3.27.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Radio Wized Diary of Science and Nature. Your
reader's Kelly Taylor. I'll have some articles on the topics
of science and nature, but first a reminder that radio
y is a reading service intended for people who are
blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to
read printed material. We'll start off today with an article

(00:24):
from The Guardian and it's headlined US honeybee deaths hit
record high as scientists scramble to find main cause. This
is March twenty fifth. Honeybee deaths have hit record highs
in the US, with the unprecedented loss of colonies pushing

(00:45):
many beekeepers close to ruin as scientists scramble to identify
the main cause of the huge declines. Commercial beekeepers have
reported losing more than sixty percent of their colonies over
the world winter, according to an ongoing project APIs survey
that covers more than two thirds of America's managed bees.

(01:08):
This enormous rate of decline is higher than record reduction
seen last year and is on track to be the
biggest loss of honeybee colonies in US history. According to
Scott maccart, Associate professor of entomology at Cornell University. Macart
said that the extraordinary rate of loss became apparent during
the winter's mass movement of honeybee hives to California to

(01:31):
pollinate the vast almon crop there. Honey Bees, although introduced
to the US, have become vital to the agricultural system
by pollinating half of all crops, including apples, berries, pumpkins, melons,
and cherries. Bee keepers are increasingly struggling to maintain the
bee numbers necessary to undertake this work. Quote something real

(01:56):
bad is going on this year, said Macart. We have
been and seeing high losses year after year, but if anything,
it is getting worse, which is troubling. Some places are
having devastating losses, and there was a shortfall in pollination
in some almond orchards this year. Whether these impacts will
cascade to other crops remains to be seen. It's certainly possible. Quote.

(02:20):
The latest honey bee losses are valued at one hundred
and thirty nine million dollars and have come as the
honey price is climbed by five percent amid a drop
in honey production. Many beekeepers are now struggling to absorb
these shortfalls, with some going out of business. Altogether. Quote.
It's all gone, said one beekeeper in response to the survey. Quote.

(02:45):
The equity on the house is gone, our retirement is gone,
the family member's money is gone. All that's left are
empty boxes. We don't even have the dead bees. They
are gone too. A certain portion of a colony typically
perishes over their more and more abund winter months, but
this rate of loss was typically only round ten or

(03:07):
twenty percent until around two decades ago, when a phenomenon
called colony collapse disorder, where colonies completely disappear or die,
started to emerge. In the US. Now, typically half of
all colonies are lost on average. Scientists have ascertained that
the climate crisis, habitat loss, and pesticide use have badly

(03:30):
affected all bees, the vast majority in the US being
four thousand native wild species rather than honeybees. For managed honeybees,
a lack of nutrition, poor handling practices, and rampant infestation
by varroamites, a type of parasite, and diseases have all

(03:51):
taken their toll. The loss of these, both captive and
wild in the US is already starting to limit the
supply of some food and is reducing the yield of
honey The declines are part of a broader crisis in
the insect world, where species are being wiped out at
an alarming rate. Researchers warn that the loss of insects

(04:14):
imperils basic functions of life on Earth, such as food production,
the flowering of plants, and waste disposal. The latest record
leap in honeybee losses is now being investigated by staff
at the US Department of Agriculture, which is analyzing bees
wax and pollen to determine if parasites and viruses are

(04:37):
to blame for the deaths. However, cuts in staff numbers
by Donald Trump's administration has required Cornell University to step
in and take on further required research to determine if
the samples have been affected by pisticides. It will take
around a month before scientists have a better idea as

(04:57):
to the main drivers of the latest loss quote. There's
no one single thing affecting honeybees, but we are trying
to figure out what the most important stresses are right now,
said MacCarthy. There are suspicions of a lot of things
at the moment. You should see my inbox right now.
There are theories about a new virus being involved, but

(05:20):
we have to gather the data. We can't rule anything
out at this stage. Quote. The record loss of honeybees
follows figures released last year showing that conversely, there are
now an all time high number of honeybee colonies in
the US three point eight million, around a million more
than five years previously. This is down to more people

(05:42):
becoming interested in bee keeping, meaning that more colonies are
being split and created. Macart said, quote that is driving
up colony numbers, but it doesn't mean they are doing well,
he said, quote the colony loss rates are increasing, if anything,
even though we are putting more supply into the system.

