when he toted around his dad’s five-weight fly rod, the grown-ups told him he “ain’t gonna catch nothing.” and yet, wiggins returned from the bays and estuaries near his home with bucketsful of sea trout. 

“where’d you catch all them fish?” they’d ask. “i can’t catch them with a fly rod,” he replied. “bye.”

wiggins was a fishing guide for a dozen years, poling his flats boat and pointing out flopping trout, redfish and mullet. then for 23 years, he starred in a tv show called “addictive fishing,” produced by childhood friend kevin mccabe. wiggins first screen-tested the show in his son’s kindergarten class. the jabbering children hushed to watch. 

“from age seven to 70, we had an audience,” wiggins said, and he still does. his show evolved into “blair wiggins outdoors,” streamed on bally sports sun and youtube. kids still scramble up to him and elders doggedly hobble over for photos.

when he hooks a fish on tv, wiggins famously hollers, “there he is!” he calls prize catches “mogans,” mixing the southern nickname “biggans” and the northern vernacular, “monsters.” 

over the decades, the mogans became harder to find. as wiggins hauled fish out of the indian river lagoon, he observed the coastal ecosystem changing. first came the vanishing critters. as a kid, wiggins recalled, he encountered millions of fragile starfish dotting parris island channels. “i haven’t seen one in 30 years,” he said.

the same holds true for seagrass, shellfish, horseshoe crabs, sea trout and mullet. wading near the south banyan isles and pineda, scraggly seagrass scratched his little-boy legs like prairie grass, and fanned out just as far. brevard county was known as the sea trout capital of the world, wiggins said. “you could go out off of any given dock, any bank, throw out a shrimp on a popping cork and catch a trout anywhere in brevard county.”

when the seagrasses first disappeared, it was a little easier to fish—the trout were stark in the waters. today, it’s tough to find them at all, he said.

in the past, hundreds of mullet would leap out of the water in a five-minute span. the splashes are now silent.

nearly a half a century after he bought that tiny outboard, and more than two decades after he became a tv fishing star, wiggins is moving into his third act. rather than extracting marine life from his childhood waters, he is putting it back. he and fellow citizens along the indian river coast are planting millions of hard clams, part of burgeoning initiatives across florida to reintroduce historic shellfish to clean up waterways and restore life up the food chain. 

oysters and hard clams, cradled in their self-built shells, clean water as they develop. clams gobble algae through a siphon and expel feces, a fertilizer for seagrass and food for shrimp. once they’re settled on the bottom, they clasp sea grass, rooting it into the soil. each clam filters 20 gallons of water a day. reintroducing shellfish to waterways is a natural solution, a return.

death by 1,000 cuts

quahog clams once thrived throughout florida’s coastlines. native american mounds along the spruce creek reveal an abundance of oysters and clams, along with saltwater fish. but by the 21st century, the populations were devastated. todd osborne, a researcher at the university of florida’s whitney laboratory for marine bioscience, calls it death by 1,000 cuts.

as the four-mile pineda causeway was built in 1973, carving into the indian river and banana river lagoons, blair wiggins and his father chugged along south across from patrick air force base. the pair glared at the hulk of concrete. “take a good look around son,” his father said. “because there’s the beginning of the end.” 

“he was right,” said cari wiggins, blair’s wife and the director of “blair wiggins outdoors.”

the pineda causeway was one of 13 causeways constructed across the indian river lagoon. around the state, the raised roads choke water flow by creating a narrow opening. the bottleneck impedes water exchange and marine life migration. pockets of decaying matter gather in its corners, fueling algal blooms. blair calls them: “dams with roads on top.”

“they funneled into a small opening and everything quit moving,” cari wiggins said. “water is not going to want to flow sideways.”

the collapse of clams can also be traced to the commercial shellfish industry. at its peak in the 1980s and ‘90s, semi-trucks idled at boat ramps to pick up croker bags of native clams. 

the intense harvesting was the “nail in the coffin” for wild clam populations, osborne said. he estimates harvesting data only cover a third of actual numbers because cash was involved.

osborne said at the peak, the wild clam harvest was like the wild west; clammers collected the shelled critters in the thousands. unload. get paid. do it again.

“the clam boats that you saw, you could have lined them up side by side and walked to merritt island,” cari wiggins said.

hard clams burrow in seagrass. as the clammers dragged spiked clam rakes along the bottom, they inadvertently dredged up seagrass and crushed the smallest clams and horseshoe crabs.

“every morning i would get up and go to the boat ramp, literally it was a sea of grass floating on top of the water from where they had been digging with their rakes,” blair said.

listen: uf biogeochemistry professor todd osborne on how humans have engineered “an efficient way of poisoning the lagoon with excess nutrients.”

pollution is another part of the complexity of harm. it flows from industries and local backyards into the water. synthetic fertilizers and septic tanks are two of the culprits. 

“we’ve engineered a really beautiful and safe human landscape.” osborne said. “we’ve also engineered a very efficient way of poisoning the lagoon with excessive nutrients.” 

while shellfish filter the water, larval clams are especially sensitive to pollution and cannot ingest it, said mike sullivan, who owns a st. augustine shellfish farm and seafood market/restaurant called commander’s shellfish camp.

clams, sullivan said, are like canaries in coal mines for the sea.

“clams die if the water quality is bad or is getting bad. they can’t survive,” he said. “that’s why they’re not repopulating in a lot of these areas that have been fished out.”

sullivan is the largest clam producer on the east coast of florida, with about 75% of the region’s “clam leases” that the state administers for inshore coastal waters, according to the marine scientist mark martindale, director of the whitney laboratory.

coastal water pollution has reached the point in florida that not many waterways remain safe enough to grow hard clams for people to eat. along the northeast florida coast, sullivan’s spot on the matanzas river is one of the few.

a meeting of the minds between scientists and locals who’ve fished the waters longer than it takes to earn a phd led to a promising solution for what ails the indian river lagoon. restore the shellfish even if people can’t eat them. reintroduce thousands and millions.

restoring the once plentiful shellfish, osborne and wiggins conclude, would represent a major step toward renewing clean water.

a bottom-up approach to clean water

the indian river lagoon clam restoration initiative began as a grassroots movement. 

