It was early spring 1968, I had received a Fulbright Foundation educational grant to produce a 16mm movie about Japanese fisheries. The grant provided for the latest "state-of-the-art" Canon 16mm movie camera (there were no video cameras in those days), and with it I ...
For many years, I have been attempting to inform people that our life-supporting oceanic wildlife is being rapidly destroyed by human misuse and overuse. I came to this conclusion not simply by reading reports written by faraway scientists, but by sadly watching my own research ...
As anyone with an iota of awareness and no partisan ax to grind must surely know by now, this planet's nature is in danger of being mostly destroyed within the next century, with catastrophic consequences for human life. However, as I have worked more and ...
Some years ago, while doing research on angelfish on the Papuan Barrier Reef, I was lying on a white sandy bottom 30 meters down observing males competing for females during the sunset spawning time. After a lengthy period of motionless observation, I moved my right ...
The year was 1980. I was conducting fish research on the Great Barrier Reef, off Cape York in Queensland, northeastern Australia. After a lengthy dive, I decided to take a short rest and then explore a small, unoccupied sandy islet nearby for signs of ...
Due to the volcanic eruption at the beginning of July 2000, it's been a fairly long time since I experienced a normal Miyakejima summer. Miyakejima, my island home for many years before that, was beautiful in summer, with lush green forests, numerous birds and ...
Man years ago, while doing research related to environmental assessments of the Shiraho coral reef on Ishigaki Island, I witnessed an extreme example of a destructive human impact on a pristine, unspoiled reef. I was on the island in the south of the Nansei archipelago, ...
In early July 2000, Miyakejima Island's 7,000-year-old volcano roared back to life. Continual eruptions led to the entire population being evacuated over the next two months as emissions of very fine, extremely heavy ash were replaced by lethal gases gushing daily from a new ...
In Johannesburg over the next few weeks, the biggest talk fest there's ever been will ensure that few people on the planet remain unaware of environmental issues such as global warming, sustainability and rapidly decreasing biodiversity. Among these key issues, though, the outcome of the ...
Mikura Island, the southernmost of the Izu Islands south of Tokyo, which are administered by the metropolitan government, is a natural-history treasure house of global value. Though it is best-known for its community of 200-odd bottlenose dolphins, the island's terrestrial flora and fauna is also ...