(06:02):
Another important point is that we have very good evidence
of range declines and even extinctions among wild polymears, which
aren't being managed by anyone. Comparing honey bees and wild
bees is like comparing a chicken and a woodpecker. That
doesn't mean honey bees, which are a part of agriculture
like chickens, aren't beautiful. They bring a lot of joy

(06:23):
to people, and without their crop pollination, we wouldn't be
doing well at all. Turning now to popular science, the
headline for this article reads with sea ice melting killer
whales are moving into the Arctic. This is from March
twenty second. In the winter of twenty twenty, Inuit hunters

(06:48):
in Canada's Central Arctic came across the frozen carcasses of
eleven beached bowhead whales, enormous marine mammals that have made
a slow but steady comeback since they were driven to
the brink of extinction by late nineteenth and early twentieth
century whalers. Unsure of what killed the whales, the hunters

(07:09):
contacted officials at fisheries and oceans Canada. Prevented from flying
flying up by the COVID quarantine, scientists instead examined photos
and tissue samples. The whales were young, thin, and scarred
by what looked like teeth marks. Quote. There was no

(07:30):
smoking gun, according to biologist Jeff Hagden, but he says
that the perpetrators were very likely orcas also called killer whales,
which were rarely seen in the high Arctic until sea
ice began to retreat, opening pathways for other marine life,
including salmon, to enter. What makes this situation even more intriguing.

(07:51):
According to the University of Manitoba, evolutionary geneticist Colin Garaway
is that these killer whales are likely members of an ecotype,
a genetically distinct geographic variety that has begun migrating farther
into previously icy regions of the Arctic from as far
away as Spain. Unlike works in other parts of the

(08:12):
Arctic which eat fish, this ecotype praise on large mammals.
If their numbers continue to grow, say scientists who are
watching this closely, they could up end or shift the
food web in ways that could affect Inuit subsistence hunting
and some endangered whale populations. For fisheries and oceans, scientists

(08:33):
Steve Ferguson, this is another chapter in a multifaceted story.
With climate change warming the Arctic faster than any other
place on Earth, reducing summer sea ice almost entirely in
some regions, killer whales, which have a global range are
beginning to colonize rather than just periodically visit one of
the few places in the world they could not historically access. Quote.

(08:58):
With sea ice retreating in the arm Arctic very rapidly,
killer whales are finding new pathways to enter regions like
Hudson Bay and the High Arctic, said Ferguson. Quote along
with the polar bear, they have become the top predator
in the region. But while rapid sea ice retreat has
diminished polar bear numbers by as much as fifty percent

(09:20):
since the nineteen eighties, the change has only benefited killer whales.
The fact that there are killer whales in the Arctic
shouldn't be surprising. A century ago, whalers sometimes spotted orcas
around the fringes of the Arctic in North Atlantic waters,
undoubtedly following some of the estimated eighteen thousand bowheads and

(09:41):
tens of thousands of belugas and narwhals that existed at
the time. None of them would have been a match
for killer whales, who approached from all sides in highly
coordinated attacks, biting and ramming their prey until there is
little life left in them. Back then, the killer whales
were reloved to follow prey into icy choke holds during breakups,

(10:04):
perhaps for fear of injuring their enormous norsal fins. It
didn't mean that they did not occasionally try. Several years ago,
Inuit elder Solomon Concatsiak recalled seeing killer whales trapped in
ice in Fox Mason, at the north end of Hudson
Bay in the nineteen fifties. He was just a boy then,

(10:25):
but remembers how much excitement it caused because killer whales
were so rarely seen. Ferguson got interested in orcus and
the Arctic sometime around two thousand and five when colleague
Jack Orr and scientists from Greenland and the US confirmed
previous Inuit reports of orcus hunting, bowhead, beluga, and narwal

(10:45):
in the High Arctic. While capturing and tagging narwhale at
the north end of Baffin Island, where orches were rarely seen,
they saw a pot of twelve to fifteen orcans kill
several narwhales. Shortly after and his colleagues reported the killings,
Ferguson brought a group of scientists and students together to
do some brainstorming. Jeff Higdon at, a University of Manitoba