“we had an idea, and a network of people that came together to say, ok, let’s just do it, and see what happens.’ and we got attention, and it was working,” osborne said. “and then the money came, so it has definitely been a bottom-up approach.”

partners including the st. johns river water management district and the florida fish and wildlife conservation commission (fwc) provide staff, scientific oversight, boats and permitting. in 2019, epa’s national estuary program awarded additional support. every 10 cents puts another clam in the water, osborne said. but what’s crucial about the project, he said, is that the public is the main stakeholder.

“it’s more important that the people that live here and experience this every day, are front and center,” osborne said. “because you don’t need someone from tallahassee telling you what to do over here.”

living on the river is much more motivating than a remote vision, he explained.

beginning in 2019, scientists collected hard clams from mosquito lagoon. osborne describes them as “super clams,” because they had survived both brown tide and toxic algae bloom crises. 

“they are adapted to this ecosystem as it is now,” osborne said.

at the whitney lab’s bivalve hatchery in st. augustine, scientists began spawning the clams and raising them in a nursery that spring. after nine months, when the clams were about the size of golf balls, scientists and volunteers released them into the mosquito and indian river lagoons. 

the clams are grown on licensed shellfish aquaculture leases; blair is among those who offer lease space. nets shield the clams from predators like stingrays, though florida crown conchs that also love to eat them occasionally drill through. the conchs can devour 20 percent of the clams on a bed.

cedar key’s model, “clamelot”

across florida on the rural gulf of mexico nature coast, a gravestone stands outside city hall in the tiny fishing village of cedar key. etched in gray are the words: “in loving memory dedicated to the commercial net fishermen of this community.” the gravestone was erected on july 1, 1995, the summer after florida’s voters banned gill-net fishing by constitutional amendment. the vote followed a major push by sport fishers to stop commercial netting they said was harming fish populations, though researchers later found that the campaign had been misrepresented. the few fishing villages left in florida, including cedar key, seemed doomed to lose a way of life.

instead, a rebound emerged. federally funded job retraining converted net fishers and others put out of work by the ban to become clam farmers. leslie sturmer, a shellfish extension specialist, relocated to cedar key to assist. locals accepted the practice, she said, as the technology is simple, maintenance is low and the relatively clean coastal waters are perfect for clams.

cedar key launched the first clam aquaculture leases on florida’s gulf coast. the legacy began. now, the town, located about 60 miles west of gainesville, provides some 90% to 95% of florida’s eating clams. the clams are cultured in water-side clam shacks and planted on the lease sites around the cedar key coast. the booming industry, which sturmer calls “clamelot” after the legendary camelot, provides a local incentive for keeping water clean. 

the clams in the indian river lagoon, on the other hand, aren’t edible. the water quality is too poor, blair said, and the pollution pulses through these filter feeders. 

“eventually down the line, i would love to be able to go out there and harvest a five-gallon bucket of clams, come back and then have a great clam bake at the house like i used to,” blair said, “but until it gets right and we get our clams and our water back, the farm-raised clams are good enough for me.”

seeding hope in seeding clams

this spring, wading outside the river rocks restaurant in rockledge, volunteers poured 100,000 hard clams from red-ribbed bags into the indian river lagoon. 

the shards collected across the sand, crunching beneath feet. “this is how the indian river lagoon used to feel,” blair said. 

the river rocks spot is among hundreds carefully chosen in the region. when people go out for lunch there, they can see the restoration project’s placard and poles in the water or spot volunteers slugging around bags of clams.

“we wanted to engage the public so that they could see what we were doing,” osborne said.

the area was a former productive aquaculture lease, with clam shell remnants speckling the shoreline. the scientists replant clams where they once lived. 

across the state in southwest florida, sarasota bay watch follows a similar strategy. the nonprofit began releasing scallops into the bay in 2009. however, the sensitive scallops couldn’t survive the poor water quality. in 2016, the group shifted to clams. the southern quahogs are heartier, said ronda ryan, sarasota bay watch executive director. they survived florida’s devastating 2017-2018 red tide.

the nonprofit also releases clams where seagrass is sparse in the bay. “the hope is that putting clams in the water will help clear the water and improve the capability for photosynthesis and thus increase seagrass,” ryan said.

osborne agrees.

“the goal here is to reestablish seagrass, because seagrass is the functional base or foundation of the ecosystem,” he said. “everything out there either eats it, lays their eggs in it, hides in it or lives in it. without it, it’s like a desert.”

a greater purpose

in 2019 when the indian river lagoon restoration project began, water samples didn’t detect any clam larvae. but in this spring’s spawning season, osborne said, hundreds of free-swimming clam larvae — known as veligers — showed up in the samples.

“we know that at least what we put out there has spawned,” osborne said.

the project has released 13 million clams since its inception, with nearly a million in this year alone. by october, the volunteers and scientists will plant three million more. the next phase, which the fwc is sponsoring, will add 12 million clams to the lagoon’s troubled waters in the next two years. 

osborne paints a vision for the future he and other scientists and volunteers are working to create: once the quahogs clear out the algae, water clarity will improve and sunlight will reach the darkened, dying seagrasses. 

pinfish, a prominent bait fish, nibble off of clam siphons, unclogging them. 

clams are the base, sullivan said, and with their flourishing, others along the ecological chain will, too.

on a recent friday, three generations of women converged in the shallow water near river rocks restaurant: a grandmother, annette bushnell, 57; her daughter, cami waldon, 36; and a granddaughter, kaylee waldon, 14. annette and cami donned straw hats and giggled as they hauled the quahogs. 

 “we’ve heard rumors that the indian river lagoon was once clear, and we’d love to try to make that happen again,” cami said. “i like releasing the clams, knowing that they were going to serve a greater purpose.”

bushnell said she appreciated working arm and arm with the community, passing the bags between one another. her father lived on a houseboat, and her grandmother owned a boat named “tattletail.” in washington state, the family clammed with her grandparents.

brine pulses through blair’s veins too. a sea breeze saturates his lungs.

his family’s fishing legacy traces back five generations, he said; on his dad’s side, back to his great-great grandad in southern alabama, and on his mom’s side, back to the seminole indians of florida.

the solution to florida’s water woes can’t be just about the shellfish, he acknowledges. for all the work he, his neighbors and the scientists are doing to restore clams, an even greater effort must be made to stem the pollution torrent killing the lagoon. 

he and other locals can wade in florida waters and chuck clams out — an action.

born and raised on the indian river and its lagoon, blair said for him, it is now dead. he aims to revive it.

this story is part of the uf college of journalism and communications’ series watershed, an investigation into statewide water quality marking the 50th anniversary of the clean water act, supported by the pulitzer center’s nationwide connected coastlines reporting initiative

this story was featured in our series, slipping through our fingers: the future of water.

