Abandoned boats in the San Francisco Bay do more than take up space in marinas and harbors – they're a potential threat to public health. The boats, left to deteriorate, can become a wellspring of pollutants, including leaking battery acid, oil, fuel, and lead from paint. But what do you do with these rusting relics? Malia Wollen reports for QUEST radio.

You may listen to the "Abandoned Boats" Radio report online.

When a humpback whale and her calf took a wrong turn at the Golden Gate Bridge and headed to Sacramento, it drew a lot of eyes (and news media) to the Delta.

But while thousands focused on the plight of the whales, another story was emerging from the Delta– a story that was, as an editorial in the Sacramento Bee noted, perhaps even more dire despite receiving far less ink. The California Department of Fish and Game released the numbers from its annual spring survey of delta smelt population levels. The trawls from March to May counted only 25 juveniles, the fewest ever recorded and a 92% drop from last year's record low.

I wrote in a recent post about the little delta smelt, a fish native to the Delta and upper San Francisco Bay and considered a key indicator of the health of the ecosystem. Even before these latest dismal numbers, scientists feared the species was on the brink of extinction. Their alarm is, if possible, even greater now. Because smelt live only 1-2 years, the window for the species' recovery is slamming shut fast.

Unlike the humpback, the smelt isn’t the kind of charismatic megafauna that traditionally has grabbed the attention and evoked the sympathies of the broader public (though I think there are several on our staff who would argue the smelt is pretty cute and charismatic in its own right). But whether or not you agree with the Bee's assessment that delta smelt "aren't lovable fish," here is a local species, found nowhere else on the planet, disappearing forever right under our noses. And it is not as if we don't know what to do about it. Scientists have outlined actions that could be taken to help protect the remaining smelt. All we need now is the will to act.

That fact that whales can swim to Sacramento is a vivid reminder that San Francisco Bay is not just a crimp in the Pacific coastline but rather part of elegant interlocking chain linking rivers, Delta, Bay, and ocean. Whales don't normally travel up and down that chain, but lots of other species do: from young Dungeness crab who feed and grow in the Bay's brackish waters before heading for the ocean, to delta smelt who migrate back and forth between the upper Bay and Delta, to salmon who make the entire journey.

As we speak, one of those links is in ecological crisis (and we all know what they say about chains and their weakest link). Whales or no whales, we need to keep our focus on the Delta.

Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, “from the Sierra to the sea.”

Our Executive Director, here at the California Academy of Sciences, recently informed the staff that we are not to provide guests with disposable bottles of water, because it's not sustainable. This simple, but challenging, edict got me thinking about the irony of being green. After all, the Earth has been green for billions of years.

Even human commerce was green until about 150 years ago, when milkmen automatically recycled glass milk bottles. Almost all food was locally grown. Horses and cows ate grass and produced manure, which farmers used to fertilize their crops. Then around the latter part of the 19th century, three inventions radically changed the virtuous cycles that informed our relationships with nature. These were: mass-produced gasoline powered vehicles, plastics, and nitrogen fertilizer.

Gasoline powered vehicles allowed vast amounts of products to be transported quickly over long distances via land, sea or air. A variety of containers made of cheap plastic gave rise to the mentality of disposability. Nitrogen fertilizers helped food grow in large enough quantities to fuel an incredible human population explosion. Now here we are, painted into a corner by our progress.

We are in a war for the oil that keeps engines pumping out greenhouse gases so that we can eat our favorite produce all year long. That same oil is used to create plastic that supports the convenience mentality of 6 billion people. It fills up our dumps, and in many third world countries, covers the ground in mounds. A huge amount of that plastic also makes it into the ocean where it kills hundreds of millions of animals every year. Meanwhile, the nitrogen fertilizer used to grow the food that supports the world's population is now the top polluter of our oceans, and is creating huge, dead zones in places like the Gulf of Mexico.

The lesson to be learned here is that nature set the bar for elegant technology solutions and we need to emulate it. Our technologies need to give back to the environment, not just take from it.

That's what the new California Academy of Sciences building is trying to do in Golden Gate Park. It has a roof covered by a million plants that supports indigenous birds and insects, while insulating the building and collecting gray water for administrative use throughout the building. The result is a minimum impact on the environment.

