Don’t worry about the sharks. They’re large, yes, but they’re sand-tigers, which are relatively docile compared to other species in the water. It’s the barracudas you might consider. From where I’m standing, on the edge of a light tower in the middle of the ocean, I can see dozens of them floating around the structure, waiting for a snack.

“They have a mouthful of K-9-like incisors. Creepy fish,” says Dave Wood, one of the owners of the off the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina. “They typically leave people alone, but don’t wear anything shiny into the water. It gets them going.”

Not that I’m planning on falling in, but when you’re 32 miles out in the middle of the ocean, perched on top of a 60-year-old light tower, watching a bunch of predators swimming below, you wonder.

This is definitely the most adventurous and remote place I’ve ever stayed.

What Is the Frying Pan Tower?

The Frying Pan Tower is a decommissioned Coast Guard light station built on the tip of Frying Pan Shoals, an unusually shallow stretch of water running for 30 miles from the tower west to the Barrier Islands along the coast. Between the 1600s to the mid 1900s, hundreds of ships wrecked on the shoals—known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic—and the lighthouse was built in 1964 by the U.S. government to help keep mariners safe.

The building was decommissioned in the early 1990s when sailors started using GPS to navigate around dangerous obstacles. Frying Pan sat empty until 2010, when Richard Neal, fresh off a corporate job and looking for a project, purchased it in a government auction for $85,000. Since then, Neal has been working tirelessly to restore the structure, passing ownership on to 10 investors and taking over as the caretaker and head of a non-profit, FPTower Inc., tasked with keeping the tower from falling into the ocean.

“Frying Pan can still help keep mariners safe. It’s the only structure out here,” Neal says. Various things can go wrong for ships out at sea, from systems failures to people getting injured. “And it’s a resource for scientific research. We’ve had marine biologists out here, NASA, NOAA, people from MIT. Frying Pan can be a point to collect wave data, hurricane data, shark data…It still has value.”

The şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs Are Endless at the Frying Pan

It’s also one hell of a basecamp for adventure. Imagine all the benefits of ocean-front property, but put that property in the middle of the sea without any neighbors (or, granted, amenities like grocery stores). Frying Pan sits in only 55 feet of water. On a clear day, you can see the coral on the sandy floor from the catwalk that wraps around the living quarters.

These are ideal conditions for scuba, snorkeling, and free diving. Anglers can drop a line off the edge of the tower and pull up grouper and cobia for dinner. Several times during my two-day visit, I stood mesmerized on the edge of the catwalk watching sharks rise to inspect the bait we cast into the water.

If you get bored with your immediate surroundings, you can explore the Greg Mickey, a fishing vessel about 1,000 yards north that was sunk in 2007 to become an artificial reef in honor of a fallen diver. Or take a 20-minute boat ride to the Gulf Stream for deep-sea fishing for wahoo and tuna.

“I would pass by this tower when I was a kid on small boats, and it was always a comfort to see, because you’re so far away from land,” says Jason Guyot, an owner of Frying Pan who grew up fishing the area with his dad. “It’s nice to know there’s something out here if things go bad.”

And the view? Climb to the very top of the structure, 135 feet above the surface of the water where the actual Coast Guard light stands, and you see ocean. Flat and blue and all around you without a spec of land in sight. As far as vacation real estate goes, it’s one of a kind.

Staying on the Frying Pan

Originally intended to house a crew of 17 Coast Guard personnel, Frying Pan looks like an oil platform. The 5,000-square-foot living space boasts eight bedrooms, a commercial-grade kitchen, two bathrooms, and even an entertainment room with a pool table. A stainless-steel catwalk hangs outside the main floor of the tower, while a helicopter pad occupies the top deck. The actual lighthouse stretches out from that pad, standing 135 feet above the water.

While most lighthouses are located on land, the Coast Guard built seven of these offshore towers, modeled after oil platforms, in the 1960s for added safety. Three of those original towers have been dismantled because of their deteriorating structures; another was destroyed in a storm. The three remaining towers were all scheduled for dismantling until private owners stepped in to purchase them.

According to Neal, Frying Pan is in the best shape of the existing structures, but it still needs constant maintenance. There’s a small movement of private citizens working to preserve lighthouses in this country, and Neal is in the thick of it.

When Neal took over Frying Pan nearly 15 years ago, it had been abandoned for decades. The windows were broken, bullets were embedded in the walls from vandals, it had no power, there were holes in the floors, and rust was eating away at much of the exterior structure.

Restoring the Frying Pan

Neal spends every other week on the tower, working through various projects, while others pop out as often as they can. The renovation project has attracted an interesting mix of investors, all of whom are DIY advocates. They come out together to weld, re-wire, re-build, and generally figure out how to maintain the building. They each bring something different to the situation. One is a helicopter pilot, another a retired contractor. Others are divers and anglers and carpenters, providing fish for the kitchen and practical skills for the restoration.

Technically, Frying Pan is in international waters, so the owners could turn the tower into anything they want–a casino, a bordello, even its own sovereign nation. But they just want to make sure Frying Pan continues to be a resource to the maritime and scientific communities.

The biggest single room is the workshop, loaded with metal cutting-band saws, welding torches, cranes, chains, power cords, two wave runners on racks, massive diesel generators, canisters of oil and soy bean oil. Neal and his cohorts have replaced the windows, installed air conditioning, reconfigured the bedrooms to handle paying guests, and renovated the bathrooms. Neal estimates he’s put $300,000 of his own money into the tower, and it likely needs another $1 to $2 million more to be fully restored.

The largest hurdle in that restoration work is also Frying Pan’s greatest appeal: its location. It’s remote. For my trip, I take a 2.5-hour ride on a 27-foot fishing boat in rough seas and spend the majority of the time trying not to vomit. Supplies need to be either shipped in by boat or flown in by helicopter, neither of which is cheap. This means that Neal and his cohorts end up improvising a lot on site.

“I can’t just run to Home Depot. If I need something, I’m probably going to make it,” Neal says. “If I can’t make it myself, I try to find smart people who can.”

When I reach the tower, Neal and the owners are fabricating braces to hang on the side of the tower to support a row of solar panels, welding together custom-fit stainless-steel tubes. Neal stands on top of a six-foot-tall ladder, set on the edge of the catwalk, roughly 100 feet above the ocean, with a welding torch in his hand to burn a hole into the top of the exterior wall to fit a bracket that will eventually hold the brace for the solar panels.

“I love this stuff,” Neal says, hanging precariously above the ocean with a lit torch in his hand.

While I’m on site, he works from sunup to sundown, tackling one task after another, the half-dozen other owners on the tower at the time working right alongside him. Most of the owners started out as working volunteers, spending a few days on Frying Pan scraping rust or putting down carpet, and fell in love with the property and the challenge of figuring out the solution to the next problem.

Later in the day, Neal and a volunteer will scuba dive below the tower to replace the that stream a live feed of the bottom of the ocean to . After the solar panels are in place, the team will replace some of the exterior doors that are rotting through. Eventually, they’ll have to address some of the structural supports beneath the living quarters that are reaching the end of their shelf life. It all costs money, which is where guests play a part.

How to Visit the Frying Pan

Frying Pan Tower hosts visitors every other week throughout the year, with the proceeds going straight back into restoration. Guests can sign up for a ($900), where they’ll spend most of their time working alongside Neal, welding or cleaning or rewiring. Or they can sign up for an ($1,950) and spend their time diving or fishing or just soaking up the view. When I was there, a volunteer was cooking and the owners brought food, but on most trips you would bring food and cook it yourself.

Most people who find themselves on Frying Pan are infatuated with the open sea. They’re divers and snorkelers, anglers casting off the sides of the tower or taking quick trips to the Gulf Stream. The tower has also seen cliff jumpers and free divers, scientists and Boy Scout troops.

The potential for adventure is only limited by your imagination. Jason Guyot dreams about bringing a kitesurfing rig to the tower and exploring the surrounding seascape. I want to come back with a paddleboard and snorkeling gear. I’d also love to bring my wife and kids; they’d have a blast snorkeling at the base of the tower and watching the sharks from above.

The Stargazing Is Incredible

The night sky is the darkest I’ve ever seen. Not a single light competes for the attention of the stars in any direction on the horizon. Our group of owners and volunteers gravitates to the helicopter pad after the sun sets, and settles in to watch the sky above for shooting stars. The Milky Way is a broad white paint stroke across the darkness.

