("Sooty Shearwater" by tombenson76 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.)
Last Saturday, I visited Point Arena, California with my wife and two friends. We ended up on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, watching sea lions, pelicans, cormorants, and gulls. Then, one of us noticed small, dark shapes moving a mile or so offshore, just about detectable to our eyes. Through binoculars, we realized that they were birds, flying low over the waves and flowing northward in a seemingly endless stream. Tens of thousands of them must have passed us every hour. They were sooty shearwaters. They had come from New Zealand.
Sooty shearwaters are medium-sized seabirds that undergo one of nature's most spectacular migrations. After leaving their breeding grounds in New Zealand between March and May, they spend the next six or seven months carving a giant figure-of-eight across the Pacific—a 40,000-mile round-trip with stopovers in either Japan, Alaska, or California.
This epic itinerary, which had been deduced through careful ship-based observations, was confirmed in 2006 by a team led by Scott Schaffer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who put electronic tags on 19 shearwaters. The data revealed that the birds are incredibly fast, capable of covering 565 miles in a day. They are also precise: When flying back south, they all cross the equator at a narrow bottleneck, within 5 days of October 7.
The shearwaters effectively treat the world's largest ocean as their restaurant, traveling to wherever the waters are richest in food, in pursuit of what Schaffer called "an endless summer." And since they depend on the entire Pacific, their health is a good reflection of the ocean's. Sooty shearwater numbers have declined in recent decades as climate change limits their food supplies and driftnets snag them while they fish; in California alone, their numbers fell by 90 percent between 1987 and 1994. Sometimes, they get poisoned: In 1961, thousands of sooty shearwaters, deranged by neurotoxic algae, went berserk in Monterey Bay, "regurgitating anchovies, flying into objects and dying on the streets." Their antics struck a chord with another summer visitor, Alfred Hitchcock, who released The Birds two years later.
I'm grateful that I got a chance to see them. Migrations always make me think about scale and coincidence. More birds than I could have imagined had traveled over planetary distances and crossed at the edge of both my world and my vision. Earlier this year, my wife and I moved from DC to the Bay Area, driving west at roughly the same time that the last of these shearwaters were taking off from New Zealand. Had we not visited Point Arena, our paths would never have crossed. Had they flown a little further away, we wouldn't have noticed anything worth pointing our binoculars at and missed one of nature's great spectacles, while there was still a chance to marvel at it.
(Thanks to Marie Cerda and Sophie Fern on Bluesky for help in identifying the birds.)
Paperback
The paperback edition of AN IMMENSE WORLD is out next week, on August 29, and you can pre-order your copies at Barnes & Noble or at indie bookstores.
Book recommendations
Chain-Gang All-Stars, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
A devastating satire about the US carceral state taken to its logical conclusion: televised gladiatorial combat. Brutal, yes, but also a profound (queer) love story about finding hope and dignity amid oppression. A spectacular novel, let alone for a debut. I'm still thinking about the ending.
No One is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood
At first, a satire of social media, presented as a kind of prose poem. Then, an exploration of unfathomable loss, and what happens when extremely online people are forcibly yanked back into the extremely offline world. (This pairs *very* well in tone and content with The Swimmers, which I recommended in the last edition.)
Nightcrawling, by Leila Mottley
Kiara, a young Black woman, turns to sex work to provide for her brother and becomes embroiled in police department scandal. Electrifying writing, a poignant exploration of several intersecting injustices, and a vivid portrait of Oakland.
Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society, by Arline Geronimus
Geronimus, a public health researcher, has built up a crucial body of work showing that systemic racism directly jeopardizes the health of Black, brown, working-class, and other margainalized Americans--an idea known as "weathering", which she explores in this book. The book doesn't quite stick the landing when it dives into policy recommendations, but its first half, which carefully lays out the theory and evidence behind weathering, is essential.
And from previous newsletters:
Trust, by Hernan Diaz
The Furrows, by Namwali Serpell
Life on Delay, by John Hendrickson
The Swimmers, by Julie Otsuka
Recommended reading
"So Ashley did what girls with no other options do: she did nothing." Charlotte Alter tells the story of Ashley, a 13-year-old girl from Mississippi, who was raped by a stranger and, thanks to the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v Wade, is now a mother. A devastating piece in which one structural problem after another washes over a girl's life.
"The truth is that however immortal we feel, we are all just one infection away from a new life." Madeline Miller, author of Song of Achilles and Circe, writes about how long COVID derailed her life.
I highly recommend Evan Urquhart's newsletter Assigned Media, which provides daily analysis of anti-trans propaganda. Here are some recent pieces on the ban in women's chess, detransitioning, and how anti-trans writers unconvincingly portray themselves as moderates.
I also recommend Annalee Newitz's resurrected newsletter The Hypothesis. In their latest issue, they discuss the concept of applied science-fiction.
"In the deep ocean, the price of admission is humility—and it's nonnegotiable." Susan Casey, one of the greatest writers on all things oceanic, dissects the Titan submersible disaster.
"It is a beautiful illustration depicting a rather silly-looking creature, raising the timeless question that plagues all paleoart: Why does it look like that?" Sabrina Imbler on a very big and very doofy-looking whale.
"Why does a medical museum get to dictate the post-mortem fates of this disabled child?" Disability historian Aparna Nair writes critically about medical museums that contribute to the "enfreakment and commercialization of disability in public spaces."
Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay write about the new age of global boiling and what many people get wrong when thinking about climate change.
The Maui fires
If you want to help people who've been affected by the Maui fires, there are many on-the-ground organizations that you can support. I personally donated to the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, who are matching donations, and Maui Mutual Aid, who are prioritizing the most vulnerable residents. Other good organizations include the Maui Strong Fund and Maui Wildfire Relief.
Speaking events
Here's a running list of public speaking events where you can come and hear me talk, or get your books signed. (If you're interested in booking me for an event, please contact my wonderful speaking agent, Stasia Whalen swhalen@penguinrandomhouse.com.)
Sep 12 – National Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan. I'll be talking about An Immense World
Sep 15 – University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana. I'll be talking about empathy and equality in science writing.
Oct 4 – Princeton University, for their Environmental Humanities and Social Transformation Colloquium. I'll be talking about An Immense World.
Oct 14 – Wheeler Centre in Melbourne, Australia. I'll be talking about An Immense World
Oct 23 – Animal Law Conference in Los Angeles, California. I'll be talking about An Immense World
Oct 28 - Massachusetts ME/CFS and FM Association Annual Meeting, virtual. I'll be talking about my long COVID and ME/CFS reporting.
Nov 8 – USC Delta Murphy Lecture at Los Angeles, California. I'll be talking about An Immense World
Nov 30 – Friends of the Hennepin County Library at Hopkins, Minnesota. I'll be talking about An Immense World
That's it for this week.
I'm still working out how best to use this newsletter, but this'll be the basic form for now. It's free, but you can choose to pay a monthly subscription (at whatever level you set) if you'd like to support my work.
In strength and solidarity,
Ed
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