Purple Urchins Feeding California, BBC
Since 2014, the Sonoma and Mendocino coast has lost 90% of its bull kelp forest due to climate change. Interestingly, the solution to the crisis may involve eating purple sea urchin. 
This is Your Brain on Weed, NeoLife
Pot is being packaged like fine wines and sold with bold claims about physical and psychological benefits. Does science back up the marketing pitch? 
Cannabis growth is killing one of the cutest (and fiercest) creatures in the US, The Guardian Fierce yet adorable, Humboldt martens have been described as the west coast’s own Tasmanian devils. They are "the wild heart of the forest." 
Fish & Flames, Playboy Anyone who has sipped the briny liquor from the deep cup of an oyster—or sighed a little in the afterglow of eating grilled king salmon bellies already knows that seafood is sensual.
Herring and Salmon Oil Smoothies, Edible Marin and Wine Country Sea lions are considered “sentinels of the sea” by The Marine Mammal Center. If they are showing up sick in significant numbers, that means that the ocean itself is toxic, and that’s bad news for everyone who eats from the marine-based food chain, including humans.
A science stopover for migrating birds San Francisco Chronicle The southern section of Point Reyes National Seashore, on the outskirts of Bolinas, offers a spot to see some charismatic birds up close.
California Gold: The Uni Dynasty of Mendocino County, Vice These men risked their lives diving for the purple pincushions with soft uni cores. Like all commercial fishing, storms and shipwrecks are always a possibility, air chambers can malfunction, and there’s one uni diver in Ft. Bragg that sports a scars left from 500 stitches he got after a Great White took a taste of him. I had no choice but to accept the shooter. I tilted the cup and the entire piece slithered into my mouth and I took a cautious bite. My life changed. 
Fish to Flowers, Modern Farmer The promise of gold, oil and king crab has lured fortune seekers to Alaska for decades. But Alaska’s newest profit-making industry stems from a most unusual source: flowers. Specifically, peonies — the kind that people will delay weddings over.
Visiting Baja Wine Country, Wine Spectator Since Mexico declared independence, viticulture has been slow to catch on in this beer- and tequila-loving country. 
Seeking Tango Bliss in Italy, Travel & Leisure
Tango comes from Argentina, but Italy can be found in its DNA. Of the thousands of immigrants that poured into the ports of Buenos Aires in the 1800’s, many of them came from Italy. 
2nd Chances, Audubon Magazine Just six miles from lower Manhattan, this small island oasis in the East River seemed almost bucolic—except, of course, for the coils of razor wire running along the high fence surrounding it and the gardeners wearing bright orange jumpsuits with DOC (Department of Corrections) stenciled across the backs.
Oberoi Rajvilas in Jaipur,
Afar Magazine I have a butler, and it’s a little awkward. What do you ask for when you’re staying in a tent in India? I don’t need someone to build me a fire or beat back wild animals; my canvas-walled refuge at Oberoi Rajvilas has polished teak floors, cloth wall hangings, and an exquisite hand-embroidered canopy. |
A daring dive into the wild blue off Costa Rica, The San Francisco Chronicle The scent of diesel, rusting anchors and fish slurry hung in the humid air of the harbor. I was in Puntarenas on the western shore of Costa Rica, waiting to leave on a scuba-diving trip to Cocos Island. 
Fish Crisis, Women's Health The catch of the day might be a menace on your plate. Women's health investigates how to protect yourself (and the
ocean) before it's too late. 
How I Started Eating Bait for Breakfast, Extra Crispy Under the glare of decklights, in the chilly spring mornings in the Homer, Alaska boat harbor, we’d use boxes of frozen herring marked, “BAIT: Not for human consumption.” My fellow fishers and I would slice the little fish in half, and then drive a curved, sharp hook through the herring, wedging the hook into the spine and then digging it into an eye socket or tail so the bait would hold fast. 
Thinks You Need to Know About Genetically Modified Salmon Organic Living The first genetically modified salmon is coming to grocery store near you. The national conversation about GE salmon is just getting started, but what does it mean for what you see at the store? 
