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underwater experiences. I once turned my head to find myself gazing into the brown, curious face of a harbor seal, mere inches away. I believe I stopped breathing. We regarded each other for one long moment before the creature swam away, leaving me thoroughly enchanted. On another dive I stumbled into a grove of giant kelp. Bright summer sunlight pierced the water in distinct beams, lighting each kelp blade in dazzling yellows, blues, and greens. Distinctive orange garibaldi, California’s state fish, swam through the majestic swaying algae, entirely unconcerned by my presence.
    Now I live in coastal Monterey, a six-hour drive north of Los Angeles, and I can dive almost in my back yard. The sea here is still full of kelp forests, but different animals swim through the fronds. Garibaldi are rare; instead I find monkeyface eels lurking beneath the kelp, their eyes and big lips full of expression. A faunal shift occurs at Point Conception, between Los Angeles and Monterey. To the south are warm-water species; to the north, cold-water. Some animals, like the frolicking harbor seals, are at home in either province, but many others must live on one side or the other.
At least, that was once the case. Now more and more southern species are creeping up around the point, displacing northern species. As stories of expanding and contracting ranges become more common, I struggle with the picture of what my beloved California coast will look like in fifty or a hundred years.
    Thoreau wrote, “The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters.” In his time the sea was perceived to be a place that human activity could not touch or transform, an endless natural resource, “equally wild and unfathomable.” Today, to our sorrow, we find that the ocean is more fragile than we thought. Overfishing has vastly depleted, sometimes extinguished, the awe-inspiring “monsters” of the sea. Global warming is causing sea levels and sea-surface temperatures to rise inexorably, shifting species’ ranges and endangering those that fail to adapt.
    I love the beauty, diversity, and abundance of the California ocean. I wonder how it will weather the global changes already under way. Will Monterey look more like Catalina when my children learn to dive?

    Danna Staaf is a Ph.D. student at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, in Pacific Grove, California. Her dissertation research is on the development and dispersal of the Humboldt squid.

For the Love of Alaskan Ice
    Susan Carol Stein
    EVERYONE SHOULD LICK A GLACIER. IT TASTES A little bit like dinosaurs and looks a little bit like God, whatever that is. Take a good, long lick. You are just one person meaning no harm.
    Everyone should hug a glacier with bare hands spread wide. Go on, do it. Run up to it with your arms open, as if it were your favorite grandma. Push your hands into the ice. Feel the old, old cold pulling away even as you make contact. It’s not your imagination. The loss is subtle but sincere. Stare at the thin line of black rock between your boots and the glacier’s edge. No one has seen that sliver of earth before this moment. No one. It’s been buried, protected, unexamined. You begin to feel responsible for exposing the hidden skull of the planet.
    How could you know, living all your life in the bellies of cities, that you would fall in love with Alaskan ice? This beautiful blueberry Slurpee that stretches across the top of the earth is changing you.
    You learn the size of your carbon footprint and begin to minimize it. You telecommute as often as possible, walk wherever you can. You grow your own organic veggies, buy local, and avoid franchised food. You plant trees and flowers that attract bees and birds. You notice that wildlife now throngs to your healthy back yard, your tiny spot of earth. You use earth-friendly cleaning products and you recycle. You cut plastic out of your life whenever possible. You share your