Julia Whitty

Environmental Correspondent

Julia is an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction (Deep Blue Home, The Fragile Edge, A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga), and a former documentary filmmaker. She also blogs at Deep Blue Home.

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Julia is a writer and former documentary filmmaker and the author of The Fragile Edge: Diving & Other Adventures in the South Pacific, winner of a PEN USA Literary Award, the John Burroughs Medal, the Kiriyama Prize, the Northern California Books Awards, and finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean. Her short story collection A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga won an O. Henry and was a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award. She also blogs at Deep Blue Home.

Salmon Return to Paris

—By Julia Whitty

| Wed Aug. 12, 2009 7:44 PM PDT

It's been nearly a hundred years since Atlantic salmon swam the Seine upriver to Paris. Now they've done it on their own, without any efforts to reintroduce them. AFP reports that hundreds, maybe a thousand, swam past the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame cathedral this year.

And they aren't all. Only four species swam through Paris in 1995 when up to 500 tons of fish died upriver every year in foul pollution. Today at least 32 species inhabit the Seine, including lamprey eel, sea trout, and shad. Why? Because there have been massive clean-up efforts in the last 15 years, including construction of a new water purification plant.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Restore.

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Hurricane Seasons Wilder

—By Julia Whitty

| Wed Aug. 12, 2009 6:47 PM PDT

Nature says so: the frequency and strength of Atlantic hurricanes has grown in recent decades. We're now at levels now about as high as anything in the past 1,000 years. The data come from sediment samples along the North Atlantic coast and are analyzed alongside statistical models of the past 1,500 years of hurricane activity. Interestingly, there was a peak about 1000 AD that rivals and maybe exceeds recent levels.

The study validates the theory that two factors fuel higher hurricane activity: La Niña and high surface temperatures over the ocean. If climate change continues to warm ocean waters (and how can it not?) we will likely experience more active hurricane seasons. This year's slow start is thanks to a newborn El Niño... though El Niño is changing too.

Flu Triggers Parkinson's

—By Julia Whitty

| Mon Aug. 10, 2009 3:48 PM PDT

Here's news of an avian flu strain that makes you more susceptible to Parkinson’s, maybe Alzheimer’s, later on. The work is published in an upcoming PNAS and reports how mice surviving infection with an H5N1 flu strain are more likely than uninfected mice to develop brain changes associated with neurological disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

The researchers note that around age 40 people begin losing brain cells. Most people die before they lose enough to get Parkinson’s. But now it appears the H5N1 avian influenza infection changes the curve, making the brain more sensitive to another hit, possibly from another infection, from a drug, or from an environmental toxin.

Flu is primarily a respiratory disease but indirect evidence dating back to 1385 links it to neurological problems, including the brain inflammation known as encephalitis. Some survivors of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic went on to develop Parkinson’s symptoms.

The study marks the first time scientists have naturally triggered a Parkinson’s-like protein build-up—something apparently not that hard to do with the H5N1 virus.

Population Growth Explained With Bubbles

—By Julia Whitty

| Mon Aug. 10, 2009 3:13 PM PDT

Hands down the best and most dynamic 10-minute explanation of population issues I've seen. From Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. Thanks to Gapminder.

Thoreau's Legacy: American Stories About Global Warming

—By Julia Whitty

| Sat Aug. 8, 2009 12:36 PM PDT

You can read some kickass good tales in this new anthology, Thoreau's Legacy: American Stories About Global Warming. It's from the Union of Concerned Scientists and Penguin Classics and brings together established writers and fresh voices with personal reflections on global climate change. There's an interactive version of the book you can read free online. Or buy the hardcover. Great stories, some from friends of mine, on everything from climate change on coral reefs to the joys of bicycling.