Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2021 i National Geographic Magazine

THE WORLD’S OCEANS, more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, are rife with problems: Overfishing, warming and acidifying waters, plastic pollution, a loss of abundance and diversity. Finding solutions, or even reasons for optimism, can seem a daunting task. But that’s what we seek in this special issue. It’s dedicated to our seas, the people who explore them, and the creatures that inhabit them—from enormous whales to the tiniest corals. To care about the ocean in the 21st century is to feel conflicted: despairing what’s been lost, optimistic about what we can save. To discuss this tension, I called photographer David Doubilet, who went on his first National Geographic assignment 50 years ago. By Doubilet’s calculations, he has spent more than 27,000 hours underwater—or just over three of his…

THERE WAS A TIME, not long ago, when peace between the Pokot and the Ilchamus seemed impossible. Living along the shores of Kenya’s Lake Baringo, the two communities had spent decades waging war over cattle, land, and water—turning one of Kenya’s most biodiverse regions into a barren battlefield. In 2006 Pokot and Ilchamus elders reached a truce in their bitter conflict. They agreed that to build unity and trust, the former enemies would work together to bring back the wildlife that their conflict helped drive out—starting with the Rothschild’s giraffe. These giraffes’ numbers are dwindling. Only around 2,000 remain in the wild, and 800 of those live in Kenya. The Rothschild’s giraffe, also known as the Baringo giraffe, was once abundant around Lake Baringo, but the iconic breed went extinct…

Yaps and fin slaps, growls and groans—whales use a wide range of sounds to communicate. But only five whale species are known to sing, with humpbacks the unrivaled musical masters of the sea. As juveniles, male humpbacks start picking up songs in bits and segments, listening to their peers in a form of social learning (females vocalize but don’t sing). Once they master a song, it changes slightly, eventually completely, as the population rearranges the tunes over days, weeks, and years. Songs have a complex structure similar to the repetition and rhymes of poetry, and all the males from the same ocean basin sing the same tune until it is modified yet again. This song, recorded and translated into human music by composer David Rothenberg, is from one humpback repeatedly…

Conveyor belt This model shows how layers of currents journey around the world. In a complete cycle, water would take about a thousand years to return to its starting point. TRANSVERSE AUGUST CONFORMAL PROJECTION MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NGM STAFF Currents of change Surface currents are driven primarily by wind, deep currents by water density resulting from temperature and salinity fluctuations. Southern swirl The Antarctic Circumpolar Current connects the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans around Antarctica. Some define these encircling waters as the Southern Ocean. SOURCES: NOAA; USGS; NASA/JPL; UNEP-WCMC; JOHN M. TOOLE, WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION; JANET SPRINTALL, SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY…

2009 2018 *THROUGH NOVEMBER 2020. NGM ART. SOURCE: NOAA On Opal Reef, staghorn and plate corals were thriving when Doubilet and Hayes dived there in 2009. Nine years later, they found the scene inert. Stressedout corals had ejected the symbiotic algae that help color and nourish them, causing them to bleach and eventually die. Many of the reef’s other residents departed for healthier habitats. “As startling as the destruction was the silence,” says Hayes, recalling their return visit. A reef can revive after bleaching, but multiple stresses in succession hinder recovery. Since the mid-1990s, the Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half of its coral. Adaptable species—those able to tolerate warmer waters and other threats—and human interventions will decide the future of this natural wonder. THRIVING CORAL They resemble…

TELEVISION, BOOKS Series, Book Reveal Whales’ Secrets National Geographic Explorer Brian Skerry’s breathtaking photographs are at the heart of Secrets of the Whales. That’s the title of Skerry’s new book, on sale April 6, and the name of National Geographic’s documentary series, with filmmaker James Cameron executive producing and actor Sigourney Weaver narrating. It premieres April 22 on Disney+. NAT GEO WILD Visit the Kingdom of the Polar Bears As winter shortens and ice recedes on Hudson Bay, a mother polar bear and her two cubs face perils brought on by climate change. Following the bear family, guide Dennis Compayre witnesses feats of survival and resilience. The two-hour TV special Kingdom of the Polar Bears airs April 22 at 8/7c on Nat Geo WILD. TELEVISION Chef Gordon Ramsay Serves Up…

They may not charm us with fuzzy paws and puppy dog eyes, but many less photogenic, oft ignored species deserve some love. The world needs to better recognize the contributions of these underdogs rather than “only spending money on cool species,” says conservation scientist Bob Smith. National Geographic Explorer and photographer Joel Sartore is founder of the National Geographic Photo Ark, a multiyear project using the power of photography to inspire people to help save species at risk before it’s too late. The National Geographic Society has supported the Photo Ark since 2012.…

ON A SUNLIT FEBRUARY morning in Cape Town, Ross Frylinck waited near the doorway of a private home perched on a steep mountainside overlooking False Bay. Co-founder of the Sea Change Project, an environmental organization dedicated to preserving the kelp forest in South Africa’s coastal waters, Frylinck had gathered with a group of colleagues and musicians to welcome Yo-Yo Ma to Cape Town, one of 36 stops on the cellist’s six-continent tour known as the Bach Project. Preparing to receive one of the world’s most celebrated musicians caused some trepidation. “We were all a bit intimidated,” Frylinck said later. But the tension dissipated as soon as Ma arrived. The cellist’s face was open and warm, and his demeanor caring, earnest, and inquisitive. “His whole heart was smiling in the room,”…