In conclusion, there is no doubt we have a long way to go before our technology is as elegant as Mother Nature's. But, I think our generation will make the world proud of its innovation, and the geeks will inherit the Earth.

Donovan Rittenbach is the Web Manager for the California Academy of Sciences. He has a Master’s Degree in Multimedia, and 12 years of web & multimedia industry experience.

Unlike this cat, my future clone won’t
grow beyond a few hundred cells.

Last blog I talked about lucky IVF kids who will get to have their own personalized embryonic stem (ES) cells one day. So in the future they'll have cells to help treat their diabetes. Or Alzheimer's. Or Parkinson's. Or…

And all of this will be done without fear of rejection because the cells will have the patient's DNA. Well, what about the rest of us? I want some too.

I needn't worry. Scientists are working hard on getting me my own ES cells. How do you get embryonic cells from an old timer like me?

One way is by cloning. No, not like the old Michael Keaton movie. Scientists instead will only grow my clone for a few days in a dish before taking its (his?) ES cells. They won't let the embryo grow into a baby.

Here’s how the process will work:

First they'll get a donor egg and take out the DNA. Then they'll take a nucleus from one of my cells and put it into the egg. Or simply fuse the two cells together. Then they will do something and the "fertilized" egg will divide and make ES cells that have my DNA.

My future clone.

Finally they will tweak the ES cells into growing into the cells I need. And then I will be cured!

You may have noticed the vague "something" and "tweaked." These are the parts scientists haven't worked out yet. But they will. And when they do, they'll be cloning me to get my own personalized ES cells.

Just when you thought ES cells couldn't get more controversial, now they're going to clone people to get them. Scientists will create an embryo to destroy it for my benefit. And some people will look at this as me allowing for my identical twin to be created and destroyed to help treat my illness.

So depending on your point of view, this leap is either a very good thing (I won’t have to worry about Alzheimer's). Or a very bad one (bye bye brother).

Dr. Barry Starr is a Geneticist-in-Residence at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA.

California's landmark stem cell research program made headlines nationally, but what's the latest story behind the science? QUEST investigates the potential for medical breakthroughs in the next decade and how the Bay Area is leading the way.

Leave your comment or question below for Series Producer Josh Rosen on this story.

San Francisco Bay Invaders & Stem Cell Gold Rush (episode #110), airs tonight on QUEST at 7:30pm on KQED 9, and KQED HD, Comcast 709. (full schedule)

You may view the the "Stem Cell Gold Rush" TV Story online.

Josh Rosen is Series Producer for QUEST on KQED Television.

Scoop a handful of critters out of the San Francisco Bay and you’ll find tourists from far away shores. Invasive kinds of mussels, fish and more are choking out native species, challenging experts around the state to change the human behavior that brings them here.

You may view the the "San Francisco Bay Invaders" TV Story online, as well as find additional links and resources. Also see behind-the-scenes photos for this story.

San Francisco Bay Invaders & Stem Cell Gold Rush (episode #110), airs tonight on QUEST at 7:30pm on KQED 9, and KQED HD, Comcast 709. (full schedule)

Amy Miller is a Coordinating Producer for television on QUEST, and is the producer seen on camera for this story.

The land north of the Cliff House near the old Sutro Baths is getting a multi-million-dollar face life by the National Park Service and local philanthropists. The area, rich in history, and in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge will get new trails, catwalks and other features, making it more accessible to millions of visitors.

San Francisco Bay Invaders & Stem Cell Gold Rush (episode #110), which contains this short segment, airs tonight on QUEST at 7:30pm on KQED 9, and KQED HD, Comcast 709. (full schedule)

You may also view the the "Lands End Facelift" TV Story online, and explore additional links and resources.

Humpback in Sacramento River. Image source:
U.S. Coast GuardFor the past 12 days, residents of the Bay Area have been following the day-to-day saga of two humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) swimming far up to Sacramento River delta. Of course, we don't expect fully ocean-going, marine mammals to wander this far up a freshwater river system, and there's no good explanation for why these whales swam up to Sacramento in the first place. If you've been following the news, officials have adopted a new tactic in this "rescue," which entails banging metal pipes below water with the idea that it'll make the whales feel like they've been locked in a room full of jackhammers with no ear plugs.