I don’t go in the water during my brief stay at Frying Pan, but I do help with restorations when I can, hit biodegradable golf balls filled with fish food into the sea below, cast for fish, and generally try to grasp the nuances of life in the middle of the ocean. This is the most isolated I’ve ever been in my entire life. The nearest Starbucks is more than 40 miles due west. If something goes wrong, it would be hours before help arrives.

That sort of isolation makes a lot of people anxious. But for others, it’s relaxing. All of the distractions of life on the mainland are gone. Your priorities shrink. There is only the task at hand, whether it’s fishing or hanging a solar panel, food, and rest.

For dinner, we fire up a grill on the helicopter pad. Jason Guyot, who owns car dealerships and runs a real-estate business on land, is constantly in motion, cooking steaks brought in from a farm in eastern Carolina. He turns the meat slowly, looks around and says, “I wonder what the rest of the world is doing right now?”

Graham Averill is şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř magazine’s national parks columnist. His time on Frying Pan was brief, but he’ll always remember the brightness of the Milky Way above and the sight of sharks feeding below.

For more by this author, see:

9 Beautiful Mountain Towns in the Southeast

The 10 Best Bike Towns in America, Ranked

8 Surf Towns Where You Can Learn the Sport and the Culture

The post I Stayed at This Coast Guard Station in the Middle of the Ocean. So Can You. appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

When it comes to adventure, there’s nowhere more exciting than our planet’s oceans. There’s also nowhere more imperiled. The threats come from so many fronts—from overfishing to plastic pollution to warming temperatures—that you need to ask more of your marine adventures. You need salty trips that pull double duty: putting you into the wildest depths of this dynamic environment and providing actionable ways to give back.

What’s more, experiencing this kind of cause-driven adventure can change you for the better, too. The right amounts of adversity and awe grant you a new perspective—one you should celebrate with a wine to match. Juggernaut Wines also intentionally seeks out challenges when it comes to growing conditions, whether it’s hillside vineyards with thin, well-draining soils where vines burrow deep in search of moisture, or coastal vineyards where fog, wind, and limited sunlight create stress—seemingly hostile conditions that bring out the best of each vine. Under duress, a hardy vine diverts resources into the grapes, ensuring that the resulting fruit yields complex and flavorful wine.

The post The 4 Best Eco-Friendly Ocean şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

When started diving, she found inner peace through her connection with the ocean. Now, she’s on a mission to share that joy with the world. See what’s out there, and discover new adventures wherever there’s water.

Born on the water in 1983,  is on a mission to create the best sunglasses on the planet and protect the watery world. An industry-leading manufacturer of color-enhancing, all-polarized-glass sunglasses, Costa combines superior lens tech with unparalleled fit and durability, helping outdoor enthusiasts See What’s Out ThereⓇ.

The post Watch What It’s Like To Explore Underwater appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

In my mid-20s, I moved to Ocean Beach, Southern California, specifically to learn how to surf. I spent the first six months of my tenure unemployed, so I was in the water every day, launching myself into the whitewash at Dog Beach, the most beginner-friendly break within a few miles of my apartment. I was enthralled with the surf, but I loved the town of Ocean Beach, San Diego, even more.

Back then, the small enclave was still grungy, with a downtown full of cheap breakfast joints and bars that only took cash. The bartenders looked at you funny if you wore closed-toe shoes. It was a surf town.

More than two decades later, I’m still enamored with surf towns. My home is in the mountains, four hours and 22 minutes from the closest surf break (but who’s counting?). Yet I still take surf trips regularly, as much to explore the towns by the beaches as the surf itself. I’ve been fortunate enough to paddle into waves in Costa Rica, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Hawaii, and areas up and down So Cal and the Southeastern United States. I’m not a great surfer, but I bar hop and scout out the best fish tacos at a very high level.

A great surf town has quick access to waves and adventure, but also good food, good vibes, and a dedication to quality of life. Read on for what I believe to be the eight best surf towns in the U.S.

1. Hale’iwa, Hawaii

Hawaii is loaded with bucket-list surf destinations, but it’s hard to beat the North Shore of Oahu, home of the world-famous beaches of Waimea Bay and Banzai Pipeline. The town of Hale’iwa is the cultural hub of the North Shore, with a small downtown full of shops, food trucks, and surf instructors ready to teach tourists.

Halei’wa is only an hour from the bustling cities of Honolulu and Waikiki, but it has the slower pace of a farming community. The town sits within a 20-minute drive of Waimea Bay, Banzai, and Sunset Beach, and has plenty of adjacent surf as well. Winter brings heavy conditions, with massive, glassy waves that only pros should paddle into, but the swells mellow during summer, allowing us mortals a go in this storied destination.

Patches of reef scattered throughout the area on the sandy bottom catch the swell. Start with the beginner-friendly waves at Pua’ena Point, which is popular with surf instructors. The beach is small, but has plenty of shade. A double reef break offers bigger rides on the outer reef and a smaller, longboard-friendly wave closer to shore. Then try Ali’i Beach, the closest surf to town. Much like Pua’ena Point, Ali’i Beach has a beginner-friendly wave close to shore and a larger, more advanced wave in deeper water.

Hale’iwa proper has fewer than 5,000 permanent residents and a downtown full of sugar-plantation-era architecture framed by Oahu’s green mountains beyond. It’s a picture-perfect island town where you’ll find waterfalls in the surrounding hills, and a fun and bustling live-music and food-truck scene in town. Paddleboarding the Anahulu River, beneath Hale’iwa’s Rainbow Bridge, is a great way to spend some time away from the surf.

Surf Shop: , right across the street from Ali’i Beach, has rentals from soft tops to performance short boards (from $30 a day).

Surf Instruction: , a female-owned company with a full staff of women instructors, teaches lessons at Pua’ena Point for the whole family (from $66).

Eat and Drink: If there’s one thing you have to eat when you’re in Hale’iwa, it’s shaved ice from , a family-run business established in 1951 that still uses homemade syrup recipes. The North Shore has become a magnet for food trucks, which serve traditional Hawaiian dishes al fresco. Online reviews say the garlic butter shrimp at is the best in town. I’m dying to go check out the reports.

2. Solana Beach, California

Here’s the problem with an article about the best surf towns in the country: I could write about 20 deserving towns in California alone. Carlsbad, San Clemente, Santa Cruz…all awesome. I could choose Huntington Beach, which is literally known as “Surf City U.S.A.” thanks to the legends that pioneered the sport there, but the town won the rights to that title via a court battle, which doesn’t seem very surfer chill to me. (Also, the breaks are notorious for their localism.)

So I’m picking the much smaller and more easygoing Solana Beach, in San Diego County. Is there a bit of nostalgia involved because I took my first surf lesson here, 30 minutes north of my old apartment in Ocean Beach? Perhaps. But this small town has a gorgeous, cliff-lined coast and relatively friendly locals, which makes for a powerful combo in Southern California.

“It’s super laid back, almost what you imagine when listening to a Beach Boys song,” says John Cavan, a 48-year-old lawyer and surfer who’s been exploring the beaches up and down the coast from Manhattan Beach outside of L.A. for more than 20 years.

The beach is flanked by tall cliffs topped by private residences, both of which help keep the crowds at bay compared to those in other popular breaks in Southern California, making Solana a top choice for surf instructors. The town offers quick access to a handful of breaks; the most obvious option is Fletcher Cove, Solana’s main beach, with plenty of parking and a sidewalk.

A beach break that picks up size during the summer makes Fletcher a popular spot for all surfers, but it’s still a great option for beginners. Another good nearby choice, Seascape, has a long sandy beach and a reef break deeper offshore that is good for intermediate to advanced surfers. Want something more aggressive? Swami’s, a legendary right-hand point break, is just four miles up the street in Encinitas.

In town, the Cedros Design District is full of boutiques and restaurants, and just outside of it is a weekend farmers’ market based in 1940s-era Quonset huts. The legendary live-music venue has hosted a wide variety of talent, from B.B. King to Ludacris to Hayes Carl.

Surf Shop: , located just south of Swami’s on PCH 101, has been a SoCal institution since the 1960s. You can rent soft tops (from $20 a day) and performance boards (from $45 a day) along with wetsuits, snorkels, and SUPs.