(11:09):
graduate student at the time, was assigned to look at
the database. He found that from eighteen fifty to two
thousand and eight, whalers and scientists recorded four hundred and
fifty credible sightings, most of which made in the nineteen
nineties and two thousands. When sea ice in the Arctic
started to retreat in a significant way. Higdon and colleague

(11:33):
Kristen Westall from the marine conservation organization Oceans North then
interviewed more than one hundred Inuit hunters from eleven communities.
Almost all reported seeing orchids. Kyle Lafort, another University of
Manitoba grad student who has been working with Ferguson, estimated

(11:54):
in a study that there may be as many as
one hundred and ninety killer whales in the Arctic one
thousand narwhals annually, approximately the same number that Inuit that
the Inuit harvest. Only Canadian Inuit and Greenland hunters can
legally hunt narwal, while both Canadian and Alaska natives can

(12:15):
take beluga. There are limits on the number of animals
each community can harvest. Ferguson does not believe that orcas
are going to have a big impact on the overall
population of narwal, beluga, and bohead anytime soon, at least
not in high Arctic waters, but he believes they could
adversely affect small endangered populations of beluga in southern Hudson

(12:38):
Bay and in Cumberland Sound off the coast of Baffin Island.
They could also drive beluga, narwal, and bowhead away from
Inuit hunting regions. It's not just the Arctic where killer
whales are making their presence known. Some orcas are clearly
on the move in other parts of the world where
they are not often seen, feasting on large marine mammals

(13:00):
and shifting the food chain in ways that are catching
wildlife managers off guard. Killer whales occasionally attacked great white
sharks when they recently began attacking them off the coast
of South Africa near the fishing town of Gansbai. The
great white split and have not come back. In twenty nineteen,

(13:21):
scientists conducting research off the coast of Australia documented orces
killing and eating endangered blue whales, the largest animal on earth.
John Totterdahl, lead researcher for the Cetacean Research Center in Australia,
says the discovery is important in determining how whale predation

(13:41):
is affecting the recovery of whale species that were over
harvested in that part of the world. This has been
the story in Alaska's Cook Inlet, where orcas may be
inhibiting the recovery of the region's endangered beluga. No one
has been able to say for sure, because while shipping noise,
changes in fish distribution and pollution may also be implicated.

(14:07):
What scientists do know is that orchesidings in the region
are on the rise now. To Scientific American in an
article from March twenty fifth that is headlined, meet some
of the strangest deep sea creatures, From sea pigs to

(14:28):
disco worms. An entire world lives deep under the ocean's surface,
far from human notice and as bustling as any city.
Animals such as tube worms and clams live crowded around
plumes of methane that bubble up through cracks in the
ocean floor. Their residence attracts shrimp, fish and many other creatures.

(14:52):
These deep sea oases are just some of many areas
of the ocean floor that scientists are only beginning to explore,
discovering new species along the way. A recent exploratory expedition
by the Schmidt Ocean Institute on its research vessel foul Core,

(15:12):
targeted nearly twenty of these natural underwater gas leaks and
five deep sea canyons off the coast of Chile. Along
the way, the research team used its underwater robot to
spot a trove of fever dream characters come to life,
including sixty that may be new to science. The scientists
found methane seeps like this one by combining visual surveys,

(15:36):
seafloor mapping, and chemical sampling or methane at suspected sites.
They even traced telltale bubbles using sonar. Clans huddle around
the methane seep so that the chemosynthetic microbes in their
gills get a rich supply of food. The microbes convert

(15:57):
the methane into organic molecules that the clams absorb as nutrients.
Dense colonies of methane munching bacteria that build up near
seeps are a tasty snack for other organisms, such as
busy little shrimp grazing on a bacterial mat, just as
cows graze on grass. Like clams, tube worms work with

(16:20):
microbes to get food from upwelling methane. They also offer
anchor points for other creatures, such as the pink basket star,
spiky sea urchin, and sea star clinging to brownish stick
like tube worm casings near a methane seep. Creatures such