Chefs, Please Stop Calling it Trash Fish, National Geographic Ocean Views While Chefs have taken the term “Trash Fish” from commercial fishermen who don’t have a market for their catch, another term commercial fishermen have for it is “dinner”. 
6 DIY gourmet foods, Sunset Magazine
Want to try your hand at the new wave of DIY foods? Discover how Westerners are raising the bar in their home kitchens. 
Achieving Slurpability, Edible Marin John Finger, president and co-founder of Hog Island Oyster Co.,wears one pearl earring, a subtle symbol of the turn his life took, from marine biologist to oyster farmer, from oyster hater to oyster guru. 
Visions of Dollars Dance Before Cuban Artists' Eyes, The New York Times and included in the anthology A Contemporary Cuba Reader.
ONCE again and, as usual, seemingly against all odds, the Havana Biennial opened. In this, the eighth rendition, contemporary artworks from around the world vie for attention with the decrepitly beautiful colonial city where they are displayed indoors and out. 
Fulton Street Fish Market, Gastronomica, reprinted in Best Food Writing 2006
At four a.m., Fulton Street fish market is already in full swing. Forklifts honk. Men with gaffs slung over their shoulders and fillet knives tucked into their belts haggle and joke. Fussy buyers from restaurants and retail markets check fish gills for freshness. Fish arriving at Fulton Street still carry tales of international roguery, intrigue, weather phenomena, and finance. |
Urchin Explosion
Edible Marin and Wine Country The kelp decimation along the California Coast is due to a “perfect storm” of environmental stressors that have triggered shifts in the entire ecosystem. 
Wine Country Gets Kind, Edible Marin and Wine Country
More and more studies confirm that cannabis has remarkable healing properties that are really just starting to be understood. The reason this plant compound integrates so well into human bodies is that the shape of the THC molecule is remarkably similar to the shape of molecules, now called “endocannabinoids,” that occur naturally in humans. 
The West Coast Groundfish Recovery: The Best Fish News You Haven’t Heard Yet, Civil Eats
Monterey, California, used to be an epicenter in the West Coast commercial fishing industry. These days, it’s still a working port, but many visitors know more about Steinbeck than Market Squid deliveries. And the city’s waterfront is full of restaurants serving shrimp and tilapia imported from China. And it’s not the only place doing so. 
Leave It to Beavers, On Earth and the Food & Environmental Reporting Network In an unexpected twist to California’s drought saga, it turns out that beavers, once reviled as a nuisance, could help ease the water woes that sometimes pit the state’s environmentalists and fishermen against its farmers. 
The West Coast Sardine Fishery is Closed: Not Because you Eat Sardines, but Because You Don't Civil Eats West Coast sardines have not been landing on our plates, but rather they are primarily being fed to larger fish as bait through the commercial fishing industry and on fish farms. Tuna farms in Baja and Australia and have proliferated over the last 10 years and it takes an astonishing 20 pounds of sardines to produce 1 pound of tuna. 
Herring on the Menu of Bay Area Restaurants,
The San Francisco Chronicle The San Francisco Bay is a frenzy of rapturous seagulls, cormorants so gorged they can barely take flight, sea lions bellowing and porpoises spinning. The herring have returned to spawn. Humans are getting in on the action, too. 
Second Chance Cafe, Sunset Magazine
Homegirl Café is more than just a place to get a taco: It's also where women who are former gang members or at risk of joining a gang can get job training and restaurant skills like cooking, barist 
Insider's Guide to San Francisco,
The Wall Street Journal WHEN OSCAR WILDE visited the San Francisco Bohemian Club in 1882, he reportedly observed, "I never saw so many well-dressed, well-fed, business-looking Bohemians in my life." San Francisco still has its share of Bourgeois Bohemians. 
Truffles for Locavores, KQED
There is no food on earth that inspires obsession like edible wild mushrooms and the Holy Grail of these are truffles. 
Gator Man, Saveur Magazine
ON HIS 65TH BIRTHDAY, John Tanner was going mano a mano with an outraged, feral razorback hog in an abandoned orange grove. With the scent of half-rotted fruit hanging in the humid air, the hog thrashed around inside a metal trap that Tanner had baited. | ||
Maria Finn
