There were about fifty thousand eggs in this one incubating tank. They are moved into another tank in another room for the longest yolk sac period of any fish—about six weeks. When they hatch and are around an eighth of an inch long they are given Artemia, a tiny brine shrimp that looks like a winged bird under the microscope. The tanks are vacuumed daily to remove clay (which is added for turbidity so the little fish do not go toward the light all the time), dead fish, and Artemia.
When they are half an inch long they have eyes on either side of their head like any regular fish; their bodies are translucent and the Artemia is orange so you can see it moving through the tiny loops of their intestine. The survival rate is about 50 to 60 percent. At forty to fifty days old they become flatfish and their eyes move to the right side of their heads, although there are occasional lefties. Many don’t survive past this stage, and getting five thousand is a success. The last tank room held these precious survivors, which were now a few inches long and looked like miniature Halibut, mottled brown and white and gray. Massed together at the bottom of the tank, they seemed like an intricate mosaic. In the wild, Shelley said, it is very hard to see them. They come to shallow inshore waters to grow, their coloration blending in with sand and rock so beautifully that they are often overlooked by prey and predator alike. In the tank they feed on pellets of fish and algae-based lipids.
This is when they are shipped to Norway, Iceland, Prince Edward Island, Hawaii, and other places in the world for more growing and to market, a process that takes three to four years. One thousand of them can fit in a container box about four feet by six feet with cold water and oxygen for the forty-hour journey by FedEx.
In the last room, a gigantic swimming tank dominated, and we climbed up to a platform. Thirty-five big Halibut, most of them brood females, one weighing two hundred pounds, circled the tank. When they saw Shelley, they congregated like eager heifers to greet her. There were a few smaller males in there to increase the pheromones. Shelley called them all by name and they lifted their big lips out of the water for the frozen herring in her hand. Lucy was one of her favorites, and Meryl and Saphoria were the biggest. I tried to feed them but became shy when she warned me their teeth were very sharp. I touched one; her skin was as soft as a baby’s bottom.
A few months later, when Shelley had tricked them into thinking it was time to spawn, through light and temperature manipulation, I watched from the platform as she and her husband, Dan—another “fish person,” she said proudly—slipped into the water in dry suits. She and Dan have no children—they call these Halibut their babies.
They wandered the tank with penlights looking for two particular females. When Shelley found one she nudged it with her foot and it surfaced enough for her to lift it from underneath and slide it onto a table. Her hands were bare so as not to harm their skin; she keeps a pitcher of warm water on the table so she can warm up her fingers between fish. Shelley held her down gently as the fish thrashed, searching for gill breath in this element, her tail curling up and back in panic. When she finally calmed down, Shelley stroked her lower belly under the gill with the back of her hand pressing slightly to force the eggs out. Dan held a container and eggs poured forth like tapioca from a fountain. The first lady gave almost half a liter and the second the same. It lasted only a few minutes before they were lifted back into the water and swam away. These are gentle creatures, like cows, Shelley said—cows of the ocean. She called them her “girls.” Some brushed up against her in an affectionate way. Hannah was one of these, a big girl who was out to pasture because she was not spawning anymore. Shelley is passionate and humane; she will not let her girls be culled when they don’t produce anymore and lets them live out their lives either in the tank or in an aquarium. The Ripley’s Aquarium in Toronto is where two of her girls happily reside. Hannah glided by in the water gazing at Shelley adoringly with her opaque blue eyes comically close together on the right side of her head.
Before they left the tank Dan and Shelley took the milt from two males. It poured out of a similar orifice near the gills like thick milk gushing from a spout. Shelley set it aside to be cryofreezed and took four vials of already-frozen milt and poured them into the containers of freshly stripped eggs. Then she told me to gently swish them together with my hand in the frigid salt water. Within a minute, sperm found egg. I found it very moving to be the catalyst for thousands of fertilized eggs with one swirl of my hand. We took them to the first room, releasing them into their own huge dark tank to begin the process of incubation all over again.
Shelley is special. How many people in the world can say they raise baby Halibut for a living?
—
The sun hit small translucent marbles on the beach as far as the eye could see, sparkling like a crystal road. What was this tumbling in with every wave all afternoon? They rode the crest of the rollers and spilled onto the sand and rocks at the end of our town’s Crescent Beach, sometimes piling four inches high.
They were not hard at all. They were like jelly, glass jelly, like something Salvador Dalí might have painted, rearranging expectations in your mind. We all know Moon Jellyfish in this part of the world, and the largest jelly of all, the Lion’s Mane, with their orange fuzz and tentacles. These were different. They were crystal clear and inside was a perfect little indigo body like a tadpole, a tiny oblong of the brightest blue caught inside a glass globe.
Migrating birds went crazy in the September afternoon. Stoking up for the long flight to the Caribbean or South America, Sanderlings and Semipalmated Plovers dove their beaks into the gelatinous mass in a frenzy, but only the Sanderlings stayed. The others decided it was not for them. The Semipals rubbed the jelly off their beaks onto their breast feathers in an effort to extinguish the taste.
“They’re tunicates,” said a passerby.
