SCIENCE

Iceland’s Upper Crust
COSMOS Explores the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

By Paul Erickson

September 20, 2023

At 4:30 AM on 18 November 1775, an earthquake rocked eastern Massachusetts, tilting church steeples, and sending the grasshopper weathervane atop Boston’s Faneuil Hall hopping to the plaza below. Today, geologists link this magnitude 6 quake with an undersea fault line—a fracture in the bedrock—27 miles east of Rockport. …

Glam Clams

June 14, 2023

I’d like to tell you about the huge “killer” clams I’ve photographed on Indo-Pacific coral reefs. And I will. But first, I’d like to pay homage to our local softshell clam (Mya arenaria), famously harvested in my hometown of Ipswich, Massachusetts, which is located just a few flaps of a gull’s wing from Cape Ann. …

Public Service Announcement

Seagulls Prefer the Human Touch

By Chris Munkholm

May 31, 2023

Summary of Scientific Study of Gulls and Food Attraction

As we enter the brief beach season of New England, many of us hope to maximize the pending days of relaxation and salty air. What has become a secondary experience is the company of increasingly aggressive seagulls, who also have their summertime plans: plundering human food. They seem to prefer “junk food”, in the form of hot dogs, French fries, potato chips, pizza and ice cream. We have no reports of seagulls snatching kale or tofu, but who takes healthy food to the beach? …

Cape Ann’s Vernal Ponds

By Paul Erickson, COSMOS Science Contributor

March 21, 2023

You’re a salamander. A spotted salamander in a forest on Cape Ann. Spring has arrived and you’ve been sheltered underground in an abandoned mole tunnel for the last eleven months.

Now, with warming air and soil, you creep out of your hideout on a rainy night. Then, under the cover of darkness, you begin a quarter-mile migration to a small vernal pond in a woodland beside Route 127. There, you join other breeding spotted salamanders among sunken leaves at the bottom of the pond. All around you life is waking up. Wood frogs quack. Fairy shrimp—small aquatic crustaceans—perform an elegant water ballet….