• cop26 goals, straight from the event’s website: what do we need to achieve at cop26?

• 10 charts explaining the economic benefits of climate change mitigation in the u.s. as leaders discuss environmental policy, learn more about how advancing climate policy will help our country economically. file some facts away to teach others who are more economically motivated during conversations about sustainability!

• what is ‘net zero’ and why does it matter? find out what net zero means and the current scientific conversations surrounding it.

• feminism and environmentalism go hand in hand. look back at this commentary from gender day at the global climate talks in 2018 to learn more about how feminism and environmentalism intertwine.

check back tomorrow for more info on what is being explored at cop26 — and good reads to keep you informed!

walking underneath the tree-covered canopy of kibale national forest, you can hear the songs of dozens of birds. moving through dense forest brush, you can look up and see the morning light gently pass through the tree branches onto the rich soil that covers the forest floor. kibale national park is home to approximately 1,500 chimpanzees as well as over 375 species of birds. a beautiful and important place. yet one person knows the bird songs best of all: harriet kemigisha.

harriet is a world-renowned birder, environmentalist, business owner, and field researcher. in 2005, harriet re-discovered the green-breasted pitta, pitta reichenowi, one of only two known pitta species on the continent of africa. her rich, environmental portfolio includes working with the ugandan wildlife authority as a ranger guide, serving as a research associate with the avian vocalization centre at michigan state university, and collaborating on numerous research projects with faculty and students at ohio university. as director and lead guide of harrier tours, harriet has profoundly impacted the environmental movement in western uganda and around the world through her conservation efforts, mentorship, and community empowerment.

we had the privilege of meeting and staying with harriet and her family during a field research trip in january 2020. harriet welcomed us to her beautiful homestead, an ecological haven filled with flowering trees, teeming with birds and delicious fruits. conservation happens year-round for harriet, as natural as breathing. during our stay, we reunited with wren edwards, ph.d. student at ohio university who had been living with harriet and collecting her dissertation research on the buraiga chimpanzee community. wren shared her findings on the newly habituated chimpanzees, providing insights into wildlife-human interactions on this complex and densely populated landscape. harriet extended her home to wren, knowing how important it is for researchers to immerse culturally and environmentally in village life, rather than sequestering in research stations far from the local community.

“harriet was born and raised near the park and she has truly dedicated her life to ensuring the long-term survival of the kibale’s species,” wren explains. “she spends every day working toward that goal. whether it is planting native species to regenerate the forest’s depleted buffer zone, or teaching children at the local birding club about the endemic avian species, or even serving on the local board which oversees the management of community protected watershed, she really embodies the power of community-centered conservation.”

harriet deliberately empowers and facilitates female-led research projects by extending her time, resources, and expertise in support of the pursuit of knowledge and long-term solutions for thorny issues of food security and sustainable livelihoods in a biodiversity hotspot. harriet has mentored many women including myself and continues to support research endeavors in uganda and across the globe.

one morning, harriet took the team on a sunrise birding tour through bigodi village. on our two-hour walk, i took note of how harriet would pause, listen, look through her binoculars, extend a bird sound, and then carefully point out the bird in question to our group. she would ask us questions to critically think about how kibale forest supports the ecological relationships we observe, and how it supports the local community. her deep knowledge of species’ relationships, from nesting patterns to feeding behaviors to social habits and her quiet ability to help others to care is what distinguishes her birding tours from the rest. harriet is in tune with her environment and uniquely provides learning opportunities and unforgettably beautiful immersive experiences for visitors, researchers, and her community members alike.

“harriet demonstrates in equal measure a deep knowledge about the environment, clear wisdom about human nature, and endless curiosity about the planet,” said nancy stevens, a paleontology professor at ohio university. “her honesty and kindness are backed by determination to make a difference. put simply, she is critical to the fabric of the local and international scientific community and an inspiration for the role of mentorship in developing sustainable livelihoods that celebrate and protect the world’s forests.”

the advent of the covid-19 pandemic has greatly affected ecotourism and environmental research in uganda. in 2019, uganda had roughly 1.5 million tourists, according to the annual tourism sector performance. on march 25, 2020, all activity of primate tourism was suspended, freezing economic revenue which villages surrounding the national parks so heavily rely on. the ugandan wildlife authority attributes over 70% of all ecotourism revenue to primate tours and activity.

due to job losses and limited economic activity, people have increased their reliance on extracting firewood and hunting in the protected areas and unprotected forest fragments, placing pressure on precious forest resources. but harriet has been working with local community members to limit this from happening.

the lessons to be gained from the covid-19 pandemic are applicable to climate change efforts too: we need to holistically change our approaches to protecting and supporting wildlife, or it will exist in the short-term. by starting in her community, harriet has shown us and the world how using your voice and thinking creatively can lead to prosperity and protection of the planet and wildlife on it.

since i was a teenager, getting my period has meant heading to cvs to replenish a stock of products from name brands like tampax or playtex and then, just as quickly, tossing them in the trash. 

i am not alone. according to data from the harvard business school, on average, users discard 11,000 tampons throughout their lifetime, which all adds up to 331 pounds of waste. 

traditional period care products are like trifle cakes of plastic. it is in product wrappers, applicators, receptacles for disposal, and even embedded in the product itself in some cases. menstrual pads specifically can be made up of 90% plastic. period care products cannot be recycled so the majority of this waste ends up in landfills. 

in the conversation surrounding sustainability, single-use plastics are normally at the forefront. reusable grocery bags and paper straws are championed as small steps you can take to reduce your impact. but, the impact of period products is talked about far less. 

the stigma surrounding periods for generations has contributed to both the impacts of menstrual waste and the fact that they are only recently coming to light. as an example, experts point to the extra plastic wrappers that tampons have, designed specifically to open without making any noise and keep your period a secret from (heaven forbid!) your stall-neighbor in a public restroom. 

luckily, we are beginning to shed the stigma around menstruation and shine a light on period care sustainability. new companies have stepped up to give eco-conscious menstruators some options. here are five brands that take five unique approaches to make periods greener…

1. natracare 

natracare gets the very first spot on this list because it created the world’s first-ever organic cotton tampon. 

statistics from their website explain how one pack of pads is equivalent in plastic content to four grocery bags. their mission since founding in 1989 has been to prevent this kind of waste by providing pads and tampons that are made from sustainably sourced materials. all of their products became completely compostable and plastic-free in 1995. 