(16:41):
as these sea urchins serve as deep sea recyclers that
break down bits of dead plants and animals that settle
on the seafloor and make nutrients available for other organisms.
They also attract predators, such as sea stars. The deep
sea anglerfish, which the mission's researchers are still working to identify,

(17:06):
was found in one of five submarine canyons that scientists
explore during the same fifty five day expedition. Like underwater
grand canyons, these formations cut through the ocean floor from
near the coast out into the deep sea, carved out
by strong currents. Sediment, nutrients, and organisms are carried out

(17:28):
by the currents like a buffet on a conveyor belt,
and attract all kinds of hungry sea creatures. Also found
on a submarine canyon floor, a deep sea worm called
a polykeet, which means many bristles, glitters like sparkling steel wool.
Its bristles contain tiny protein based structures that bend and

(17:52):
scatter light, which may deter predators the researcher's spot. Recently,
a recently identified mystery mollusk swimming far from its gnome range.
The phantom like creature had never been seen in the
Southern Hemisphere before it was found more than seven thousand

(18:15):
feet beneath the surface in the ocean's midnight zone. Some
of the researcher sightings were familiar. A sea star, encountered
in another underwater canyon, had been seen before. Its many
tiny tube feet help its suction to surfaces such as
rocky canyon walls, and help it move along the seafloor.

(18:40):
As scientists sent an underwater robot into the twilight zone,
a region of the ocean where sunlight fades to a dim,
dusky glow even at high noon, they saw a bioluminescent jellyfish.
It may have been waiting for prey to rise from
the ocean's depths as part of an enormous daily migration.

(19:02):
The team turned up some of its most bizarre finds
in dark ocean expanses between seeps and canyons. A sipho
siphono four, a collection of single cells that team up
to form a larger creature, was spotted in shallow water
near Mocha Island, a small island off the coast of Chile.

(19:24):
While sigists were hunting for methane seeps, seafloor dwellers must
survive the crushing near Freezian conditions found deep in the ocean.
A sea cucumber nicknamed the sea pig, who was seen
gently drifting more than nine thousand feet underwater. Having that
much water pressing down from overhead is like having dozens

(19:45):
of elephants stacked on top of your head at sea level.
Sea pigs survived the intense pressure partly thanks to their
flexible body. Quote. Through this exploratory expedition, we were able
to conduct a raw biodiversity survey and study oases of
life on the seafloor, including many places that had never

(20:07):
been explored in detail before, says Jeffrey Marlowe, Assistant professor,
Boston University and one of the chief scientists on the expedition. Quote.
Now we'll study the samples we collected back in the
lab to learn as much as we can about the
incredible array of life we saw during the expedition, where
these organisms came from, how they're all connected, and what

(20:31):
it means for critical functions of this rich ecosystem. Next
is an article from March the twentieth published in Reuters.
The headline is Saudi Aramco launched his first direct air
capture test unit. Saudi Oil Giant A Ramco has launched

(20:57):
a pilot direct air capture unit able to remove twelve
tons of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere. It's
set on Thursday. The facility, developed with Siemens Energy, is
Saudi Arabia's first carbon dioxide direct air capture unit and
will be used to test CO two capture materials. Critics

(21:19):
of capturing CO two emissions have said the technology is
expensive and unproven at scale. Quote. The test facility launched
by Aramco is a key step in our efforts to
scale up viable DAC systems for deployment in the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia and beyond end quote, said Ali Al Mushari,

(21:42):
a RAMCO Senior vice president of Technology Oversight. Quote. In
addition to helping address emissions, the CO two extracted through
this process can in turn be used to produce more
sustainable chemicals and fuels. Aramco, the world's top oil exporter,

(22:05):
aims to reduce its so called Scope one and two
emissions to net zero by twenty fifty. Aramco announced the
pilot VAC unit with Siemens Energy in October twenty twenty three,
and said at the time it would be completed in
twenty twenty four, and was intended to pave the way
for a larger pilot plant that would have the capacity

(22:27):
to capture twelve one hundred fifty tons of CO two
per year. The state oil giant in December signed an
agreement with oil service firms SLB and Lend to build
a carbon capture and storage project in Jubail, Saudi Arabia.
The first phase is expected to be completed by the

