Why right whale extinction is on the horizon

Surrounded by the stench of rotting flesh, and wielding knives more than a foot long, the team will slice through the whale’s slippery skin and blubber, carving long strips into the carcass. When the cutting is done, they’ll use an excavator to peel back each strip, revealing bones and decomposing organs underneath. Each step of the way, the scientists will search for sharp cuts and gashes on the skin, signs of internal bleeding, or fishing rope embedded so deep that bone has started to grow around it. The team will photograph and catalogue each one.

Chelsea Murray – The Coast – August 2019

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Joe and the Whale

“The day Joe Howlett died dawned perfectly. The water in Shippagan Harbour was flat like glass, the winds calm, the sun rising into a dark blue sky as Joe maneuvered the Shelagh—the Canadian Whale Institute’s research vessel—into the Gulf of St. Lawrence for a day of surveying North Atlantic right whales and sampling for zooplankton off the coast of northern New Brunswick. Out on open water, Joe, and any on-board scientists not still in their bunks at that early hour, marveled at the morning’s perfect golden light—and the three tall ships they encountered, arriving in full sail for a summer festival. Joe, 59 years old and a near-lifelong sailor and fisherman, was ecstatic over spotting the boats.”

Chelsea Murray – The Deep – June 2018

The Agony of Intimacy

“For those lucky enough to have never experienced this kind of genital pain, let me give you an idea: it feels somewhere between an internal carpet burn and the slicing of many small blades, and it can be triggered by any internal vaginal pressure, even the lightest touch. Sex becomes not merely un-enjoyable but unbearable. Your body seizes up. You cry a lot, feel like you’re broken. And though many people have never heard of PVD or other genital pain disorders (broadly called vulvodynia), they’re common, affecting between eight and sixteen percent of women.”

Chelsea Murray – Hazlitt – February 2018

How Not to Die

Why one New Brunswick veteran—afflicted by PTSD, forgotten by the military, and armed with an evangelical faith in the healing power of pot—turned his small town into Canada’s medical-cannabis capital.

Chelsea Murray – The Deep – August 2017