustainable Living
Milk in glass comes home to Timboon
Schulz Organic Dairy in Timboon has sold milk in returnable glass since 2017, and from July its bottle is made in South Australia instead of shipped in from overseas.