(22:49):
end of twenty twenty seven, capturing and storing up to
nine million tons of CO two a year. Aramco has
signed several other agreements to explore carbon captures development, and
last year took part in an eighty million dollar funding
round of Los Angeles race based carbon capture. And now

(23:13):
an article from Rolling Stone and the headline is why
LA burned. We're in serious trouble. That's the message I
saw written on the ashes of Los Angeles. And this
is written by Jeff Goodell. And by we, I mean
every human on this planet, rich or poor, younger, old,

(23:34):
black or white or brown. In La, an eighty three
million dollar house with eighteen bedrooms and six bathrooms burned
just as fast as fixer uppers next to the freeway
We're in trouble not because we're helpless or because we
have broken the planet beyond repair. We're in trouble because
we live in a world that was built for a
climate that no longer exists, and the rebuilding of our

(23:58):
world to adapt to this new, hotter, more dangerous climate
is a task that we have hardly begun to undertake.
We are like dinosaurs wandering around after the meteor hit,
thinking that the axe that is blocking out the sun
is going to dissipate in any moment and everything will
go back to normal. We are much smarter than dinosaurs,

(24:19):
but we are also deeply stupid in our own way.
Millions of Americans think that because they have their own
YouTube channel and AI on their phones and overnight Amazon deliveries,
that they have mother Nature whipped, that she is just
some old hag. They have vanished to the basement of
modern life. The Los Angeles fires were burning evidence of
how dangerous this delusion is. The fires were a bonfire

(24:43):
of bad ideas that it piled up over decades, from
suburban sprawl into wildfire zones to the flammable plastics that
now fill many people's homes. But beyond all that, is
the larger fact that the Los Angeles fires have demonstrated
to anyone who can cares to look, how unprepared we
are for what is coming for us on a superheated planet.

(25:06):
You could argue that lots of other climate related disasters
demonstrated that too, from broken levees during Hurricane Katrina in
two thousand and five to the fire tornadoes during the
campfire in northern California in twenty eighteen, to the epic
heat wave in the Pacific Northwest in twenty twenty one.
But the Los Angeles fires peeled back the fire blanket

(25:28):
of unpreparedness to reveal a new level of vulnerability to
the human induced mood swings of Mother Nature. Quote. If
there has been a single fatal flaw in the design
of Southern California as a civilization, California historian and urban
theorist Mike Davis wrote, it has been the decision to

(25:48):
base the safety of present and future generations almost entirely
upon short sighted extrapolations from the disaster record of the
past half century. First, let's get one thing out of
the way. No climate change didn't cause the LA fires.
The sparks that ignited The fires were almost certainly human sparked,

(26:11):
likely by power lines or fireworks, whatever the ignition source was.
Fires have been a part of the chaparral ecosystem in
the mountains around LA since the beginning of time. Native
plants that thrive in the San Gabriel Mountains behind Altadena,
the community in the northeastern part of the Los Angeles

(26:35):
County where the Eton fire destroyed more than ninety four
hundred buildings and at least seventeen people died, as well
as above Malibu and the Pacific Palisades, where another sixty
eight hundred buildings burned and at least twelve people died.
These are exquisitely adapted to fire. The California lilac, a

(26:56):
common plant in these mountains, drops seeds that only germinate
in the aftermath of fire. Chemise and manzanita are glossy
with oils and resins that seal in moisture during hot,
dry periods and easily explode into flame during wildfire. The
best way to think about the role of climate change

(27:18):
in the LA fires is as an accelerant. Last year
was the hottest on Earth ever recorded by humans. Ten
of the hottest years have all been in the past decade,
and the source of all that heat is no mystery.
It's mostly a consequence of our addiction to coal, oil,
and gas. With more heat comes more fire. A study

(27:41):
released a few weeks after the fires found that the hot, dry,
windy conditions that drove the LA fires were about thirty
five percent more likely due to warming caused primarily by
the burning of fossil fuels. Well, that will be all
for today's Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader was

(28:02):
Kelly Taylor. Now stay tuned for the Health Corner on
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