LEADING THREATS Scientists examined 14 human stressors on 20 marine ecosystems. Climate change pressures caused significant impacts across all of them, with intertidal and nearshore ecosystems the most vulnerable. IMPACT OVER TIME Cumulative ocean change stemming from all human stressors (detailed in bottom chart) is shown on this map, reflecting more than a decade of recorded data. Heating up The ocean stores more than 90 percent of the world’s excess heat. Last year the heat in the upper layers of the ocean was the highest on record. Taking action To combat the growing pressures on the ocean, a group of 14 countries* recently pledged to sustainably manage 100 percent of their waters. IRENE BERMAN-VAPORIS, MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, AND ALBERTO LUCAS LÓPEZ, NGM STAFF SOURCES: BENJAMIN HALPERN AND COLLEAGUES, NATIONAL CENTER…

2017 Between the visits Doubilet and Hayes made to Tumon Bay, robust corals turned to bleached rubble. The bay suffered years of elevated sea temperatures, destructive low-tide exposures, and disease outbreaks. From 2013 to 2017, nearly 60 percent of the staghorn communities—whose thickets provide habitat for fish and invertebrates—died. One key species vanished completely. The Micronesian bay, with its shallow, nearshore coral communities, was designated a marine preserve in 1997 and is a lure for tourists and locals. “It’s been very difficult to watch,” says coral ecologist Laurie Raymundo of the University of Guam, “especially as corals would start to recover, only to be hammered again a few months later.” *THROUGH NOVEMBER 2020. NGM ART. SOURCE: NOAA 2005…

I GREW UP along the Mediterranean coast, in the south of France. My first swimming, snorkeling, and scuba diving took place on the Riviera. As time passed, and the Mediterranean became my professional home base, I watched this torrentially visited coast be ravaged by unbridled development—and I also saw, at depths of more than 150 feet or so, worlds that still seemed intact. Until recently, however, I’d gotten only brief glimpses of them. When you’re scuba diving, it takes four to six hours just to ascend from such depths; you have to decompress slowly to avoid dying from the bends. So time on the bottom is frustratingly short, usually only five or 10 minutes. In July 2019 we changed that. For 28 straight days my four-man team lived in a…

BIGGEST ’BERGS Since 2000, iceberg B-15 has held the record for Earth’s largest. In its prime, A-68 likely was one of the 10 largest—more than twice the size of Rhode Island. IN THE BEGINNING On the Antarctic Peninsula’s east coast in 2017, a large chunk of the Larsen C Ice Shelf calved off the continent. The iceberg was labeled A-68; it was renamed A-68A when it shed a fragment, labeled A-68B. IN HOT WATER Moving into the Atlantic’s warmer waters, A-68A was spawning smaller icebergs and slowly eroding. As the colossus shrank, so did the risk to island wildlife. DEATH OF AN ICEBERG What was left of A-68A, less than a third of its initial volume, missed South Georgia; melting pieces drifted to its south, east, and north. Because iceberg…

JOHN FORD WANTED a whale’s-eye view. One summer day in 1978 a pod of killer whales raced toward a pebbled beach on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island. The young biologist was waiting in a wet suit and snorkel. The ghostly black-and-white procession steamed in like a team of U-boats, low and fast. Ford pressed on his face mask and slipped into the sea. In waters barely 10 feet deep, the creatures slowed and rolled to their sides. Bodies partially submerged, the fans at the end of their tails—their flukes—wagging, the whales began to twist and shimmy. One by one, each scuffed its side and belly on the stones, like grizzlies scratching against the pines. Ford, age 66, has now studied killer whales, the largest dolphin and from the branch of the…

Navigating this map Centered near the South Pole, this projection distorts landmasses to keep the ocean as undivided as possible. Largest ocean The Pacific Ocean covers 69 million square miles—an area greater than all of the continents combined. TRANSVERSE AUGUST CONFORMAL PROJECTION RELIEF: ERIC KNIGHT. SOURCES: USGS; NASA/JPL; GREEN MARBLE…

THE DIVERS SHRIEKED into their regulators, arms and legs flailing in delight. It was August 2020. Thirteen feet down on a reef in the Florida Keys, marine biologist Hanna Koch and her colleagues from the Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium had been hovering, waiting. Just before midnight, in a silent explosion from coral all along the reef, tiny pinkish orange bundles of sperm and eggs began to rise, speckling the sea with a pointillist eruption of life. The team’s happy dance set off electric blue sparkles from the bioluminescent organisms in the sea around them. “It looked like we’d created our own fireworks,” Koch says. “It was beautiful.” This sudden flurry is how many reef-building corals typically reproduce—usually once a year on a summer night a few days after a…

“IF THE PLANE WAS IN THERE, it would have seen it,” says Robert Ballard, referring to the 14-foot autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) launched from his 211-foot exploration vessel, the E/V Nautilus. He is sitting in his cabin on the Nautilus, gesturing at a map of the seafloor on his computer screen. The ASV, a remote-controlled boat equipped with multibeam sonar, had generated the underwater image as it skirted the reef surrounding Nikumaroro, the remote Pacific island where Ballard was searching for Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E. More than four decades after discovering hydrothermal vents and black smokers on the seafloor, three decades after finding the Titanic, and nearly 20 years after locating John F. Kennedy’s World War II patrol boat, the 78-year-old National Geographic explorer-at-large is still in the business…