Sounds matter to whales because hearing is a primary sense underwater. The marvelously sophisticated biosonar system used by toothed whales (like bottlenose dolphins and orcas) has been well known for almost 50 years. Baleen whales are much more of an enigma: we know that some, like humpbacks, emit low frequency sounds for long periods of time– whalesong– but we don't know how they do it, nor do we understand how they hear it. Low-frequency sound travels far underwater, and humpbacks in particular seem to be selective about the depth at which they sing, suggesting that humpbacks use unique differences in the density of ocean water at certain depths that provide communication conduits– much like the tin can and string telephones that kids use – allowing humpbacks in California to talk with those in Hawaii. Given the long-range migrations that humpbacks undertake, communication across ocean basins isn't such a funny idea, and the evidence to support this idea continues to accumulate.

Manipulating the acoustic environment in the Sacramento River may help the two humpbacks make it back to sea, but, in general, human impacts on the acoustic environment of the oceans has made it a much harder place for whales to communicate. As ambient levels of sound increase with more shipping vessels, the louder whales need to sing to communicate over the din. Not all forms of pollution are material, and the more we learn about the oceans– using all of our senses – the more we discover that there's so much more to learn.

Nick Pyenson is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, in the department of integrative biology and the museum of paleontology.

Gertrude Weise — a deposit of silica uncovered by
the wheel of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit.
Credit: NASA/Mars Exploration Rovers.

Watching the unfolding story of the exploration of our solar system's fourth planet is like watching an episode of CSI: Mars. Robotic orbiters, like police helicopters, constantly circle the neighborhood while determined rovers doggedly comb the ground for evidence. Back at the lab (Earth), forensics investigators put all the clues and data through detailed analyses, looking for the smoking gun that will solve the crime….

So what's the crime? In a headline, "Is Mars concealing a wetter, warmer past?"

As the Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and other spacecraft have revealed, signs of past liquid water flowing on Mars' surface are abundant — though scientists still tend to couch the evidence with the caution that there are other processes in nature that can produce these signs. Still, the preponderance of evidence points so strongly to past liquid action on the Red Planet, sometimes you can almost taste the water.

What startling piece of evidence has our forensics team uncovered this week? In a headline, "Gertrude Weise: Scratching the Surface for Pay Dirt." I'll explain. NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, which has been exploring the giant Gusev Crater for about the past 1,200 Martian days, recently dragged its non-operational wheel through the dirt to reveal a deposit of white material, which it identified as silica (silicon dioxide — same material that glass is made of). (One of Spirit's six wheels stopped working awhile back — which has made it a good soil furrowing tool, or plough!)

Gertrude Weise, by the way, is the name given to the silica deposit, named after a player in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. Yes, naming opportunities abound in our solar system — dwarf planets, asteroids, craters, mountains, and, yes, small deposits of minerals!

The well-cautioned announcement is that silica deposits like this tend to be formed and concentrated by water–although there are other possible explanations. Whether by the action of standing pools or lakes of water, or geyser-like activity of hot water heated by volcanic activity and bubbling up to the surface, this is yet another strong piece of evidence for the existence of liquid water on Mars, long ago. And, if volcanic heating is what produced the Gertrude Weise deposit, then this spot on Mars once boasted a hot spring — a warm, mineral rich, watery environment that may have been quite conducive to life…

That's probably the most exciting piece of the Martian puzzle right now: water and life, life and water. As it looks increasingly likely that Mars was indeed warmer and wetter in the past, and as we are finding life forms on Earth that thrive in conditions of extreme heat, cold, and toxicity (extremophiles), the Martian investigation seems to be mounting toward a climax. Is it only a matter of time before we find the fossil of a Martian microbe, or even higher order of life—or, maybe, beneath the frigid, dry, red soils, in an underground aquifer of liquid water, life that is living right now?

Stay tuned to this show. It's hard to say when the "finale" episode will be aired, but it promises to be a good one. For now, it's a real cliff hanger…

Benjamin Burress is a staff astronomer at The Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, CA.

Not long ago, nuclear power was unthinkable among environmentalists, particularly in California, where a moratorium on new power plants has put a lid on the industry for thirty years. But that sentiment may be changing.

You may listen to the "Reconsidering Nuclear Power" Radio report online.

Amy Standen is a Reporter for QUEST and Radio News at KQED-FM.