Hakai Magazine Audio Edition

by Zach Zorich Along southern Florida’s coast, the ancient Calusa constructed an entire island of shell and defied the Spanish Conquest.

by Ann Finkbeiner Fleeing the Irish Famine, some immigrants brought their islands with them to North America.

by Sasha Chapman All of them—which makes conservation difficult when your neighbors keep poaching.

by Bruce Grierson Our oceans contain enough energy to power the planet—if we could just get our hands on it.

by Heather Pringle Did lowly shellfish change the world?

by Ferris Jabr The moon influences life in a surprising and subtle way: with its light.

by Heather Pringle Tireless in her quest, ethnobotanist Nancy Turner works with indigenous elders to preserve plant knowledge dating back to the First People in the New World.

by Emily Urquhart Isolated in the North Atlantic, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador developed a subtle and beautiful lexicon to describe their environment.

by Amorina Kingdon and Patrick Daley How shellfish farmers are leaning on genes to unmask the secrets of mussels, scallops, and oysters.

by Theodora Sutcliffe Indonesia’s reefs have been poisoned or blasted to smithereens by the very people who depend on them the most. Now islanders are working to restore the coral, and recover the resources they’ve lost, piece by piece.

by Shanna Baker In the Northern Territory of Australia, policymakers and biologists managed the impossible—making the benefits of living with a booming population of deadly crocodiles outweigh the risks. But when two apex predators must share coastal resources, there’s bound to be conflict.

by Larry Pynn In the Pacific Northwest, the diligence of citizen scientists is shedding light on the lives, and deaths, of seabirds.

by Jude Isabella What island raccoons tell us about fear.

by Jude Isabella The drought in California has created an obsession with water, but sometimes, no water is just fine.

by Egill Bjarnason For 70 years, Iceland has kept afloat the idea that mandatory swimming lessons save lives, but the policy doesn’t hold water.

by Paul Greenberg A nascent environmental movement is liberating rivers and freeing fish.

by Claire Eamer The fleece that launched 1,000 ships.

by Lina Zeldovich As Westerners condemn live whale shows, Russia hunts and sells killer whales to Chinese amusement parks.

by Gloria Dickie The grim curios and taxidermic creations housed in the US wildlife repository provide clues about trends in wildlife smuggling. And in recent years, coastal species from Latin America have been showing up en masse.

by Heather Pringle How a toxic debate over the first Americans hobbled science for decades.

by Michael Engelhard Butchered whales lure polar bears and tourists to a coastal Alaskan town. So far, so good. Sort of.

by Rebecca Heisman A team of scientists and land managers is racing to save a butterfly that depends on fragile coastal habitat.

by Vanessa Gregory The most important feminist, postcolonial artist you’ve never heard of.

by Sarah Gilman These infamous clams are invading new areas, buoyed by climate change and the 2011 tsunami in Japan.

by Eli Kintisch Charles Francis Hall had the courage to explore the Arctic—and the savvy to get the wealthy to pay for it.