Surf Instruction: For lessons, try , which offers two-hour instruction sessions ($120 per person).

Eat and Drink: has been a pillar of good pizza and craft beer since the early 1990s. The place helped establish the West Coast style of IPA and is still a master of it today.

3. Ocracoke, Outer Banks, North Carolina

The Outer Banks is a chain of barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina that is absolutely full of great surf, and a dozen towns up and down the islands could qualify for this list. OB is the epicenter of surf culture on the East Coast, and the towns that line the northern section, like Kitty Hawk and Nags Head, have some of the finest breaks on the Atlantic.

But they’re also pretty crowded, which is why I’m choosing Ocracoke, a sleepy fishing village on its own island on the southern end of the Outer Banks, as my favorite surf town. I’ve surfed and camped dune-side there several times over the years.

Ocracoke has under a thousand year-round residents, and you can only reach the island by boat. A can take you from Cedar Island ($15 with car) to , crossing the Pamlico Sound in just over two hours. The remoteness means crowds are minimal compared to other towns on the barrier islands, and the vibe is pretty tranquil. A small fishing village wraps around the harbor, and most of the 17-mile-long island is protected as part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which means there are miles of undeveloped beach and dunes covered in sea oats to explore, not to mention inexpensive just inland of the breaks.

All of the surf on Ocracoke is beach break, and the sandbars are constantly shifting, so it’s hard to point you to one specific spot. Ocracoke Lifeguarded Beach, two miles south of the village, has a guard on duty and, thanks to that added safety net, is the best place to get in the water as someone who is new to the sport. But if you’re an experienced surfer and have 4WD you can cruise the beach looking for your own personal break. The surf is best in the fall and winter, but you can find good conditions year round. You’ll need a (which is free) to drive the beach, and while you’re at it, snag a permit for a , too.

Surf Shop: has rentals (from $25 a day) and lessons (from $95 per hour).

Eat and Drink: is an institution, with a shaded back porch perfect for drinking beer. has the southern staples of barbecue and fried fish along with its bivalves.

4. New Smyrna Beach, Florida

The Sunshine State has no shortage of beach towns, but New Smyrna Beach, in North Florida directly northeast of Orlando, gets the nod on this list because of the consistent quality of waves and the variety of options. Sandwiched between Daytona Beach and Cocoa Beach (childhood home of pro surfer Kelly Slater), New Smyrna Beach is blessed with long beach breaks and a river inlet with stone jetties that create what may be the most bankable surf in all of Florida. The conditions are so good, the beach is a stop in the USA Surfing’s Prime Series of competitions for rippers under 18.

As you might expect, the breaks are incredibly popular, so weekends can feel like a zoo, especially at the best wave, Ponce Inlet, where two rivers meet the Atlantic between stone jetties, adding shape and size to the swell. Ponce is a great option for advanced surfers who know how to maneuver through a lineup, but New Smyrna also has 17 miles of other beaches and waves.

“You can drive onto the beach at Flagler Avenue and drive north on the sand until you see a spot you like,” says Joshua Stallworth, a 24-year-old law student who spent his college years surfing the various breaks around New Smyrna Beach. You need a to drive on the beach ($20 per vehicle, per day).

The town is sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway. Flagler Avenue is the main strip, stacked with fish shacks and surf shops, while Canal Street Historic District is a little more upscale, lined with palm trees and boutiques. New Smyrna Beach also makes for a great basecamp for exploring other beaches in the area.

Head south to , a 58,000-acre wildlife refuge with 26 miles of undeveloped sand. Playalinda Beach, inside the National Seashore, has a beginner-friendly beach break without many crowds. Canaveral is the longest stretch of undeveloped coast on the Atlantic coast of Florida, protecting wildlife such as manatee and sea turtles, as well as ancient shell mounds left by the native Temicua.

Surf Shop: is the area’s oldest, with board rentals (from $35) delivered to you at the beach, and two-hour lessons (from $109).

Eat and Drink: You can’t beat the location of , a burger bar with local Half Wall Brewing beers on tap overlooking the Atlantic. Head to for a lobster roll and wood-fired pizzas.

5. Westport, Washington

Washington’s coast might offer the most dramatic surf backdrop in the U.S., with beach and reef breaks tucked between dense green redwood forests and craggy sea stacks rising offshore from deep water. The state offers adventure surfing at its finest, with many of the best options requiring multi-mile approach hikes where you carry your board. Westport, a town of 28,000 two hours west of Seattle, is the happy exception, with two steady breaks on its outskirts. The surfing is so good, locals refer to Westport as the “Surf City of the Pacific Northwest.”

The two main breaks start with the Groins, a big left-hander on the north side of Westport’s marina. This one is best for advanced surfers, not just because of the sizable wave but the powerful currents and shifting tides, which can change as much as 20 feet. The Jetty, however, in Westhaven State Park, is less daunting and has something for both beginners and advanced surfers. It’s known as the most reliable wave in Washington, thanks to the rock jetty that helps shape the swell and deliver point breaks, while the sandy bottom and frothy whitewash (that’s the foam after a wave breaks close to shore) offer a less intimidating option for learning.

“There’s always a wave in Westport,” says Brian Calder, owner of Bigfoot Surf School. “Even if the surf is too big for beginners, we can push them into the whitewater on a sandy beach so they can practice standing up in it. And we teach new surfers to respect the locals, who are usually surfing bigger waves on the outside.”

The Jetty can get crowded on weekends, but it’s an expansive break with long waves, so you should be able to find a spot in the lineup. Just be aware of rip currents, which locals may use as an expressway back out to the lineup after surfing a long wave in—not a move new surfers should ever try.

Surf Shop: was the first in Washington, opening in 1986. LOGE has a basecamp in Westport that not only has rooms, but performance boards and soft tops to rent.

Surf Instruction: has semi-private lessons (from $175 per person including the board) and will get you paddling out into the whitewash at Westhaven State Park.

Eat and Drink: Westport is a hub of commercial fishing, and you can find fisherfolk selling their catches, from albacore tuna to Dungeness crabs, right on the docks. Or you can hop over to , which has a variety of local catch as well as a fish ’n’ chips restaurant.

6. Newport, Rhode Island

Rhode Island may be the smallest state in the country, but it’s also dubbed “the Ocean State,” with more than 400 miles of coastline to brag about. Located on the edge of the state’s Aquidneck Island, Newport is positioned to make the most of that coast. Traditionally known as a hub for sailing (the harbor is full of yachts, and America’s Cup is staged here every year), the swanky town is also the epicenter of surf in New England, with very big swell showing up offshore during hurricane season in the fall.

Locals surf the town’s handful of beach breaks year round, getting the thickest wetsuits on the market for the bitter winter temps. Newport was long home to Water Brothers Surf and Skate, a cornerstone of surf culture for more than 50 years until the owner, Sid Abruzzi, closed the shop to focus on making apparel two years ago.

The northeastern edge of Aquidneck Island offers a handful of breaks, with something for all levels of surfers. Ruggles, with a rocky bottom and big, powerful storm waves, is the most famous of those breaks, attracting the biggest names in surf during hurricane season. Easton’s Beach, near downtown Newport, has beginner-friendly waves.

The town of Newport is well-known for its Gilded Age mansions, once built by America’s wealthiest families as their summer retreats, some of which you can now tour as museums. Enjoy Newport’s historic 3.5-mile Cliff Walk, showing you many of those homes.

Surf Shop: has boards and anything else you might need for the water.

Surf instruction: offers private lessons ($75 per person for one hour, includes a board).

Eat and Drink: Seafood is the name of the game in Newport, and much of it is upscale. , though, is a casual burger-and-beer bar downtown. , in neighboring Middletown, has house-made clam chowder and massive warm lobster rolls.

7. Pacific City, Oregon

Pacific City is a former fishing village of just over 1,000 full-time residents that in recent years has turned into the surf mecca of Oregon. Surfing here is as much about the scenery as the waves. The break is framed by , a sandstone headland that reaches out into the water, protecting the beach from the wind, while huge sea stacks rise just offshore. As for the wave, it’s not huge, but the shield effect results in a glassy structure over a sandy bottom that’s ideal for beginner and intermediate surfers. A popular is held at the beach every September, and it all happens steps from downtown at Pacific City Beach.