“Tunicates?” I replied.
“That’s what someone said earlier. Google them.”
All the beaches were covered with them, a mile in each direction. It was a massive invasion. I collected a jarful to photograph; before I finished shooting them, arranged in clamshells and tiny pools of seawater, the jelly had disintegrated and the little blue creature was losing color.
There were thousands of different kinds of tunicates on the Internet. There were photographs of ones called sea squirts, some as big as a chair, attached to the ocean floor or rocks in a variety of shapes and vibrant colors. I saw none that looked like our little beauties.
I contacted Nova Scotia’s marine biologist Boris Worm, who told me that, indeed, they were tunicates and that they were of the phyllum Chordata just as we human beings are. They have a “notochord,” a kind of backbone or rod, which is found in all embryos of Chordata. I find this amazing. We are connected. These beautiful creatures were not jellies at all. They had a spine, a nervous system; they had a complex gut, and sexual and asexual ways of reproducing. They live inside their translucent globe for filtration, bringing water and phytoplankton in to eat and excreting fecal matter out the other end.
They are very, very old, first appearing around 500 million years ago. And they are common in the oceans of the world. Larry Madin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute is one of the world’s experts on gelatinous marine animals. He thanked me for sending the pictures and said they were of the order Salpida, or Salps, and the species Thalia democratica, a small tunicate that does not attach itself to rocks but spends its life free-floating in the deep ocean or the slopes of the continental shelf. At night they descend to two thousand feet but come close to the surface during the day. They can form long chains that move together through the water and reproduce asexually, or they can roam the water as single sexual beings. They are food for countless species, from large baleen whales to sea squirts. They also eat carbon-producing algae and so may mitigate against emissions that increase global warming.
Sometimes they swarm, creating huge mats that are carried by ocean currents to beaches such as ours. They are harmless and soon die on the
shore, lost to the hungry mites of the sand that devour the dead. We human beings are made of seawater and stardust. These Salps share that with us.
—
The fog was dense. There were about forty of us on the deck, a few yellow slickers piercing the wall of white. The weather was not unusual in the Bay of Fundy; still, it came on quickly, blanketing the water, making any whale sighting impossible. The captain cut the motor and told us to be very still. From port to starboard we waited, not moving a muscle. The lap of waves against the hull was gentle, and we moved with the cradle of the boat. We stared into the mist with the expectation of travelers in a brave new world. How long, I cannot remember. The whale surfaced without our knowing and then we heard the huge animal draw breath, a deep whoosh of air filling the great lungs before it slipped home to the dark waters. The breath of life.
EPILOGUE
We live in the most extraordinary time: massive changes to our climate are juxtaposed against the continuing miracle of the human brain, which recently transported us to see pictures of the farthest dwarf planet in our solar system. And we are connected in milliseconds to anyone in our world through handheld devices transporting our images, sounds, and ideas through the ether.
This instant connectivity has made it impossible to hide anymore. We have no secrets, there are no uncharted territories, and there is nowhere without the sound of human activity. A few minutes of silence snatched here and there in remote places is sure to be interrupted by the buzz of a plane or a saw or a phone. We are transparent and stand naked on the threshold of the future. And for all the exploration of space, all the cold stones and ice, there is no planet B. Earth is our home.
It is only through thoughtful management that we will save the declining species of the world. Tom Lovejoy said it many years ago: “We still tend to think in the very short term and locally when in fact we are disturbing global systems and the way the planet actually works. We need to consciously manage the planet.” We will not save all species. Those that need very particular niches to survive may not make it. But there is life everywhere, and life wants to thrive. Life-forms have been at it for millions of years. Birds, fish, and some mammals continue their ancient migratory patterns despite the buffeting of changing weather and human incursion. Many adapt. We can help them when they arrive in our area.
Our lines of connection have also created extensive communities of activism. Information is shared online, petitions are signed, and legislators are paying attention more than ever. There are thousands of organizations dedicated to saving the environment. This was not the case fifty years ago when I joined the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and a handful of others. Now we can surf the Internet and find organizations dedicated to saving bats, butterflies, sloths, orchids, or bogs. We can “adopt” an Elephant or a gorilla or a tortoise, or pledge to save habitats ensuring clean air, water, and landscapes.
We do what we can in the time of our lives to hold things in place. It is vital to do so. I believe it is a moral imperative as the most evolved creature on the planet to care for the home we share with all others. Everything we need, or make, comes from natural resources: food, clothing, shelter, minerals for technology. The rest is a constant dance with our imaginations, retelling stories a thousand ways and conjuring numbers to understand how the universe works. Without wild things and wild places our stories are diminished and we ourselves become stunted.
I cherish the hours I have spent with scientists in the field. I admire their patience, perseverance, and endless wonder at the natural world. In the face of so much bad news I felt sure they must be pessimistic about the future. But WCS’s chief of conservation, John Robinson, reminded me that you cannot be a conservationist and a pessimist. It is an oxymoron. The endeavor of conserving anything is an effort of optimism and hope.