2. dame 

dame, a u.k. based company whose motto is “bleed red, think green,” created the first-ever reusable tampon applicator. their product is ideal for the user who is attached to tampons and the comfort of a smooth applicator, but not to plastic waste. dame’s reusable applicator can be loaded with a tampon, used, and then rinsed off and stored until you need it again. 

a 2020 impact report published on their website claims their products have already saved 2.5 million plastic applicators from being thrown in the trash. as a bonus, the company boasts a carbon-negative certification. for every one metric ton of carbon dame emits, two more metric tons are offset. 

3. aisle

if you purchase pads regularly, a reusable cloth option may be the best bet to become more sustainable. aisle (formerly known as luna pads) is a company that sells a variety of period products including cloth pads. according to their website, thanks to the reusable aisle products purchased so far, more than 639,000 pounds of carbon which would have been used to produce disposable period products, have been avoided. aisle calculated this number using greenstory, a company focused on analyzing sustainability.

4. organicup

yet another approach to the green period problem, is replacing tampons and pads altogether with a menstrual cup. according to organicup’s website, their menstrual cup model lasts for up to two years. on average organicup calculated that this is equivalent to the use and disposal of 528 pads or tampons.

5. thinx

a final option, that eliminates the need for pads and any type of insertion, is period underwear. thinx is one company that has developed underpants designed to absorb period blood. their underwear options range from light absorbency to a super absorbency option that can hold up to 36 ml of blood, the equivalent of four regular tampons.

explorers — nearly all of them men — first sighted antarctica some 200 years ago in 1820 and put up barriers to deter any women who hoped to join them.

in 1914, famed british explorer ernest shackleton told three women his expedition has “no vacancies for the opposite sex,” in what was hardly an isolated incident of discrimination. it took a prolonged struggle, but today, women are a growing presence among the scientists and explorers in antarctica.

one place the evolution of this presence can be seen is at mcmurdo station, the main u.s. research station on the southern continent.

“when i first started going there, it was a military base, so it was highly male,” said brenda hall, a professor and researcher at the university of maine, whose first season in antarctica was in 1990.

mcmurdo was first established as a military outpost, though control was transferred to the national science foundation by 1998. the u.s. navy first allowed a woman biologist — mary alice mcwhinnie — on a research vessel in 1962, but didn’t allow women at the base until 1969. that year, a four-woman team was allowed to research in the mcmurdo dry valleys. since then, integration of women researchers in antarctica has been slow, but steady.

hall’s research, primarily on the paleoclimate clues of glacial history, takes her to many of the rockier parts of the continent, including across the whole length of the transantarctic mountains and to the antarctic peninsula. understanding antarctica’s past is an important factor in interpreting what might lie ahead as the earth’s climate heats up.

“the antarctic ice sheet is the major control on global sea level today, and in the future, most likely,” hall said.

in recent years, one of hall’s students accompanied her to antarctica. she is laura mattas, 23, who went during her junior and senior undergraduate years at the university of maine. mattas started as a field assistant and then became a research assistant, working with hall to use a technique that looks at the quartz on rocks to determine when they were deposited in the terrain—left ice free by a retreating glacier. the isotopes in the quartz act as a time machine that can show a history of glacial melt.

“we like to make maps because it’s a little bit more intuitive and easier to communicate to people who might not be really up to date with our studies,” mattas said.

for the vast majority of the time, hall and mattas remained isolated in the field, at a location that required a helicopter ride to reach. during the time they spent at mcmurdo, the gender ratio at the base was a stark contrast to when they were with their all-female field team.

“when i was on base, it’s very, very male dominated,” mattas said. “i wouldn’t say it was a problem. but i would say that the fact i was a woman did not go unnoticed by the copious amount of men who were, i would say, ‘lonely.’”

but even for someone as young as she was, mattas said she felt her position as a scientist was respected. still, there were times she felt “a little weird,” and in one instance was harassed by construction workers, she said. the majority of the population at mcmurdo aren’t scientists, but support staff, such as construction crews, administrators, pilots, and food service workers.

“all the women on base look out for women on base,” mattas said.

chris carr, another woman scientist who’s spent time at mcmurdo and a ph.d. candidate at the university of alaska fairbanks, echoed mattas’ sentiment that the mcmurdo base provided an uncomfortable environment with men making frequent advancements toward women. she felt this less while at her field locations.

“i haven’t personally had to deal with anything of that nature while i was in the field in antarctica. but you know that it’s there and you know the history of women who’ve been coming there and what they’ve had to deal with, and with being excluded,” carr said.

for carr’s ph.d., she’s studying a dramatic feature of taylor glacier in antarctica called blood falls, a frozen waterfall that’s fed by water from underneath the glacier that has a high brine content. when the iron-rich brine water hits the air outside the glacier, it essentially rusts, giving the falls a reddish sheen.

“for me personally, i’m really interested in what sorts of seismic signals these brine release events might generate, and so i’ve been using some different seismic detection methods to see if we can notice anything unusual at times that brine was coming out of the glacier,” carr said.

mattas and carr are part of a younger and much more diverse generation of polar scientists. according to the scientific committee on antarctic research, the association of polar early career scientists (apecs) had a membership that was 55% female in 2018.

carr is a board member of the usapecs, the united states branch of the organization. the group helps scientists early on in their careers studying the arctic or antarctic network and find resources.

usapecs is also taking steps with the intention of supporting underrepresented groups in polar research, including women but going beyond just women. later in an email statement, carr explained that the organization hosted a diversity and inclusion panel, is working to make its website more screen-reader friendly and is actively reaching out to indigenous researchers and policymakers for the website’s blog, owing to the fact that almost all arctic research is done on indigenous land.

marilyn raphael, chair of the antarctic sea ice processes and climate group (aspect), thinks a key to improving representation in the sciences is having scientists visible in the field who younger people can look to and see they look like them.

“women see other women doing science in this area, and they think they can do it too,” raphael said.

she explained that this applies not only to women, but all underrepresented groups. raphael, a black woman who is originally from trinidad and tobago, is currently a professor at the university of california los angeles. this position means she’s often one of those people visible to minority students looking to see themselves in the sciences.

raphael works to diversify the next generation of scientists through this role, as well as with her other work. she will sometimes reach out to apecs when in search of a junior scientist for a position and encourage people of underrepresented groups to apply.

while this diversity work is important to raphael, ultimately, she says she is a scientist, and generally doesn’t see the need to make a distinction about her race or gender.