Pacific City is hella charming, even without the surfing. Fisherfolk launch dories straight from the beach and paddle beyond the break to haul in cod and salmon off the point of Cape Kiwanda. The hiking in travels through Sitka spruce forest to the top of the 246-foot tall “Great Dune,” with dramatic views of the Pacific below. In town, breweries and restaurants embrace the scenery, with outdoor beer gardens and expansive windows.

Surf Shop: , two blocks from the beach, has everything you need for cold-water surfing, with full rental packages that include wetsuits (from $75). The place also offers daily two-hour lessons (from $165 per person).

Eat and Drink: might have the best view in town, with a beer garden that unfolds directly onto the beach and a full view of Haystack Rock, the most notable sea stack in the region. Kiwanda Ale is the place’s signature easy-drinking beer, named after the home cape.

8. Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Yes, there’s surfing on the Great Lakes, whose 4,500 miles of shores are often dubbed “America’s Third Coast.” Hardy surfers track down waves all over these inland seas, and Sheboygan, a small town on the western shore of Lake Michigan, is arguably the most surf-centric town in the Great Lakes area. Locals call it the “Malibu of the Midwest” because of the laid-back vibe and access to good surf, which can be found year round, but is best in the fall and winter.

“Summer is pretty flat, but come fall and winter you can get out a couple of times a week at least,” says Nathan Anderson, who grew up in the area and now works at EOS Surf Shop downtown.

The surf is dependent on the wind and gets the biggest when heavy gusts come in from the northeast or southwest. Since the best waves form in fall and winter, a thick wetsuit is necessary. The lakes are fresh water, less buoyant than salt, which means long boards are a must for most surfers.

North Beach of Deland Park is the best break in town, thanks to the jetty that helps shape the wave. The shore has a sandy bottom and can be suited to beginners on mellow days, or hard chargers when the wind and surf are up.

Beyond surfing, Sheboygan is a town of 49,000 situated between Green Bay and Milwaukee and known for its bratwurst. There’s a vibrant downtown with a good and even better food. Also cool, the city of Sheboygan places a handful of large fire rings, each about twice the size of a Solo Stove backyard pit, out for lakeside bonfires from Memorial Day through August, north of Deland Beach near North Point Park. Kohler-Andrae State Park, next door to downtown Sheboygan, has two miles of sandy beach and dunes.

Surf Shop: is the only game in town, and they’ve got you covered with local knowledge, rentals (from $40 a day), and two-hour lessons ($120).

Eat and Drink: You’ll find bratwurst all over town, but has been an institution since the 1950s, serving a brat burger that does the town’s reputation proud. To drink something local, check out , which has a 10,000-square-foot taproom and a Fresh Coast juicy pale ale.

Graham Averill is şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř magazine’s national-parks columnist. He’s always been torn between the mountains and the beach, but currently lives in the Southern Appalachians. Construction has begun on a surf wave in the French Broad River close to his home of Asheville, North Carolina, so that could solve all of his problems.

For more by this author, see:

The Best Ways to Get şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř in West Virginia

The 10 Best National Parks in Canada

The Ultimate Guide to Driving the Blue Ridge Parkway

Boating Turns Me Green. But I Couldn’t Miss a Chance to See the Channel Islands.

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On June 28, a pod of Atlantic white-sided dolphins became stuck in the shallow mudflats at the mouth of the Herring River estuary on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod. Within a few days, rescuers counted 146 of the aquatic mammals that were trapped in the tidal mouth. The International Fund for Animal Welfare, a Washington D.C.-based conservation charity, eventually confirmed that it was the largest mass-stranding of dolphins in U.S. history.

The beaching kicked off a major operation to try and save the dolphins. Staff from IFAW led the rescue effort, which spanned five days and included help from multiple organizations: the AmeriCorps of Cape Cod, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, the New England Aquarium, the Center for Coastal Studies, the Wellfleet Harbormaster. Dozens of local volunteers also pitched in. The efforts were not in vain, and the IFAW said that the group saved 102 dolphins, approximately 70 percent of those that were stranded.

Cape Cod has a history of marine mammal strandings, a phenomenon that results from a rare combination of coastal geography and changing tides. When seen on a map, Cape Cod juts out into the ocean in the shape of a hook, with a smaller hook nested inside it at Wellfleet. “It’s basically a trap, from a geographical sense,” says Sarah Sharp, an animal rescue veterinarian with IFAW, who was on the scene for the duration of the rescue. Wellfleet also has one of the largest tide fluctuations on the East Coast—sometimes the difference is 12 feet—second only to Canada’s Bay of Fundy. The combination ensnared the pod of dolphins, which usually swim farther out at sea. “The species is pelagic, meaning deep offshore dolphins,” Sharp says. “They’re not used to having a 12-foot vertical tide drop and then ending up on land when that happens.”

IFAW has been running rescue operations at Cape Cod for 26 years. Sharp and her colleagues respond to an average of 315 stranding events each year—typically a single marine mammal, or a small group of three or four. Prior to June 28 the largest mass stranding on record in the U.S. was 97 Atlantic white-sided dolphins, in 1998. But that stranding happened over the course of four weeks, not all at once. The largest that Sharp had personally experienced was 45 common dolphins, in 2020.

Sharp recalls arriving at the June 28th scene in the late morning and being astonished at the sight. From her vantage, she counted more than 80 large dolphins lying in the mud. Many of them were thrashing or flipping their tails, so she knew they were still alive. There were likely more she couldn’t see around the corner. Sharp had five staffers with her, and more than a dozen volunteers, but they were grossly outnumbered. “It was completely overwhelming,” she says.

The group quickly divided into small teams and fanned out to cover the broad area. As Sharp rushed down to the shore, she was overcome by the sudden sound of dolphins breathing—a forceful whoosh in and out that seemed to come from all sides.

In a typical rescue, Sharp and team would lift the stranded dolphin onto a stretcher and transport it on a specialized beach cart to a custom-built mobile veterinary clinic that staffers call “Moby.” They’d place the dolphin on a squishy foam mat inside, shelter it from heat and sun, administer IV fluids, and then transport it to Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod, where it would be released into food-rich waters near the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

But the June 28 event was not a typical rescue—there were far too many dolphins to use Moby. Instead, Sharp and the others went from dolphin to dolphin, rolling those that were on their sides onto their bellies and then hand-digging the sand out from beneath the dolphins’ nine-inch pectoral flippers so the appendages wouldn’t dislocate. The rescuers then cleared out sharp oyster shell shards from the dolphins and covered them with light-colored sheets to protect them from the sun. “We tried to be methodical, but we ended up running to whichever animal was thrashing the hardest,” Sharp says.

Over the course of an hour or so, they were able to reach every live stranded dolphin before the tide turned and the process of “refloating”—getting the dolphins to swim in deeper water—began. At that point, the rescue team faced the most critical point of the operation. “When the water comes back in, the chance of [dolphins] drowning is high,” Sharp says. If a dolphin falls back over onto its side before the water is deep enough for it to swim, it might not be able to right itself and could drown if the water level is higher than its blowhole.

Sharp compares the refloating experience to whack-a-mole, rushing from dolphin to dolphin trying to keep them upright as the tide rushes back in. “Time morphs weirdly when you’re out there doing these things, but I think it was probably 45 minutes of panic, running from animal to animal trying to save as many as we could.”

Afterward, the rescue team switched from foot to boat to herd the swimming dolphins further away from the shore. Boat crews worked until sunset. The next morning, Saturday June 29, Sharp and her colleagues were back on the scene monitoring ten dolphins who remained in shallow waters.

By Sunday morning, six dolphins remained. One became stranded at low tide, and was in such bad condition that Sharp euthanized it. Not only because it was the most humane thing to do, but because the gravely injured dolphin was most likely preventing the others from leaving for deeper water. As the IFAW stated in a press release: “The very social nature of these dolphins means that they will stick together even in a bad situation. By removing individuals that are not well, the group may be more easily moved offshore.”

Meanwhile, a call came in that 20 Atlantic white-sided dolphins were stranded nearby in Brewster. Three of the 20 died before rescuers arrived at the scene. The rest were able to be successfully refloated.

