Monday, December 31, 2018

Best of 2018

Bald Eagle and Red Fox Tussling Over Rabbit, San Juan Island National Historical Park, Washington

Welcome to the annual post of my favorite images from the past year. And let’s just get this out of the way right now: eagle, fox, rabbit.

The image of the bald eagle that stole a rabbit from a young fox quickly became a defining picture not just of my year, but of my career. Just hours after I posted the story and a sequence of images on my blog this spring, TV stations and newspapers were emailing me, wanting to do a story on it. By the end of the week, it had run in papers from Russia to Australia, on network TV news and was a featured story on National Geographic. And now, CNN named it one of the pictures of the year.

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Behind the scenes: Bioluminescence, Mosquito Bay, Vieques

Bioluminescence, Mosquito Bay, Vieques, Puerto Rico

Whether you call it Mosquito Bay, Bahía Bioluminiscente or something else, the bioluminescent bay on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques is the world’s brightest. The Guinness Book of World Records says so.

The glow comes from dinoflagellates, which are not particularly rare. They’re a type of plankton and are found in most ocean water. What makes Mosquito Bay special, however, is how concentrated they are there.