“when you say ‘scientist’ it should mean everybody,” raphael said, referring to the fact that additional descriptors such as “woman” or “black” are often unnecessary.

when it comes to her antarctic work, she focuses on how sea ice and the atmosphere affect each other. raphael enjoys linking observations to find patterns, but her methods don’t necessarily take her all the way to the south pole.

“i don’t do the observations, satellites do the observations,” raphael said.

for some, getting more women to antarctica isn’t just the goal, but a step on the way.

homeward bound, an australian-based initiative, is designed to “heighten the influence and impact of women in making decisions that shape our planet,” according to the website. starting in 2016, the program has taken around 100 women in stemm (science, technology, engineering, math and medicine) every year on a voyage to antarctica, teaching them leadership skills along the way. the program focuses on a handful of core principles, called streams, such as ‘science’ or ‘visibility.’

though they were forced to move this year’s event online due to the ongoing pandemic, the ultimate goal of homeward bound remains to create a network of 1,000 women in ten years with strong leadership skills to diversify global leadership positions.

joanna young is a postdoctoral researcher at the university of alaska fairbanks. her studies focus on the glaciers in alaska and how their presence and accelerating melt affects the communities nearby. young has never researched in antarctica, but was a part of homeward bound’s first cohort of participants in 2016.

though young said it was a wonderful experience, she wished there had been more of a focus on systemic issues women face, rather than on individual transformation.

“i think there was a little bit of discord between what the, maybe, lead faculty members, who were leading the program were delivering versus what participants expected they might get out of the program,” young said.

in an email statement, homeward bound communications manager louise johnson explained that the organization believes building leadership and collaboration skills is needed to deal with the problems facing the planet.

“the program has changed in many ways since the first voyage, with intensive feedback from participants incorporated into every stream, including the addition of a ‘wellbeing’ stream that runs online and onboard,” johnson said.

additionally, in 2019 women from three of the homeward bound cohorts worked together to publish a research paper identifying barriers facing women in stemm. implicit biases, discouragement from studying stemm and lower salaries and retention rates for women relative to men in their fields are a few of the numerous obstacles they found hindering women on these career paths.

young thought that there were likely many reasons antarctica was chosen as homeward bound’s destination.

“i think that one was to just provide a really inspiring once-in-a-lifetime experience for a lot of the women on the ship, especially those who don’t work in polar sciences,” young said.

she also mentioned that because antarctica is a place where the effects of climate change can already be seen, so some of their learning was centered around that. and then, of course, there’s the ever-present antarctic glass (or perhaps ice) ceiling, with its cracks widening every day.

“sending a ship full of women to that place is kind of a way to subvert or challenge that notion of antarctica being a place where only men go,” young said.

only one side event during the week-long meeting at the fao headquarters in rome was dedicated to fishing, and the fishing industry rarely, if ever, came up during main events. according to people who work on fisheries and aquaculture for the fao, this is indicative of a larger problem.

“fisheries in general, by and large, do not gain as much attention or recognition or publicity as terrestrial agriculture,” said omar elhassan, an aquaculture biosecurity consultant for the fao.

fisheries and aquaculture provide the primary source of animal protein for 17% of the world’s population, according to the fao. and in low-income, food-deficit countries and small-island developing countries, nearly 25% of people rely on fish for their primary source of animal protein. when it comes to nutrition, fish matter, both globally and locally.

the same is true for employment, as it is estimated that more than 260 million people around the world work in the fishing industry. this number doesn’t necessarily account for those who aren’t employed as fishers but rely on sustenance fishing to feed their families. aquaculture and fisheries assure the livelihoods of 10% to 12% of the world’s population, or about 770 million to 925 million people.

if you picture huge industrial fishing boats – or the tv show “deadliest catch” — when you hear the word “fisherman,” you’re not alone. industrial-scale fishing tends to dominate how the western world understands fishing, but it doesn’t reflect the reality for most of the world’s fishers. small-scale fisheries employ 90% of the world’s capture fishers. adjust your mental image to include open-air fish markets, small fishing boats, and “the old man and the sea,” and now you’re closer to the truth. oh, and half the people in your mental image should be women.

empowering female fishers

women make up half the workforce of the seafood industry (including both fisheries and aquaculture). because the fishing activities are often equated with capture fishing and most capture fishers are men, the number of women involved in the fish supply chain has typically been vastly underreported.

“we see some women are fishing, but they are certainly marginalized often because they don’t often get on the boat, and that might also depend on some traditional beliefs – for example, that women are bad luck having on the boat,” said nicole franz, a fishery planning analyst for the fao.

women do the majority of the post-harvest work in many small-scale fisheries worldwide, whether they are cleaning and selling the fish or repairing fish nets and boats. but carrying these responsibilities doesn’t mean women always have access to necessary resources or to the markets, and they rarely reap the full benefits of their work.

“(women) don’t necessarily get the fair distribution of benefits within the value chain. if they’re not organized, that’s even worse. we see examples when you have a women’s organization that can act as a trade group together then obviously they can demand higher prices and they’re in a better position to access the market,” franz said.

the fisheries department at fao works closely with women’s groups, especially in africa and asia, to help support the rights and empowerment of women fishers. franz cites the recent establishment of a national women fishers’ organization in tanzania as an example.

technology as an intervention in fisheries

technology can make a critical difference in the fish supply chain, especially in terms of productivity and nutrition. in africa and southeast asia, it’s common to dry small fish by placing them directly on the beach. access to something as simple as a drying rack can completely change how much a small-scale fishing community can gain from their harvest.

“a small innovation like putting this fish on a rack rather than on the floor could make a big difference in terms of the product quality and hence the price, the nutritional qualities, and the overall volume that is produced by these women,” franz said.

some traditional fish-smoking processes can cause respiratory illnesses among women and children who are exposed to the smoke. the fao is working on providing access to better ovens that allow women to work without health risks. usually, a country or an organization will make a request to the fao for better technology, and the fao will provide training on how to build, operate, and maintain the technology. this helps to avoid dividing the market, which is what would happen if some women were directly given the technology and others were not.

