Bad news from the annual American Geophysical Union’s Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu. Researchers there announced today that radioactive isotopes from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, when three reactors melted down after the March 11, 2011, Tohoku earthquake and subsequent mega-tsunami, have finally reached the West Coast. John Smith, a research scientist at Canada’s Bedford Institute
Following some strange migratory pattern of its own design, and emitting a plaintive call-song that is never answered, a solitary whale roams the depths of the northeastern Pacific Ocean. The call-song has been tracked through NOAA’s underwater, sound surveillance system since 1989, when a research team out of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute noticed “whale-like” sounds occurring in the 51.75 Hertz band of the radio spectrum. Amongst the scientists who have faithfully tracked the song since, the mystery whale is known as ’52 Hertz’, but popularly, “she” is known as Alice.