By Tuesday morning, July 2, a total of 11 dolphins were still swimming dangerously close to shore at Welfleet. When the mammals began to move up shore toward Duck Creek, which Sharp describes as a historic mass stranding area that’s particularly difficult to extract from, rescuers herded them to a more accessible area. The dolphins became stranded there, where Sharp and team were waiting to bring them into Moby and administer advanced treatment. Two were euthanized for their condition. Nine were treated and released in Provincetown.

As of July 15, of the 146 stranded dolphins, 102 are believed to have survived, 37 perished, and seven were euthanized for humane purposes. As for what triggered the biggest mass dolphin stranding in recorded U.S. History, no one can say if factors beyond Cape Cod’s geography and tidal shift led the animals to become trapped.

Scientists do know that the species that most typically strands shifts over time. In Cape Cod in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was pilot whales. In the late 90s it was Atlantic white-sided dolphins. In the early 2000s, it was common dolphins, which continue to be the most frequent species stranded today—although this recent mass stranding may be the start of a shift back to Atlantic white-sided dolphins.

“The Gulf of Maine is the fastest warming body of water on the planet so we know that this ecosystem is changing quite a bit,” Sharp says. “That’s probably affecting where the prey are distributed and the dolphins follow the prey. Other than that we don’t know.”

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By the time we’d reached the bottom of the Cayman Trench, some 2,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, I’d lost feeling in my legs. My neck was aching, and my ears felt as though they were going to explode under the mounting pressure. “Heavy,” said the passenger sitting next to me. He stared out the window with shell-shocked eyes, and I looked, too. A Milky Way of multicolored stars twinkled in blue, violet, and white as far as we could see, like fireworks in a night sky. But these were no fireworks, and the view was no starscape.

What we were seeing were the bioluminescent emissions from tens of thousands of plankton, cephalopods, and who knows what else. This is what the world looks like at the ocean’s sunless depths.

I’d come here because I wanted to see where the planet’s largest collection of organisms called home. I wanted to explore one of the last frontiers on earth.

This was more than ten years ago. Back then, regular folk weren’t talking about vacations to the deep ocean, let alone booking trips to it. There were no sanctioned tours or government-licensed operators to take you. The only way for a private citizen like me to get down there was to either save up several million dollars and purchase a custom-built submersible, or fly to Honduras and meet with the renegade undersea explorer Karl Stanley. I chose the second option.

Stanley had hand-built his own submarine, the Idabel, without any formal training and without any government oversight. Because taking tourists down 70 stories in a homemade, unlicensed submarine, without insurance, was a liability nightmare, Stanley moved his operation to Roatan, Honduras, where regulations for underwater craft were lax or nonexistent, and deep water is close to shore. He ran his submarine business off a tiny dock along Roatan’s touristy West End, between a few sand-floored tiki bars serving pink slushy drinks and packs of stray dogs picking through trash heaps.

Stanley had completed more than 2,000 dives in his little homemade sub. Along the way, he had some close calls. Like the one time in an earlier sub when he got stuck in a cave and snagged on a rope. Or another when a window cracked at 1,960 feet as he carried a local from Roatan and the man’s pregnant wife. Dangers aside, thus far Stanley had chalked up more time exploring the deep waters between 1,000 and 2,000 feet than anyone in history.

To join him on a deep-sea adventure, I’d need to autograph no waiver, wear no helmet, strap on no seat belt. I just needed to show up at a dock at the end of a dusty dirt road with several hundred dollars and an empty bladder. I signed up. Soon after, I was 200 stories beneath the ocean, witnessing lifeforms that put Avatar to shame.

Today there are more than 200 private submersibles operating around the world and a dozen companies selling tours to the sunless depths. The deep ocean has finally become accessible to anyone who wants to go there. What could go wrong? Even back then, I knew the answer: just about everything.

A Year After the Titan Disaster

It’s been a year since the world saw exactly how lethal these deep-sea voyages can be. On June 18, 2023, the private submersible Titan launched five men on an expedition to view the wreckage of the Titanic, which is roughly 400 off the coast of Newfoundland. The dive was supposed to take a few hours and reach a depth of more than 12,000 feet. But 105 minutes after the Titan ducked below the waves, it went dark.

The U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards and the U.S. Navy were called in on a frantic search to rescue the passengers, only to discover days later that the Titan had imploded. There were no survivors.

The Titan disaster made international headlines for more than a week. Soon millions of people around the world were talking about submersibles and debating the merits of manned exploration to the ocean’s depths.

On various social media platforms, many people wrote condolences to the families of the deceased passengers. Many more mocked the whole enterprise. I saw people label the passengers “daredevils,” “fools,” “arrogant,” “idiotic,” and worse. Several journalists (rightfully) lambasted media outlets for focusing on the lives of five wealthy men lost at sea while 700 migrants drowned in the Aegean Sea a few days after the Titan was lost. The comments and derisions continue to this day. I should know. I’ve been on the receiving end of some of them.

I’ve since spent a decade praising undersea explorers and arguing the importance of visiting the ocean’s depths. Several people scolded me, explaining how manned deep-sea pursuits were not only dangerous and expensive, but also pointless.

They argued that in the age of robotic drones, cameras, cables, and computers, no human needs to go down there again. We can explore the planet’s secret wonders in HD from the comfort and safety of a climate-controlled office. Why bother boarding a sub? Why go deep?

And so I find myself here, defending the human compulsion to explore. You know, that messy, tactile, anything-can-happen kind of exploration we used to be proud of. The kind that shot us to the moon. That brought us across oceans to new worlds. That led us out of caves.

Without that kind of exploration, a scientist can’t prove theories and a journalist can’t tell rich stories. I’ve learned over the past 20 years, through much trial and error, that the only way to really write about a subject is to know it; the only way to know it is to experience it; and the only way to experience it is to show up.

The road to discovery, I’ve learned, is long and hard and filled with frustration, wandering, and dead ends. It’s expensive and too often feels fruitless. Which is the whole point. I believe that casting a wide net and blindly trying to follow leads is an essential part of the discovery process.

The Merits of Showing Up

Anyone with a computer can view HD virtual tours of the Louvre, the pyramids of Giza, and Pisa’s leaning tower. Yet that kind of tourism hasn’t overtaken our collective desire to experience things in person. Families this summer and last have, in record numbers, chosen to spend weeks on the road and thousands of dollars adventuring to these landmarks in person. Business travel also stormed back as soon as airports reopened, and bars, clubs, and restaurants in many cities have become packed to the gills.

After a few years of lockdown, of experiencing life on Zoom, human beings are flocking to IRL experiences. The metaverse is a failed, desolate wasteland, and virtual cocktail parties have gone the way of Iggy Azalea.

As wasteful, time-consuming, and seemingly pointless as it may seem, even bean counters and glad-handers realized that the best experiences in business, science, journalism—and life in general—can only be had in person. This is what the submarine skeptics seem to be forgetting.

The U.S. Navy submersible Alvin has made more than 5,000 dives in the past five decades at depths below 20,000 feet. While researchers were putzing around the Galápagos Rift in Alvin, they witnessed giant “chemosynthetic” tube worms, the first life-forms ever observed to exist entirely without the need for sunlight—one of the most significant biological discoveries. It was in Alvin that researchers recovered a 1.45 megaton hydrogen bomb that had been lost over the Mediterranean Sea in 1966.

It was in another submersible that scientists caught the first footage of a giant squid—a massive, mythic creature that no human had ever witnessed in the wild before. The list goes on and on, and includes hundreds of supposedly impossible discoveries made during deep and dangerous dives into the ocean. Discoveries that were made by showing up. One sub captain told me that on every dive they discovered something new.

Certainly, the passengers aboard the Titan weren’t on a serious scientific or journalistic mission of discovery. They were on a joyride to see the remains of history’s most famous shipwreck. But they were moved by the compulsion to explore. We can have the debate about how deep a submersible can safely go, which safety precautions should be required, who ought to be trusted to build and captain them. Those are worthy discussions, and there are people above my pay grade who should have them.

I’m not against rules and regulations, either—rather, it’s the idea that we should avoid certain kinds of exploration that irks me. I believe that the only real way to experience life and truly connect with the ineffable, otherworldly wonders of the world is to experience them in person. I learned this valuable lesson in those sunless depths, 2,000 feet below the waves.

