In exchange for donating a portion of unspoiled, forested land to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste — a nature preserve in the country's northwest — the park would allow the company to dump its discarded orange peels and pulp, free of charge, in a heavily grazed, largely deforested area nearby.
One year later, one thousand trucks poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, mealy, orange compost onto the worn-out plot.
The site was left untouched and largely unexamined for over a decade. A sign was placed to ensure future researchers could locate and study it.
Treuer initially set out to locate the large placard that marked the plot — and failed.
The first deposit of orange peels in 1996.
Photo by Dan Janzen.
"It's a huge sign, bright yellow lettering. We should have been able to see it," Treuer says. After wandering around for half an hour with no luck, he consulted Janzen, who gave him more detailed instructions on how to find the plot.
When he returned a week later and confirmed he was in the right place, Treuer was floored. Compared to the adjacent barren former pastureland, the site of the food waste deposit was "like night and day."
The site of the orange peel deposit (L) and adjacent pastureland (R).
"It was just hard to believe that the only difference between the two areas was a bunch of orange peels. They look like completely different ecosystems," he explains.
The area was so thick with vegetation he still could not find the sign.
The results, published in the journal "Restoration Ecology," highlight just how completely the discarded fruit parts assisted the area's turnaround.
The ecologists measured various qualities of the site against an area of former pastureland immediately across the access road used to dump the orange peels two decades prior. Compared to the adjacent plot, which was dominated by a single species of tree, the site of the orange peel deposit featured two dozen species of vegetation, most thriving.
Lab technician Erik Schilling explores the newly overgrown orange peel plot.
In addition to greater biodiversity, richer soil, and a better-developed canopy, researchers discovered a tayra (a dog-sized weasel) and a giant fig tree three feet in diameter, on the plot.
"You could have had 20 people climbing in that tree at once and it would have supported the weight no problem," says Jon Choi, co-author of the paper, who conducted much of the soil analysis. "That thing was massive."
In a 2016 study published in Nature, researchers found that such forests absorb and store atmospheric carbon at roughly 11 times the rate of old-growth forests.
In many parts of the world, rates of deforestation are increasing dramatically, sapping local soil of much-needed nutrients and, with them, the ability of ecosystems to restore themselves.
Meanwhile, much of the world is awash in nutrient-rich food waste. In the United States, up to half of all produce in the United States is discarded. Most currently ends up in landfills.
The site after a deposit of orange peels in 1998.
Photo by Dan Janzen.
"We don't want companies to go out there will-nilly just dumping their waste all over the place, but if it's scientifically driven and restorationists are involved in addition to companies, this is something I think has really high potential," Treuer says.
The next step, he believes, is to examine whether other ecosystems — dry forests, cloud forests, tropical savannas — react the same way to similar deposits.
Since his first scouting mission in 2013, Treuer had visited the plot more than 15 times. Choi had visited more than 50. Neither had spotted the original sign.
In 2015, when Treuer, with the help of the paper's senior author, David Wilcove, and Princeton Professor Rob Pringle, finally found it under a thicket of vines, the scope of the area's transformation became truly clear.
The sign after clearing away the vines.
Photo by Tim Treuer.
"It's a big honking sign," Choi emphasizes.
19 years of waiting with crossed fingers had buried it, thanks to two scientists, a flash of inspiration, and the rind of an unassuming fruit.
This article originally appeared on 08.23.17
"Why does it sound like you're leaving?"
In every relationship we'll ever have, there's going to be a final conversation. Before the digital age, these interactions were usually face-to-face or over the telephone and could only be recorded in our memories. But now, just about every relationship leaves a paper trail of text messages, social media interactions, and voice messages. Sometimes the final communication is a heated breakup, and other times, it's a casual interaction shortly before a person's death.
Now, there's a blog that collects these haunting final messages. The Last Message Received contains submissions of the last messages people received from ex-friends or ex-significant others as well as from deceased friends and relatives. Here are some of the blog's most haunting posts.
"My good friend's dad died around Thanksgiving. Two weeks later he drank himself to death."
"This is the last text I got from my mom before she died of Stage IV brain cancer at the age of 53. It left her completely paralyzed on the left side of her body, hence the typos in the texts. What she was saying was, 'You're missing music therapy.' Almost as good as Good Friday church giggles.' A few years prior to this, we went to the Good Friday service at our church. The choir was absolutely horrendous and couldn't sing whatsoever. She and I sat there, in the most serious, somber church service of all, laughing hysterically, unable to stop for the life of us. She sent me this text while she was in hospice and I was at school."