“you need to very carefully assess the situation beforehand and discuss with the women themselves a solution on how maybe as a group they can come up with a system where they take turns in accessing this oven or how they divide the benefits of the products that are coming from the use of this improved technology,” franz said.

indigenous fishers and rights to the resource

small-scale fisheries also are critically important to indigenous communities, from the arctic circle to the coasts of south america. as with women, it’s difficult to track how many fishers are indigenous, but this is an area that the fisheries department of fao is beginning to dedicate more attention to because of how important fishing is to indigenous peoples around the world.

one of the main issues facing indigenous fishers is the recognition of access rights. customary or informal access rights are often disregarded when governments develop regulations and create fishing quotas. in the united states, the fish wars were a notable series of conflicts between the washington state government and native american tribes in the 1960s and 1970s. the state government tried to enforce fishing laws that were in conflict with hundred-year-old treaties held by the tribes, and the u.s. government eventually sided with the tribes.

tribal governments and organizations can help people organize and assert their rights, and franz has noticed an uptick in organizing among young indigenous people, especially.

“it’s an expression of this growing awareness and interest to get organized, to get the voice into processes, and to see how the particular issues that indigenous peoples depending on small-scale fisheries are also facing on top of what already is often a challenge for small-scale fishers,” franz said.

climate change threatens livelihoods

you may be wondering why any of this matters, since climate change is acidifying and warming our oceans, killing our fish, and driving people away from their coastal and island homes. but climate change only makes the need for fisheries-focused work even greater, because the people who rely on fish for income or food will be hit hardest. the role of the fao, then, is to figure out how to increase the resilience of coastal fishing communities.

“we have colleagues (who) work on climate change impacts on fisheries because obviously, in particular, coastal communities are very, very exposed, and the vulnerability to the impacts of climate change are considerably higher in coastal areas,” franz said. “they’re looking at the impact both on the resource, in terms of, for example, how stocks are shifting patterns based on the change of temperature in the sea, but also the impacts of increased climate vulnerability on coastal communities.”

multibillion-dollar fisheries in the united states are threatened by ocean acidification, which impedes the structural development of corals, lobsters, and other marine organisms. one state that is particularly threatened is alaska, the home of the nation’s largest crab fishery. alaskans tend to rely more on subsistence harvests than many other americans, so communities that rely on subsistence crab harvests are especially threatened by the changing ocean. thousands of miles away in the caribbean, ocean acidification is harming the coral reefs that are critical to the economies of florida, puerto rico, and the u.s. virgin islands. coral reefs bring in tourism, produce fish to be harvested, and reduce coastal flooding and erosion.

women and indigenous fishers are especially vulnerable to climate change because their more limited rights and mobility make it harder for them to migrate when their current homes no longer yield enough fish. increasing their economic mobility and power in the market can make women and indigenous fishers more resilient to climate change.

the social costs of conservation

destructive fishing practices and overfishing can transform ecosystems and reduce fisheries, sometimes to the point of no return. when there are few regulations over access to a fishery, resources become depleted and communities are devastated.

“what we see often is that there are no regulations for access, and that’s part of an issue in terms of environmental sustainability, because we see growing populations, increased pressure on coastal areas,” franz said. “on the other hand, for many of these communities, fishing is the only way to make a living, to get food.”

the presence of industrial fishing companies puts pressure on the already tenuous balance of access and protection. common resource management models include coastal zones that are reserved for small-scale fishers, quota systems assigned to a community or an individual, and co-management systems that allow governments to directly collaborate with small-scale and industrial fishers. but monitoring and enforcement is always a challenge for a government, which is a benefit of co-management.

“it’s about handing over, in many ways, the responsibility for the stewardship directly to the communities by generating a system in which they really recognize and value those management measures because they have co-designed them,” franz said.

conflicts between conservation efforts and fishing communities are also a growing issue, especially since national or state governments may create marine protected areas without consulting small-scale fishing communities that will be affected. conservation has social costs, and just access to resources is sometimes overlooked in pursuit of environmental protections.

“in fao, what we’re using is the ecosystem-based approach to fisheries, which tries to look at the environmental, the human, and the institutional dimensions together to make sure that these tradeoffs and tensions are identified from the beginning, and that whenever management measures are decided or the use of an area is decided, this is kept in mind,” franz said.

when negative impacts on the community are unavoidable, it’s important to look out for them in other ways.

“you make sure that either there’s a compensation mechanism or there’s some kind of a safeguarding function to ensure that you’re not having these unintended impacts afterwards that you haven’t even thought about,” franz said.

wild-caught vs farm-raised: the aquaculture debate

not all fish are harvested from the wild, which is a good thing since climate change and overfishing are shrinking fisheries worldwide. aquaculture is responsible for about half of global fish production.

here’s another mental image you may need to adjust: for the most part, aquaculture is not done in factories by large corporations but in backyard ponds by individuals and families. most aquaculture is small-scale, and 90% of the world’s aquaculture takes place in china and southeast asia, according to fao aquaculture biosecurity consultant omar elhassan. and again, about half of the people involved are women.

elhassan believes aquaculture is the future of global fish production, and he notes that aquaculture has been the fastest growing sector of food production since the 1980s. but cultural opinions about it differ greatly from place to place.

“all the fishing zones are essentially at capacity,” elhassan said. “the only thing that’s going to boost food fish production is (aquaculture), but also it really depends on the cultural mindset towards aquaculture.”

in asia and europe, aquaculture tends to be widely accepted, but in the united states, wild-caught fish is believed to have superior freshness and nutrition. 

“in the u.s., (fish) is one of the largest trade deficits. all of the fish in the u.s. is essentially just imported from other countries, and it’s a mix of aquaculture and wild-caught,” elhassan said. but false or misleading labeling leads americans to believe all of the fish they’re eating came from an ocean or a lake.

in elhassan’s opinion, there’s nothing inferior about fish, shrimp, or other animals that come from aquaculture versus from the wild. in terms of nutrition, health, and safety, the american distaste for aquaculture has little factual backing.

protecting aquaculturists’ livelihoods through biosecurity

the main risk faced by aquaculturists is aquatic animal diseases, which can rapidly infect an entire population of animals because it is hard to pinpoint the original source of infection and stop the spread of disease in a pond. biosecurity is a set of measures that people involved in aquaculture undertake to fortify an aquaculture production facility against aquatic animal diseases, and it’s what elhassan focuses on at fao.

“if you’re a small-scale farmer and you lose your entire stock, that can be quite devastating for livelihoods,” elhassan said. it’s like a corn farmer who loses his entire crop to a flood or a sheep herder who loses his herd to an animal attack.