The View At the Bottom

A carnival of the bizarre danced outside my porthole ten years ago during that submarine dive in Honduras. We’d just touched down on a sandy dune below 2,000 feet. On the other side of the window, a fish with stumpy legs waddled past another fish covered in brown blotches, yawning with pouty Mick Jagger lips.

Minutes later, a beach-ball-size orb appeared a few inches from the glass—a jellyfish, I think—emitting flashes of bright pink and purple light like some kind of underwater disco ball. First only blue lights flashed, then red, then purple, then yellow, until every color in the spectrum had appeared. After that, all the colors appeared at the same time, and the spectacle was repeated. The hundreds of rows of lights were evenly spaced around the glob. It looked like a cityscape after nightfall. When the lights were red, they looked like the taillights of cars on a freeway; when they were white, they looked like an urban grid as viewed from an airplane thousands of feet above.

Between the lights there was nothing—no visible flesh, nerves, bones, or body. And there it was, this thing, two feet from our faces, at a depth equivalent to twice the height of the Chrysler Building, watching us with its non-eyes, communicating with its non-brain, and dazzling us with its Las Vegas lights.

I realized that not only had no human ever seen these animals, but that these creatures had never seen themselves. The ocean down there was completely black; the only way we could see anything, and they could see us, was through the glare of the submarine’s headlights. These animals had been evolving at these depths for millions of years; we’d been evolving on land for just as long. And here we were sharing space for the first time.

Beyond witnessing these life-forms, I wondered how else our presence might be interacting with theirs, what other information we might be broadcasting to one another.

As I sat there cramped in a tiny metal sub pondering all this, I felt an emptiness in my chest that breath couldn’t fill. The undersea is the largest living space on the planet, the 71 percent silent majority. And this is how it looks—gelatinous, cross-eyed, clumsy, glowing, flickering, cloaked in perpetual darkness, and compressed by more than 1,000 pounds per square inch.
I’d love to share with you some pictures or videos from my sub experience, but I didn’t take any. I was too busy being gobsmacked by wonders of the natural world and our place within it.

I guess you had to be there.

James Nestor is the author of . This essay was adapted from the book.  

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Though it is night, the ice surrounding us glitters in the sunshine. Only silence and shades of white surround me as I pace the decks. I am on a tourist ship, parked in the sea ice off the coast of Antarctica, for my work as a naturalist. It is 2 a.m., in January. On one side, glaciers drape the mountains, sliding slowly toward the sea. On the other is the frozen ocean. I can’t discern the line between ice and sky. Behind our ship, only the jagged break in the floes indicates that humans have come, and disturbed.

The ice is moving, unseen in the stillness. Melting of Antarctic and Greenland ice, as well as glaciers all over the world, is clearly documented. The polar regions are warming faster than any other place on Earth. Climate change is incontrovertible. I have witnessed it. Yet I know my being here, marveling at this icy world, contributes to its melt.

I have seen a lot of ice.

In 1993, I journeyed to Antarctica on a small ship that lurched through frenzied waters, we 50 passengers clutching the walls as we staggered between communal showers and a pot of pasta plonked unceremoniously on the table for dinner. But I was entranced by the beauty of the land outside. For 25 years, I have worked as a guide in Antarctica and the Arctic, and I wrestle with knowing that I should probably stay at home to avoid further contributing to the climate change affecting my beloved frozen world. But is the best way to protect what I love, never to see it again? Other guides and I discuss this dilemma often. We do not know what to do.

As a naturalist-guide, I take people to shore and talk to them about what they are seeing: wildlife, glaciers, habitat, everything. In all the years I have done this, I have believed that only by seeing the great ice expanses, tasting and smelling the salt air, and touching the cold do people learn to care for these places and join the fight to preserve them. Sea ice retreats to higher and higher latitudes, with shrinking populations of bewildered penguins nesting in previously unimaginable places, and humans now reach sites once only imagined.

We visitors used to see Adelie penguins everywhere. On some trips now, we are lucky to spot even one. Last year, on a cruise ship designed for luxury rather than serious exploration, we reached the western side of James Ross Island; 20 years ago, in an icebreaking ship three times more powerful, we could not get within about 80 miles. The ships have changed as well. Now luxury ships prevail, and passengers can enjoy champagne, live music, and butler service. On the first icebreaker I worked on, the beds had seatbelts for rough weather, but the communal area for passengers and crew at the bottom of the stairwell was full of laughter.

that 2023 was the record low for maximum sea ice in Antarctica since continuous recording in this region began. The World Meteorological Organization says the Antarctic Peninsula has experienced a 3-degree C (5.5-degree F) temperature rise in the last 50 years. In February 2020, the highest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica was reported at 18.3 degrees C (65 degrees F). The since 2012 than in previous decades; were the Antarctic ice sheet to melt, global sea levels would rise 58 meters (190 feet). Although there is no danger of all the ice in Antarctica or Greenland melting away in any of our lifetimes, visiting tourists often tell me they want to see the ice before it is gone.

Yet fossil-fuel emissions from travel and human activity accelerate ice melting, trapping all of us who come here to admire these icy realms in a quandary: We further the demise of what we have come to marvel over. When I started as a guide in the late 1990s, approximately 10,000 visitors traveled by ship to Antarctica each year. Now shows over 71,000 in the 2022-23 season.

Staring at the ice around me, I wonder about the people below decks, sleeping soundly through the sunshine of the night. Will they act as ambassadors for these regions? My fellow naturalists and I fervently hope so. We feel conflicted by our presence and the presence of the passengers we guide. We love ice, but we also know that our carbon footprint, which contributes to melting, is greater for flying across the world to reach the ships that burn fossil fuels as they steam towards these ends of the earth. We do our best to educate our passengers about climate change and have them understand what they are witnessing. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough. Would it be better for us to stay home to protect these regions? Yes. Would other guides step in and take our place? Also yes.

A recent described a study of black carbon (essentially soot) in Antarctica resulting from fossil-fuel emissions, and showed that it contributes to the darkening of snow and ice, accelerating melting. More people equals more melt.

In 2022, a group of scientists determined a method for separating natural variability in glacier fluctuations and the to climate change. So far, it has been tested only in computer models, but if it can be applied to actual locations, we could know exactly what human visitation does to this ice. When jagged pieces break and crash into the sea, would tourists shed tears, knowing exactly how much damage they contribute, instead of shouting with joy to see such power?

Most of the ice I have touched is now gone.

My father, Gunter Weller, was a glaciologist who became a climate scientist before the term existed. He introduced me to Antarctica through the six-foot-long black-and-white photo of Adelie penguins that hung on our living-room wall in Fairbanks, Alaska. His voyages to Antarctica in the early 1960s were a bit different from mine. On two separate occasions, a supply ship dropped him off at the research station and picked him up one year later. There he drove a VW beetle with chains on the tires over glaciers to collect weather data, watched the same black-and-white films so often that he and his co-workers took turns reciting the actors’ lines, and ate eggs of a disturbing color since fresh supplies also only arrived once a year.

His work looked at the effects of climate change on glaciers, which were clear to him already in the 1970s. He became curious when a scientific station buried long ago by ice and snow on the McCall Glacier in northern Alaska melted out (research he did on this glacier was published in a peer-reviewed paper, “Fifty Years of McCall Glacier Research”), and he turned his attention toward what melting ice meant for people and the environment. As kids in Alaska, my sisters and I walked along glacial moraines and explored ice caves with our father. We slipped and slid crazily in our old sneakers as we scrambled behind him, trying to keep up.

Over the years, as my father tried to convince the world that climate change was happening, and people ignored his pleas, he developed a strategy for deniers. He never shouted back when people tried to argue. He calmly told them they were welcome to disregard the clear data and statistics if they wished. But surely, he said, they must acknowledge that we humans have put a lot of horrible stuff into the atmosphere. Wouldn’t the world benefit by reducing that? That usually ended the conversation.

Many people travel to see the natural places on this planet, to glimpse a wild animal in its ferocious splendor, feel the grandeur of vast landscapes, or learn about the world. And yet an analysis in The Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism in 2020 of tourists visiting glaciers in Iceland, Canada, New Zealand, and Chile showed that although most guests were aware that this might be the last chance to see these glaciers, few understood that their visits contributed to the demise. Even for the few people who did, the desire to see the destination exceeded concern. The Journal of Sustainable Tourism in 2021 described a from Churchill, Canada, where tourists flock each fall to view polar bears, that indicated that few visitors associate their air travel with greenhouse gas emissions responsible for melting the ice that the polar bears need for survival. Comparing data from 2008 and 2018, the study found that consumption patterns and CO2 production have not changed despite growing awareness of the impacts.

