Nature & Wildlife
Tool use isn’t unique to humans. Various species across the animal kingdom, including birds, insects and mammals, exhibit the behavior. For example, sea otters use stones to crack open shellfish, while crows modify twigs to probe for hidden prey—and even have been observed using cars to crack open nuts.
Nature & Wildlife
The predator/prey relationship is an age-old association. Despite that longevity, it can still mystify us. For example, on a remote Alaskan island, gray wolves are rewriting the rule book by hunting sea otters—a behavior few scientists ever expected to see.
Nature & Wildlife
Sea otters can be a powerful ally in confronting climate change, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. In places where they’re thriving, they can maintain and restore kelp forests and coastal wetlands, strengthening our natural defenses against the worst impacts of a warming world.
Nature & Wildlife
Symbols of courage, resilience and strength, polar bears have been featured in decorative arts for centuries. Today, they may be best known as emblems of climate change, “charismatic victims” used to inspire people to care about our warming Earth.
Conservation
Found along 25% to 30% of the world’s coastlines, kelp forests are the most extensive marine vegetated ecosystems in the world. A type of seaweed, kelp attaches to rocky surfaces on the ocean floor and—like terrestrial plants and trees—grows upward toward the sunlight. Some experts even call kelp “the sequoias of the sea.”
Alaska
From a distance, the line of black bobbing forms in the waters just off the coast of Alaska look like flotsam, or driftwood entangled in kelp. But upon closer inspection, the almost comically adorable faces of a raft of playful sea otters pop up from behind cresting waves, their hind feet pointing toward the sky.
Travel Tales
Our small group of explorers stood quietly in a semicircle facing the crenelated black stone slab of an unassuming grave. The raised white Cyrillic letters read “Vitusi Beringi: 1681- 1741.” A slight offshore wind blew ripples from the lead-colored bay below across this final resting place of my Danish countryman and explorer Vitus Bering.
Videos
Camera traps, GPS tracking and radio-collaring are all tools that researchers have traditionally used to study the wildlife that shares the planet with us. But it seems there’s now another method—an ingenious one—that allows us to unobtrusively infiltrate communities in the natural world without letting our very presence alter them.
Nature & Wildlife
Sept 23-28 marks the 10th Anniversary of Sea Otter Awareness Week, a time when we recognize and appreciate the critical role sea otters play in the nearshore ecosystem. Sea otters are near and dear to our hearts because we frequently run into them on our Alaska tours.
