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THIS WEEK IN
CALIFORNIA WILD

Winter 1999
Vol. 52:1

cover winter 1999

Tens of miles from shore, a harbor seal takes refuge in drifting kelp.

Photograph by Richard Herrmann.

Departments
Life on the Edge
New Moons, Blue Moons
Keith K. Howell

Habitats
Napa River's New Freedom
Gordy Slack

Horizons
Shades of Redwood
Glow-in-the-Ground Fossils
Blake Edgar

A Letter from the Field
Research in Cuba's Forbidden Seas
John E. McCosker

Counterpoints in Science
A Word from Klasies River
Jerold M. Lowenstein

Reviews
California coastal guides
Editors' Recommendations

Features
Mirrors, Magic, and Murres
On a small rock south of San Francisco, biologists serenade murres with loudspeakers and decoys to entice them back to their historical rookery.
Laura Helmuth

The Little Spacecraft That Could
Lunar Prospector, made from off-the-shelf parts, charts undiscovered resources and breathes new life into the Moon research.
Sally Stephens

At Home in the
Natural World

Naturalist's Almanac
What to See This Winter
Michael A. Roberts

Skyguide
Blue Moons
Bing F. Quock

Not available online:
Poached Eggs
For fifty years, much of San Francisco's protein came from the Farallon Islands, where eggers fought lethal wars to harvest nearly one million eggs a year from hapless murres.
Aleta Brown

Oases in the Open Sea
When their holdfasts break, giant kelp off California's coast become drifting ecosystems, home to ever-changing assemblages of seaweed and sea creatures.
Richard Herrmann

Swimming in Data
Thanks to satellite telemetry, marine mammal researchers are suddenly deluged in at-sea data. How to sort the signals from the noise.
Pam Squyres

Here at the Academy
Unearthing Snakes and Frogs in National Forests
Lisa Owens-Viani