How sad, this conundrum of desire, guilt, and lack of understanding.

Years ago, I did the same thing, climbing Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with my sister, to see ice at the equator before it was gone. As we rose from the tropical zones, we smelled wet soil turned hard with frost, then tasted the tang of ice. My teeth chattered, my face and fingers froze, and we gasped for breath in the thin air. My father would have loved those glaciers, pink in the rising African sun.

On one of my tour ships, ice blocked the way when we tried to reach the northernmost piece of land in the world, Oodaaq Island in northeast Greenland. Since then, new islands have been revealed as ice melts and now, the northernmost land is a rocky islet called 83-42. Another year we got stuck in sea ice in the Northwest Passage, and even our six-engine, 25,000-horsepower icebreaking ship could not move until the currents released us. Some passengers were frustrated, some bored, and some frightened as we watched the icy rubble press high against the side of the ship. After a week, the ice consented to let us through.

In other years, we made it to the North Pole, in a bigger, nuclear-powered icebreaker that smashed and plowed its way through the thinning sea ice. We found open water at the top of the world, a place that should be solid white. The tourists marveled at the vast expanses of ice surrounding that open water, and a reverence for this landscape shone in their eyes. We tasted the icy brine as we plunged into the open water for lightning-quick swims.

The North Pole trips have become more difficult in subsequent years, because finding solid sea ice in which to park the ship is a challenge. A this year projects that under current greenhouse-gas-emission scenarios, the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free in the summer before 2050. That is soon.

At the annual Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) in 2023, the governing body of Antarctica made a resolution known as the Helsinki Declaration. They committed to increasing efforts to communicate the global impact of climate change on Antarctica and the need to prevent irreversible changes.

Do I keep guiding at the ends of the Earth?

Susan Adie, a friend and fellow guide who has worked in the polar regions longer than I have, says she believes that if she can help educate the visitors who travel there and get them to care, and enough caring people educate others, perhaps action can be taken, in many ways, to help the Earth. She says, “If I just give up and say it’s a losing battle, then what kind of a human am I?”

Our lives are enriched by ice, made larger and wilder and somehow more precious. To love cold inanimate objects sounds at odds with all that is logical and right in the world, and yet we do.

It may be that this one politician, that one influencer, that one poetic writer who listens to us guides, who sees what we see, whose heart can be pierced by a shard of glittering ice, can make a difference in this confusing, messed-up, beautiful world of ours. Maybe I can reach one more person. Maybe just one more trip.

Kara Weller is a ship-based naturalist who works all over the world, but primarily in the polar regions. Although a snow and ice aficionado, when visiting the outhouse at her plumbing-less cabin in minus-40 degree temperatures she dreams of simple things such as flush toilets. She lives in Fairbanks, Alaska.

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February, 20 years ago, long before OceanGate’s Titan submersible imploded. It kept snowing and snowing and snowing. Slopes that hadn’t gone in 20 years were sliding. Five skiers from the Front Range were missing in the mountains outside Ashcroft, near Aspen, Colorado.

Each night as darkness fell—I remember it clearly—I’d peer out a window and wonder, Are you still out there? Can you make it to morning? The people were missing for five days. I didn’t know any of them. But I had—have—a friend, Hugh Herr, who in 1982, at 17, was lost in the wintertime mountains of New Hampshire for days, dying of cold and thirst, fearing he’d never see his family again. As a lifelong climber and skier, I’ve known many people who’ve had accidents, and haven’t exactly avoided risk myself, just tried to be careful.

That year of 1993, people with backcountry skiing experience in the Aspen area felt off-the-record certain the skiers had been buried and killed. When I heard on the radio that they had emerged, I stumbled into the common area at Climbing magazine, where I then worked. “Hey!” I cried weakly. I was trying to shout that they’d been found, but my voice cracked and failed.

People streamed out from their offices. We were all so happy—everybody in town was—but then came the harsh second-day analyses. The skiers had gone out amid storm warnings. They had split up, which is what you don’t do. There was further criticism; there always is. Usually some is fair. It’s hindsight.

Now here we are again, minus the happiness phase.

When word broke on Sunday about the missing Titan submersible, I started obsessively checking the news, wondering about the people inside. Many of us felt especially bad for 19-year-old Suleman Dawood, but I actually felt even worse for his father, Shahzada, imagining him down there looking into his son’s face, knowing that the trip had been his idea. My son, in his twenties, didn’t think the father should have castigated himself—he had offered his son an incredible adventure, and, yes, there was risk, and sometimes things go wrong. But I thought Shahzada would have been wracked.

I felt a huge jolt of hope on Tuesday night, when it was reported that banging sounds were being detected at 30-minute intervals. I remembered a brilliant, wrenching short story from 1960, “The Ledge,” which was very loosely based on a real incident in Maine. It was about a hunter, his son, and a nephew who are stranded on an offshore ledge in December, hoping for rescue as the tide rises.

The fisherman tells his son and nephew to load their guns.

“I’ll fire once and count to five,” he says. “Then you fire. Count to five. That way they won’t think it’s somebody gunning ducks.”

The systematic nature of the reported banging, possibly coming from Titan, gave me hope. On Wednesday night, knowing that oxygen in an intact-but-immobile submersible would be running out, likely gone by morning, I kept picturing the five people in there: cold and huddling, rime forming on the surfaces around them, with a boy who was afraid and a father who felt responsible for the death of someone he loved. I did not sleep for hours.

I accept that preoccupation with the °Őľ±łŮ˛ą˛Ô’s predicament was giving short shrift to a in the Mediterranean, off the Greek coast, five days ago. Much commentary on social media and in writing, such as on Tuesday, showed how our attention to the Titan was a misplaced priority, focusing on the few rather than the many. “Widespread outrage and anguish for the hundreds of souls taking an extraordinary risk in search of a better life,” the author wrote, “and those who failed them along the way, seems much more justifiable than the frenzy over a small, lost group of hyper-niche tourists, tragic as both circumstances may turn out to be.”

But I was sickened by the lack of sympathy I saw on social media. “Rich people are a drain on society,” one person wrote on Twitter. “Not sure why taxpayer funds are being expended on people who bought into a fancy underwater coffin.” The same kind of schadenfreude was on display in comments attached to stories published by the Washington Post, the paper I grew up with. Sneering and jeering because the people involved were wealthy, bored billionaires who somehow deserved what was happening to them. There were jokes, with more cropping up Thursday after the implosion and deaths were announced. I saw awful puns on my Facebook feed—“sinking low,” “subpar”—and references to Darwin Award winners. Morbid humor is a common response to tragedy, but the aggregate this time was next level. I know: It’s the internet, what do we expect? Yet those on the submersible were real people.

All week, many in the nation were fixated, as I was. Why? I have no simple answer. It involves many things, one being that the Titanic shipwreck is an icon, a symbol of tragedy, the way Everest is a symbol, of both excellence and tragedy. But I think the main reason we were drawn in is that the drama was happening in real time—or so we thought, until we found out on Thursday that they’d died the first day. The passengers could still be alive, we mistakenly thought. They had over 90 hours of oxygen. I kept thinking of the Aspen skiers. They came back.

In the end, many of us were pulled into this story by the power of the individual. The most influential piece of journalism I read as a graduate student was John ±á±đ°ů˛ő±đ˛â’s New Yorker story from 1946, “Hiroshima.” It was pioneering in its approach and structure. As the professor who assigned it explained, if a reader takes in an article about hundreds or thousands of people being killed, he or she often thinks, That’s terrible, and then turns the page and goes on to something else. Hersey based his story on individuals, six of them, survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. He noted where each was at the time of the blast, how far from the epicenter, and then followed them through his or her day, struggling amid the devastation. Readers experienced the events as seen by that person. It made a difference to know their names.

±á±đ°ů˛ő±đ˛â’s New Yorker editors saw what they had, a human account, all the more powerful for its muted tone. In magazine and later book form, “Hiroshima” humanized the Japanese to Americans, who were accustomed to dehumanizing them during the war. These were real people, men, women, children and babies on the ground, people with eyes burned out and skin falling off, a young mother carrying her dead infant for days, refusing to let go.