“let’s say i’m a small scale aquaculturist and i lost all of my shrimp stock because of a disease, and let’s say that i’m not even in the worst case; i lost my whole stock but i still had some money or i could still take a loan. there’s still persisting problems of having this disease in my pond. now i have to take all the water out, i have to disinfect the water – can’t just throw it into the environment – and i’m going to have to dry my pond and my soil and sediment and disinfect the things for like at least three months before you would be even allowed to try to produce again,” elhassan said.

the role of the fao is to work with governments that request aquaculture biosecurity assistance to try to protect small-scale aquaculturists from losing their livelihoods in this way.

“what really drives a lot of the work, at least for us in the aquaculture branch, is trying to connect different stakeholders such as national, international, government, academia, and small-scale to recognize aquaculture as a truly profitable enterprise,” elhassan said.

getting fisheries to the global stage – or not

fisheries and aquaculture are profitable, important industries that employ and feed millions of people – especially women and indigenous peoples – around the world. in recognition of this, the fao is working to ensure that the needs of fishers, aquaculturists, and the people who rely on their harvests are addressed by the un. but most public-facing policy conversations in the international community still focus on terrestrial agriculture. despite the love that many cultures share for the ocean, it seems unlikely that fish will ever hold our attention like cows have.

but on the other hand, elhassan and franz measure success through the local impacts of their efforts, not through the global perception of their work. their focus is the small-scale fisher, not the large-scale policymaker. and maybe that’s for the best – maybe the most impactful work is done when policies for fisheries and aquaculture remain on the smallest scale.

while her words were flattering, i can’t help but wonder how critical i am to young lyvi’s life. as the executive director of the jackson hole kayak club, a small non-profit dedicated to the growth of whitewater kayaking, my primary job is to ensure her wellbeing and safety on the water. in a safe environment, i can coach and teach lyvi about the movements of the river, the varying features and hazards, and how much fun spending time outside on rivers can be. but, at the end of the day, i am a young man who shares little in common with a 12-year-old girl. i can’t help but wonder how a female coach could have provided a more rich experience for lyvi that day on the water.

the disconnect between lyvi and myself reflects a larger issue in outdoor recreation. across kayaking, skiing, climbing, mountain biking and other outdoor adventure sports, the majority of coaches, athletes and participants are white men. deeply embedded social structures and gender politics cause the gender gap in outdoor recreation, resulting in an outdoor culture where everyone looks, acts and thinks similarly. this “boys club” attitude of the outdoors can create invisible yet impassable boundaries that alienate women and people of color from interacting with the outdoors and participating in the activities that i enjoy the most. but, this is old news.

outdoor recreation has been immersed in white american culture since the 1800s. colonial influences shaped our perception of the outdoors and how we interact with nature, including driving through national parks and participating in extreme outdoor activities. these influences, paired with the traditional masculine influences of domination and conquest, frame the outdoors as a space for macho white males. though the recreation industry has a flawed history, playing outside is a critical step for young people to care about their environment.

according to the u.s. forest service, outdoor recreation introduces people to the outdoors and stimulates public interest in varying environmental issues, generating support for the preservation of air, water and wildlife. as climate change becomes an increasingly important issue, the importance of outdoor recreation thus also grows. and, while we seek various solutions to the complex problem of climate change, we must rely on fresh and different perspectives from various people to tackle such a problem. outdoor recreation opportunities must be open to everyone.

at a young age, outdoor recreation (kayaking and skiing specifically) inspired me to protect the spaces i love to play in, and find thoughtful solutions to various environmental issues. but, my passion for the environment did not drive my return to skiing and kayaking; my coaches did.

i fell in love with my ski and kayak coaches over the years. i looked up to their demeanor, their high level of skill in the sports i was beginning to enjoy, and at their own passion for the outdoors. i wanted to be like my coaches, and felt i strongly that i could grow up to be just like them. every single one of them was white and male. i only ever had one female ski coach, and she was a substitute.

in order to expand the range of people participating in outdoor recreation, we must create the space for a wider range of coaches and role models for the young people wanting to play outside.  a female coach for lyvi has the power to transform a scary situation into a light hearted one. her leadership and demeanor are both traits for lyvi to follow. and, finally, a female coach’s interaction with nature and the outdoors can pave the way for lyvi to develop her own passion and care for the environment, cultivating new ideas and passion necessary to combat global climate change.

in my role at the kayak club, i find myself in a unique situation where i can fix this systemic issue of exclusivity in outdoor recreation. i want to be more thoughtful in who i hire as coaches, who participates in our programs, and making my favorite sport accessible to anyone interested. these sports, along with the coaches and role models in my life, were critical in helping me find my voice and passions, and i hope to create the same opportunities for everyone and anyone interested in playing outside.

while i might have saved lyvi’s life that day on the water, with the right role models in her life she might be able to save our world.

to head off the threat of overgrowth, the global community has turned to solutions like birth control and family planning to help fast-growing populations slow their birth rates and assuage our sustainability fears. but when you look at who ends up carrying out our efforts to reach demographic sustainability, it seems that the growing countries of the global south are being unfairly saddled with a burden that is not theirs.

lowering birth rates in countries simply because they have high birth rates is not the fast track to a sustainable future because it ignores the major global inequalities in resource usage and environmental impact. wealthy, highly developed countries tend to encourage unsustainable choices at every turn, so even while their growth rates shrink, their harm to the earth and to future sustainability grows.

if carbon dioxide emissions per capita are used as the measure of impact on the planet, one person in the united states has the same impact as 46 people in bangladesh or 67 people in afghanistan. so while these countries may be growing very rapidly, the people in those countries are not to blame if we one day overwhelm the planet – the blame lies with the countries and people who are doing the most to harm the earth. we must focus our efforts on massive changes in consumption and production patterns, not on population growth.

family planning can be an effective tool of development when it is done in a way that benefits individuals. access to family planning has been found to give women more control over their lives by allowing them to make decisions that had previously been left up to their husbands, families, communities, and governments. it allows women to take more control over their educations, health, employment, and bank accounts and gives families opportunities to develop and grow in ways beside population.

but the benefits of family planning must be considered in the context of the global community’s ultimate goal: not just to improve the lives of individuals but to slow down population growth and improve our overall chances at survival. racialized, poor populations are not the primary perpetrators using our resources too quickly or destroying our planet through carbon emissions and plastic pollution, yet it has become their responsibility to reverse trends that they didn’t create.