There are almost fifty million people in the United States who call themselves bird watchers. Some will venture outside of their own region as I have done, some will visit nature centers and take part in bird counts. Most are content to watch birds and animals right where they live, marveling that a bit of unpredictable wildness visits them.
I am one of those people. Of all the places I have been, my own backyard, my “patch,” is the place I know and love best. It is deep in my heart: the soil and the scrub, the stream and the tide; it is where I watch the sky for birds as the seasons change, those winging in during spring to rest before heading north and those coming home to breed. My patch begins around my house and extends through the neighborhood and beyond as I learn the ways of creatures in nearby places. Protecting those species is my patch work.
Bon Portage Island is close to us. It lies a mile over the water, off Nova Scotia’s south shore, just an hour away. Fifty thousand Leach’s Petrels nest on this foggy outpost of windswept spruce trees. There were burrows everywhere on the forest floor, little holes peeking between tree roots and against spruce logs, making every step on the sod a bit precarious. I gingerly placed a toe down, testing the sphagnum to make sure I was not going to crash through the roof of a petrel home.
The young biologist gently cupped and drew a tiny Petrel chick from a three-foot burrow beneath the spongy moss at our feet, knowing its parents were off searching for food. They left before first light and would not be back until dark, traveling over the ocean perhaps a hundred miles to find tiny fish for their chick. She assured us they would not mind our touching their baby. I cradled the precious chick in my hand as it bleated in high dudgeon. Gray fluff radiated from two black eyes and its smell was deeply sweet, like violets in loam after a rain.
Bon Portage is owned by Acadia University and managed by the Nova Scotia Nature Trust. Students come to research the bird life and band some of the migrants passing through on their way south in the fall and north in the spring—thousands of birds, from warblers to thrushes. It is a protected island, considered one of the most important habitats in all of Nova Scotia, if not the northeast Atlantic. The protection offered by the university gives hope that the island will be home to these tiny birds forever.
Well, not forever. There is no “forever.” Things change. Things fall apart. New things come into being. The little petrels’ burrows on Bon Portage Island will almost certainly be inundated by rising tides, which are already apparent on Nova Scotia’s coast as the Greenland ice sheet melts and sweeps into the Labrador Current. Not this year or next, but some time. For now it is safe.
My patch is a kind of island, although connected to my neighbor, and she to the next, and the next and on and on; our quilt can blanket the world. I protect my patch for the creatures who live there. I don’t poison them or their grasses or trees. I encourage the plants they like to eat and nest in, and the nectar they sip from flowers. In return I am serenaded with song in the morning, the Muskrat grazing on pond reeds, and the eels making circles in the water at night to stir up insects. I welcome the sweet trill of the Yellow Warbler in the wild rose, and the Black-throated Green Warbler in the woods.
As the days grow short, shorebirds return from their tundra nests and head down the coast, stopping for worms and insects in the seaweed on our beach: Black-bellied Plovers and Least Sandpipers and Ruddy Turnstones. The Blackpoll Warbler makes the longest flight of any small songbird, 1,700 miles over the Atlantic Ocean heading for South America. They visit for only a few days, but I marvel when they stop on our spruce trees before launching themselves headlong on their epic journey.
The Short-tailed Weasels scurry through the scrub into the barn for the cool nights while the big sow Porcupine leads her waddling youngster up a tree, her inquisitive black eyes peering at me, sensing I am no threat. In her seasonal quest for sodium she has overturned the mossy lawn looking for larvae but it is okay with me. We are in this together.
Acknowledgments
Nothing happens without others. We are social animals. I am first indebted to Delauné Michel, who introduced me to her literary agent, Laura Yorke, at the Carol Mann Agency, the perfect home for me. Lau
ra and Carol directed me to interested publishers and Seth Godin advised me to go with senior editor Victoria Wilson at Knopf. Vicky was outstanding from the very first meeting, sensing I had more to tell than the proposal she insouciantly tossed on her desk. This was a fine proposal that Karen Kelly helped me structure, but when Vicky changed its direction I knew I had to go it alone. Her guidance these past two years has been constant and wise. My thanks also go to her able assistant, Ryan Smernoff.
My time with scientists in the field and with colleagues in board meetings or at conservation events always ended up in my trip journals, making it easier to recall conversations and sightings. First and foremost, I am grateful to my friend Alan Rabinowitz, the Tiger Man in my life, who tapped the conservationist in me and introduced me to a home at the Wildlife Conservation Society. William Conway, Archie Carr III, Elizabeth Bennett, John Calvelli, John Robinson, Edith McBean, Joyce Moss, John Gwynne, and the inestimable George Schaller taught me more than they will ever know in those years.
The Audubon Society has been a constant in my life. The first chapter I joined was Hudson Highlands in Putnam County, New York, where I came under the tutelage of the late Tom Morgan, the indomitable Ralph O’Dell, and the steadfast Henry Turner. I joyfully bird on the Christmas Bird Counts with Eric Lind, Max Garfinkle, and the McIntyre brothers and son, David, Lawrence, and Mark. Times in the forests on CBCs or on Bird-a-Thons are some of the happiest of my life. And I thank Charlie Roberto for making events happen and teaching us all to pass on what we know to the younger generation.
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