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Channel: Elizabeth Preston | The Atlantic
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Recalculating: The Mind and the Map

The mere mention of Boston inspires dread in my family. On one infamous trip from our home in upstate New York to a Boston wedding, we were done in by a single step in the directions sent by family...

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Making Facebook for Whales

There are only around 500 North Atlantic right whales left in the world, making them one of the most endangered of all whale species. This month, nearly that many data scientists raced to complete a...

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Solving an Undersea Mystery With CT Scans

Brittle stars, relatives of starfish, have tough exoskeletons and long, slender arms. Most of the 2,000 or so species use the standard, hands-off marine method of reproduction, spewing their eggs and...

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Eating Iguana at the Explorers Club

A server gasps when she comes into the kitchen and sees the iguana. Curled onto a sheet pan and surrounded by kale garnishes, the muscular reptile is very much dead. But its lifelike appearance is,...

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How Bad Is Ocean Garbage, Really?

Chelsea Rochman, an ecologist at the University of California, Davis, has been trying to answer a dismal question: Is everything terrible, or are things just very, very bad?Rochman is a member of the...

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Scientists Have Developed Shark Vision

David Gruber sees glowing life forms everywhere he looks. He’s found dozens of fluorescent corals in the Great Barrier Reef. In 2014, he reported on more than 180 fish species that fluoresce. Last...

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How Lasers Can Help Clean Up Beach Trash

One strike against the human species is that we’ve filled the Earth’s oceans and beaches with garbage. A point in our favor, though: We’ve figured out how to use 3-D laser scanners to automatically...

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Making Room for Autism in the Workplace

George glares at me from behind his desk. His hair is buzzed short and his mouth is set in a sneer. He asks about my prior work experience, then replies sarcastically, “Okay, well, what you’d be doing...

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A Robot Buoy That Saves Whales From Boat Strikes

Twenty-two miles south of New York’s Fire Island, in an ocean region jam-packed with shipping traffic, there’s a bobbing yellow-and-blue buoy that’s actually a robot spy. It’s using advanced acoustic...

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Under the Sea in a Ragworm's Garden

Looking for a little hideaway beneath the waves? Until you find an octopus’s garden, maybe you can make do with a garden tended by a worm.Hediste diversicolor, also known as the common ragworm, is a...

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Who's Peeing in the Global Pool?

Compiling more than 10,000 lines of data on the waste products of aquatic animals, from lake trout to pond insects to ocean shellfish, was more time-consuming than the ecologist Michael Vanni expected....

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The Mystery of Off-The-Grid Whale Moms

Thick fog sat over Cape Cod Bay the morning of April 20, so the survey boat had to work by sound. Every so often, the researchers aboard cut their engine and listened for deep blows to track down...

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The Lonely Lives of Dolphin Lice

It’s hard to muster sympathy for lice. Most of the parasites seem to be doing fine—living, feeding and multiplying on their hapless hosts. But lice that live on dolphins have it tough. Their hosts are...

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The Bloody Pirate Life of One of the Ocean’s Most Elusive Creatures

When the current dragged the giant squid toward a Spanish beach in October 2016, the creature was already near death. Wounded and suffocating, she stayed alive in the shallows—far from the deep, frigid...

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Baleen Holds Secrets to Whales’ Lives—and Deaths

The most convenient place for a dead whale to wash up is somewhere that can be reached with large construction equipment. But when a 12-year-old right whale died in 2005, gruesomely tangled in fishing...

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