"This happened a few months back. He was my best friend and my boyfriend of 7 years. He stuck with me when I fell pregnant at 16 after I was raped. He became an actual dad to my son. He was my everything. A few months before this message, things started to change, we drifted apart and he was telling my 5 year old son to lie to me about his whereabouts. One night he beat me, I ended up in hospital for a few days. He begged for forgiveness, I stayed. It happened again a few days later, he was at work when I text him. I took my son and left. This is the last text I received from him. I heard last week that he's just been sent to prison for crimes involving violence and drugs. I hope he gets the help he needs."
"My dad died 6 weeks later flying the plane in this picture."
"The last text he sent me. The next day I got a call from his daughter that he was still very much with his wife and I wasn't the only one he was cheating on her with."
"She had sent me a message earlier asking me not to contact her anymore. I woke up to one last message. We'd dated for 3.5 years and when I came out as trans, the relationship fell apart. I still think about and miss her every day."
"I sent this to my grandpa on thanksgiving. Two days later he unexpectedly had a heart attack and passed. He was my favorite person in the world and nothing has been the same since. I refuse to delete this message."
"I would have fallen in love with her if distance and timing hadn't gotten in the way. I'm ignoring her because I need to let her move on."
This article originally appeared on 05.25.19
Under the sea...
But in case you're not, here's the gist: Moby Dick is the name of a huge albino sperm whale.
(Get your mind outta the gutter.)
OK, technically, the narrator Ishmael survives. So it's actually a happy ending (kind of)!
Illustration from an early edition of Moby-Dick
Image from Wikimedia Commons.
It's chock-full of beautiful passages and dense symbolism and deep thematic resonance and all those good things that earned it a top spot in the musty canon of important literature.
There's also a lot of mundane descriptions about the whaling trade as well (like, a lot). That's because it came out back when commercial whaling was still a thing we did.
A non-albino mother and baby sperm whale.
Photo by Gabriel Barathieu/Wikipedia.
In fact, humans used to hunt more than 50,000 whales each year to use for oil, meat, baleen, and oil. (Yes, I wrote oil twice.) Then, in 1946, the International Whaling Commission stepped in and said "Hey, wait a minute, guys. There's only a few handful of these majestic creatures left in the entire world, so maybe we should try to not kill them anymore?"
And even then, commercial whaling was still legal in some parts of the world until as recently as 1986.
Tail in the water.
Whale's tail pale ale GIF via GoPro/YouTube
What are the odds of that? Honestly it's hard to calculate since we can't exactly swim up to a bowhead and say, "Hey, how old are you?" and expect a response. (Also that's a rude question — jeez.)
Thanks to some thoughtful collaboration between researchers and traditional Inupiat whalers (who are still allowed to hunt for survival), scientists have used amino acids in the eyes of whales and harpoon fragments lodged in their carcasses to determine the age of these enormous animals — and they found at least three bowhead whales who were living prior to 1850.
Granted those are bowheads, not sperm whales like the fictional Moby Dick, (and none of them are albino, I think), but still. Pretty amazing, huh?
This bowhead is presumably in adolescence, given its apparent underwater moping.
GIF via National Geographic.
Barring these few centenarian leviathans, most of the whales still kickin' it today are between 20 and 70 years old. That's because most whale populations were reduced to 10% or less of their numbers between the 18th and 20th centuries, thanks to a few over-eager hunters (and by a few, I mean all of them).
Today, sperm whales are considered one of the most populous species of massive marine mammals; bowheads, on the other hand, are still in trouble, despite a 20% increase in population since the mid-1980s. Makes those few elderly bowheads that much more impressive, huh?
Southern Right Whales hangin' with a paddleboarder in the Great Australian Bight.
GIF via Jaimen Hudson.
We might not need to worry our real-life Captain Ahabs anymore, but our big aquatic buddies are still being threatened by industrialization — namely, from oil drilling in the Arctic and the Great Australian Bight.
In the off-chance that companies like Shell and BP manage not to spill millions of gallons of harmful crude oil into the water, the act of drilling alone is likely to maim or kill millions of animals, and the supposedly-safer sonic blasting will blow out their eardrums or worse.
This influx of industrialization also affects their migratory patterns — threatening not only the humans who depend on them, but also the entire marine ecosystem.
And I mean, c'mon — who would want to hurt this adorable face?
BOOP.
Image from Pixabay.
If you want another whale to make it to his two-hundred-and-eleventy-first birthday (which you should because I hear they throw great parties), then sign this petition to protect the waters from Big Oil and other industrial threats.
I guarantee Moby Dick will appreciate it.
This article originally appeared on 11.04.15