many of our narratives around family planning are based in dehumanization, with the women of the global south viewed primarily as producers of children and not as people. global institutions celebrate dramatic drops in birth rate as development successes, but what is left unsaid speaks volumes: lowering the population growth of developing countries is helping us survive on this planet. the jump to a disturbing conclusion from this is a short one, as reducing the fertility of certain populations in the name of the greater good is clearly eugenics.

reducing birth rate in the 20th century was not about choice but control. institutions like the united nations and the international planned parenthood federation (ippf) have dark histories of participating in eugenic activities. for instance, the united nations population fund contributed to the fujimori sterilization campaign in peru in the 1990s, during which 100,000 women, mostly indigenous and rural, were forced to be sterilized. governments themselves are often perpetrators of eugenics, as was the case in 1976 when the government of india – supported by the american government – sterilized 6.2 million men against their will.

dramatic cases like these may seem like blemishes on an otherwise fair and successful global movement for demographic sustainability, but they are really indications that racism and classism are deeply embedded in our conceptions of population and development. in his controversial book fatal misconception: the struggle to control world population, matthew connelly writes that family planning can create and encourage racial divides and victimize vulnerable populations.

“even now, long after the demise of population control as an organized movement, fear of the fertility and mobility of particular groups continues to spark ethnic strife,” connelly writes.

the potential still exists for family planning to be an equitable and empowering tool for sustainability if utilized differently. this requires looking at populations and communities on an individualized basis at the local level, rather than the global, and identifying what specific environmental and socioeconomic problems they face. family planning may not be able to mitigate global climate change, but it can help communities adapt to their changing ecological conditions and enhance their abilities to survive and prosper on the small scale.

demographic sustainability in the future may not mean protecting the environment from populations, but protecting populations from the changing environment. hopefully, the future of sustainable development will prioritize the rights of individuals over the shrinking of the human population. it is the reduction of harmful activities that will save the planet, not the reduction of numbers.

yet scientists, like teachers, have lives outside the four walls of their work domain. media often focuses on the difference between those who practice science and those who don’t, rather than the things we might have in common, like family, sports, and love for pizza.

while this seems trivial, making the humans behind science more relatable is important for getting different kinds of people involved with science. dr. tesla monson, a postdoctoral scholar at the university of california, berkeley, maintains that this idea is key for people to realize that there is a pathway for everyone, especially for those less inclined to view themselves as potential scientists, into the field.  

one goal of monson’s podcast and radio show the graduates is to illustrate the different ways graduate students got involved with science. the show is a platform for these students to explain their research and its importance to radio audiences, all while giving them an opportunity to get to know them on a personal level.

highlighting that scientists don’t get involved with the subject at the same stages in their life is an important part of diversity in the scientific community, explains monson: “the last thing we want is for people to think, ‘i can’t understand biology right now, so i can never be a scientist.’”

monson felt the same way as a high school student and undergraduate: the way she was taught science was rigid and memorization-based rather than a creative and flexible process. framing of science — and scientists — as tough, cold, and disconnected, compounded by the fact that many underrepresented populations can’t view themselves as scientists, discourages participants in the field.

representation of real scientists and their stories can change that. the more we identify with someone, the more we understand where they come from and why they do what they do.

the perception of scientists isn’t the only problem in science communication. currently, many attempts at science communication have failed because of an audience disconnect problem. sara elshafie, a graduate student at uc berkeley, maintains that unsuccessful science communication is due to those disseminating the information failing to recognize how its consumers will perceive it. elshafie is involved with science communication through the creation of a workshop series, “science through story,” geared toward using storytelling strategies in science communication.

“the science itself is important,” she argues, “but the most important thing is making it meaningful to the audience.” information that the audience feels, rather than simply understands, has more of an impact.

it can be hard to make a significant impact when you cast a wide net, so elshafie advises targeting communication for a specific group. targeting communication towards a specific audience can seem paradoxical, but can often have better impacts than just the “general public.” it has a greater chance of making a lasting impact and a well-crafted piece might even have spillover effects into other demographics.

science communication is not only about getting views, it’s about getting people to care about issues enough to do something about them. thus, a better strategy is needed than the one for clickbait. it can be hard to balance thoughtful communication in the era of mass media, when it is hard to resist turning to sensationalism to get readers’ attention.

an effective and honest strategy involves consideration of how your words can be interpreted while critically thinking about how to use these words to better connect with consumers.

“it’s more about the audience than the speaker,” elshafie concludes, “and the ultimate goal is to make it meaningful to the audience.”

monson experienced a similar problem with audience relatability when she taught a class on human variation at berkeley. the biology class, touched on many controversial topics such as clinical obesity, skin pigmentation, and evolution. in a 300-person class, there was a potential for great social, cultural, and political diversity among students.

“i couldn’t be flippant with my language,” monson said. “for example, i couldn’t casually say that creationism shouldn’t be taught in schools — i had to be considerate of how students’  individual backgrounds lead to different interpretations of my words and find a respectful way to convey that.”

whether it’s through writing or through teaching, those with the responsibility of delivering information also have the duty to ensure that it is communicated in an honest, meaningful way.

what about the consumer’s duty? we should, as consumers, demand factually accurate information about the things that matter to us, such as our communities, environmental health, and governmental affairs. if we don’t care about the quality of our information, it means other people can change the way we think and act through how we learn about these issues.

it’s impossible for everyone to have a comprehensive technical background on every subject, so it’s important that we have accurate and high-quality information filters. the biggest thing preventing us from caring about an issue is lack of knowledge about the problem.

in a country where public opinion matters, it is important to have a scientifically literate citizenry that is aware of the problems our nation faces. it is imperative our community members feel empowered to be advocates for real change. many issues are preventative, and it is incredibly important to get people to care about them before it is too late.

we consumers should change the way we think of science. instead of something abstract and inaccessible, science should be thought of as a creative process. the only thing blocking someone from science is lack of wonder. science is tinkering and experimentation, with the end goal of truth above all else: pipetting in the lab, traveling to rainforests, and publishing papers are just a means to an end. most consumers won’t have much of a science background beyond their long-forgotten high school chemistry and biology lessons. it can be hard for readers to get past the jargon, to separate fact from opinion, and to see who is genuinely intentioned in communicating the truth. in this situation, maintains elshafie, it’s great to be skeptical. “if (something) doesn’t satisfy your curiosity, keep searching,” she advises. “and if you do that, you’ll find you have a lot in common with scientists.”