Field Notes
The Border
Climate Change
Sea Life
Good News
Endangered Species
Dispatches

Super Sucker
Eat Local
Sour Grapes
Arresting the Messenger
Mother’s Day
Batmobiles
Yosemite Sam’s Vacation

Illustrations by Edwin Fotheringham

Super Sucker
Vacuums are not only good for carpets, they can clean coral, too. To suck up invasive algae that is overwhelming the reefs along the coast of Hawaii, marine biologists dive below the surface with a giant vacuum hose in hand that snakes from the water to a pump atop a barge. This machine, named the Super Sucker, has no blades, so it doesn’t kill crabs and sea cucumbers and other small creatures. The algae problem began in the 1970s when one researcher tried to help countries develop a market for agar, a gelatinous substance used in Petri dishes, by growing the fastest, strongest algae he could find. The project was a success except for one thing: The algae started colonizing Hawaiian reefs, nearly smothering them. Today the Nature Conservancy and other environmental groups are involved in the reef restoration effort. “This particular application has not been tried before,” says Celia Smith, a seaweed specialist at the University of Hawaii. “It’s proving to be remarkably successful.”—Susan Cosier
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Eat Local
For some, even the distance from the couch to the refrigerator is too far to go for a snack. But consider one leatherback turtle, which swam for nearly 650 days and more than 12,427 miles from Papua Barat, Indonesia (on the island of New Guinea), to an area between 30 and 50 miles off the coast of Oregon to feast on its favorite jellyfish. A transmitter attached with a flexible harness designed to fall off after two years enabled researchers to track the turtle’s journey—one of the longest migrations ever for an in-water marine vertebrate. Scientists suspect the trip was timed to an annual boom in coastal jellyfish populations and that the leatherback went to forage before returning to her nesting grounds. When the turtle left Oregon it headed for the tropical waters southeast of Hawaii, then turned to the northeast until the battery in her custom-fitted transmitter backpack—which obviously does not impair her ability to swim­—finally gave out. Pacific leatherbacks, which can be six feet long and weigh 1,300 pounds, are federally listed as a critically endangered species. Researchers are studying their migrations to identify waters that may need protection to conserve turtle populations.—Shawn Query
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Sour Grapes
Birds foraging in Panama’s tropical forests may find “fruit” that packs some extra punch—or crunch. Instead of eating what looks to them like juicy red berries, the birds are sinking their beaks into ants ripe with parasite eggs. Researchers recently discovered a new roundworm parasite species that causes its ant hosts to resemble fruit. The rear ends of the normally black ants turn bright red and swell with hundreds of clear eggs. Infected ants also become sluggish and hold their gasters high, unwittingly enticing fruit-eating birds with their rosy bottoms. “My guess is that the bird grabs something it thinks is a berry and winds up popping a bunch of goo or eggs in its mouth,” says tropical insect ecologist Stephen Yanoviak from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. None the wiser, the unharmed bird passes the eggs of this sneaky nematode through its body and into its droppings. While birds usually don’t eat these ants when they are uninfected, the ants love to munch the birds’ mineral-rich feces. After collecting the egg-laden excrement, the ants take it back to their colony and feed it to their young, and another bunch of imposter berries is born.—Melissa Mahony
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Arresting the Messenger
The six-foot polar bear sat in a white paddleboat bobbing in an artificial pond in front of the Interior Department in Washington, D.C., waving to children on their way to school and federal employees trudging to work. The bear, or rather Greenpeace general counsel Tom Wetterer in a plush fur suit, was protesting the Bush administration’s third missed deadline for deciding endangered-species status for the polar bear. Traffic was sparse that January morning, but a few cars honked at the upright bear and his black-and-white signs: “I Have Fish, Who Do I Bribe?” and “Boats Float, Bears Don’t.” Police pulled the paddleboat to shore, unzipped Wetterer, confiscated his costume and boat as evidence, and led him away for a night in jail. “I thought it was a nonthreatening way to have fun and make a serious statement,” says Wetterer. “And now I’m kind of dealing with the consequences.” He has been charged with launching a boat without permission and not obeying a police officer who asked him to leave.—Kristin Elise Phillips
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Mother’s Day
Doting grandparents are rare in the animal kingdom. Only a few species, including humans and pilot whales, have a family structure that includes animals that behave like grandma and grandpa. Now scientists can add the Seychelles warbler to the list. David Richardson, a molecular ecologist at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, and his team of researchers studied the birds on Cousin Island in the Seychelles for more than 20 years. They found that non-breeding mothers can lend a hand to their offspring that are raising little fluffs of joy and help ensure that the family genes will be passed on for generations by sitting on the eggs and bringing supplies to the nest. “You’re helping a relative, so therefore your genes are being passed on through your relatives,” says Richardson. There may be an evolutionary advantage to this behavior in the birds, which in the 1960s were so endangered that only 26 individuals were left, says Richardson. Now there are 350 of the warblers on the island, partially because of the cooperation. This behavior is usually seen in close-knit societies, and the research may help scientists better understand why certain species evolved to help take care of their kids, calves, or chicks.—Susan Cosier
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Batmobiles
Motorists in Port St. Lucie, Florida, are being driven literally batty by recent delays in roadwork on Interstate 95. More than 20,000 Mexican free-tailed bats and evening bats have taken up residence under a bridge, complicating plans to widen the road. Construction crews are working around the colony to allow the bats to raise their young without disturbance. Mating has already taken place, and maternity season for the free-tailed bats, which make up the majority of the large colony, lasts from early May to mid-August, says bat researcher John Greenwood of Friends of Bats, a Florida group advising the construction project on bat conservation and protection measures. “The babies, when they’re initially born, can’t fly, so that’s why we need to be particularly careful,” Greenwood says. Bats comprise up to half of all the mammals in Florida and each one eats its body weight in bugs—about 2,000 to 3,000 insects—every night. “Imagine what the mosquito population would be without them,” says Greenwood, who says the bats likely chose the area under the bridge because the narrow passageway is too small for natural predators to enter.—Shawn Query
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Yosemite Sam’s Vacation
If you’re vacationing in a national park this summer, that crack you hear may not announce the start of an afternoon thunderstorm. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), with the support of the National Rifle Association, is pushing legislation (cosponsored by 23 Republican senators) that would open the national park system and all national wildlife refuges to visitors bearing arms. True, current laws allow gun owners with permits to pack heat in the parks, but their weapons have to be unloaded and locked up in vehicle trunks. That’s not good enough for Coburn, who says the parks are becoming too dangerous for the unarmed public. The senator cites recent studies showing that some parks (in borderland areas) are drug-running havens and that ranger forces are stretched thin. “He’s always trying to protect law-abiding citizens, trying to protect their Second Amendment rights. And not being allowed to carry [guns] in national parks, [it] seems like their rights were being violated,” explains Coburn’s press secretary, Don Tatro. But both the U.S. Park Police and The Association of National Park Rangers oppose the bill. Says retired ranger Doug Morris, “Loaded guns have been prohibited in the national parks since the 1930s. These rules work and have long contributed to the indisputable fact that our national parks are among the safest places in America.”—Kurt Repanshek
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