“That kid didn’t get to live his life,” I said to my husband, referring to Suleman Dawood.

“A lot of people don’t,” he said.

Ever hear the parable of the starfish? In it, a boy is walking along a beach where a storm has washed up thousands of starfish. He is picking them up and throwing them back into the waves. An old man asks why he is bothering, saying there are too many to save. “It won’t make any difference,” he says.

The boy listens, then reaches down, picks up another starfish, and wings it into the water. “Well,” he says, “it made a difference to that one.”

The point of that tale is that you can make a difference, if only to one person. My husband is in the Buddy Program, a friend and mentor to a 12-year-old; several friends work with that program, too. Why? Because there’s a world within one person.

Each of the people in the submersible was a human being, and at the end of the day—the sad end of the story—that is why we cared.

Alison Osius is an editor at şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř, and a former editor at Climbing and Rock and Ice magazines.

The post What Made Us Care So Much About the Titan? appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

Five people were killed this week when they took an experimental submarine, the Titan, into ocean depths to visit the wreck of the RMS Titanic. Yesterday, search and rescue officials confirmed the vessel had seemingly imploded.

Internet reactions to the tragedy continue to range from compassion to outright vitriol directed at both the submersible’s maker, Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate, and its paying passengers: Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood, and his son Suleman Dawood.

Why the mixed emotions? Is it because the submersible ride cost a steep $250,000 per-person—unaffordable for most—and because at least two of the passengers were billionaires? Or, because despite dire warnings from industry peers about the safety and functionality of Stockton’s Titan submersible, he and his tourist crew went anyways? Or, because we put dangerous faith in innovators and these missions sometimes result in loss of life? Or, perhaps, it’s simply easier in today’s digital age to weigh in on disasters from behind a screen—positive or negative.

“Rich people taking risks outdoors is nothing new,” explains Dr. Len Necefer, an şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř contributor who works at the intersection of Indigenous peoples, natural resources, and environmental policy. “From Christopher Columbus to Richard Branson, money and resources have historically brought the ability to do dumb, dangerous stuff.”

We asked Dr. Necefer, along with Matthew Scott, an şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř contributor and Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and frequent leader of vehicle-based expeditions through some of the world’s most remote places, to examine some of the social media memes, comments, and reactions to this tragedy.

https://twitter.com/superking1816/status/1672224657142054912?t=OiTonpD0Z9wbPyJCXJ2TCQ&s=19

“$250,000 is a lot of money. Couldn’t it have been better spent helping people in need?”

Scott: That kind of coin is being thrown around daily, all around you. When I see a person of extreme affluence spending their money on experiences, instead of a gold-encrusted steak from that terrible Salt Bae guy—I support it.

Dr. Necefer: This particular adventure is one of the dumb outcomes of a gross misallocation of society’s resources. Let’s not forget the other stories from just this past week of in the Mediterranean and outside the Canary Islands.

The willingness to allow certain people to die while every effort is made to save others is a really dark reflection on humanity…

— Olabode (@olabode_szn)

“It’s unethical for billionaires to exist at all since the only path to hoarding so much wealth involves exploiting others. Good riddance.”

Scott: Billionaires are a by-product of the values and legislation that a majority of society supports. If society didn’t want billionaires, we could tax them out of existence with the stroke of a pen. But deep down, you want to be a billionaire the same as I do.

Dr. Necefer: I’m sure OceanGate, the people in it, and anyone who decided that it was a good idea to associate with this mission are going to get sued out of existence. I can just see those wrongful death lawyers wringing their hands together in delight with the money they’ll make on the stupid litigation that will come from this. Who knows, maybe a new billionaire will be minted through these lawsuits?

“That sub looked sketchy. It was stupid for anyone to even get on it.”

Scott: There’s no way in hell I’d get on a submarine controlled by a knock-off game controller. But let’s not forget that some of the people on that submarine—which included elected members of the Explorer’s Club—had legitimate deep sea submarine experience, including at the Titanic site. They obviously felt comfortable enough to strap themselves in. There are few, if any, regulations or standards for submersibles capable of this depth. You have to accept this risk before doing something like this.

Dr. Necefer: Let’s quote OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush: “Safety is just pure waste.”

“The passengers were just paying for a seat, they’re not real adventurers.”

Scott: “The battle for authenticity, as viewed through someone else’s eyes, is a battle you will never win. How many people reading this went on a gap-year backpacking trip to Thailand where they spent a couple weeks getting drunk and then went home to brag about their “adventure?” These folks bolted themselves into a steel tube and went to the bottom of the ocean. Sounds like an adventure to me.

Dr. Necefer: Honestly, if I had access to this kind of money? Hell yeah I’d do it. But hell no would I think of myself as an adventurer.

https://twitter.com/KhandakerMunta/status/1671671157106573314?t=4_V1Mzwb6TlcDMnzO-9Cmw&s=19

“They were just watching the trip through a 21-inch TV screen from inside the sub, and occasionally through a tiny porthole. What was the point?”

Scott: Were you expecting a double bay window with a screen door? This is 3,000 meters below sea level. The small porthole was the entire point of the trip—to see the wreck of the Titanic with your own eyes.

Dr. Necefer: From what I can see from the vessel’s layout, the toilet has a direct view out of the porthole. Talk about a million dollar view, huh?

“Stockton was just exploiting gullible rich people to pay for his research.”

Scott: It’s really easy to point fingers at this early stage. When you consider the exploration credentials and accomplishments of some of the expedition members, my opinion is that you’d be hard pressed to take advantage of those guys without them knowing what they were getting into.

Dr. Necefer: Good marketing can convince people to do just about anything. Up to, and including, spending a quarter of a million dollars on a vacation they’ll never come home from.

For those who keep saying "it's cruel to laugh at him , y'all are just jealous"
Just want to point at the jackass who said "safety is pure waste" and dimwit billionaires who actually listened to him deserve this.

— HeZukka (@SpaceBoiAhmed)

“These guys argued against government regulations and purposefully chose to operate in gray areas. Why did they expect those same governments to come to their aid once they got into trouble?”

Scott: Let’s be humans here for a second. If someone had the assets necessary to help, why wouldn’t they?

The outrage comes from dissimilar responses to two disasters happening at similar times—the migrant ship disaster off Greece, and this OceanGate thing. But, the resources and training of the combined United States and Canadian Coast Guards, plus the United States Navy, are also dissimilar from the training and resources of Greek government responders.

Dr. Necefer: Of course we should ensure that search and rescue services remain accessible without a paywall. But damn, reaching Titanic depths is a next level SAR mission. There should at least be contingencies paid by the wealthy people who do stuff like this. You know, like taxes.

“At what point does extreme risk taking become unethical?”

Scott: Walking out of your front door comes with risks. Staying inside raises certain risks. Everything is a risk. Racing drivers, who often come from the same financial group that undertake extravagant trips like this, die all the time. They assume the risk, and that risk is their own. You have no idea how much stupid money is being spent in that world. Winning the Baja 1000 costs millions. Winning a Formula One constructor’s championship? Billions. Risk taking becomes unethical when you’re endangering lives other than your own without their full knowledge or understanding. If those folks willingly got on a submarine which they knew was experimental with a window that was rated for less than half of the pressure and depth they were going to, that’s on them. But if they were misled—there’s an ethical issue.

Dr. Necefer: I am fully in support of people taking risks if they’re fully aware of the dangers involved. These folks should be able to get their submarine thing on, but should also be aware that society is going to have little sympathy when things go wrong.

“Deep ocean and outer space travel should be regulated by governments.”

Scott: We have to be careful that as a society we do not regulate ourselves into complacency. The survival of our species largely depends on furthering our understanding of the unknown.

Deep ocean exploration will never fall under the realm of public transportation. It is inherently experimental. However, space travel might one day become commonplace, and just like our governments agree on air travel regulations, there will need to be space travel regulations.

Dr. Necefer: I’m not an expert in either ocean or space tourism, but pulling from environmental and technology policy: we cannot let private actors externalize costs and risks to society. In this particular instance OceanGate was circumventing safety regulations by calling this vehicle “experimental.” When the experiment predictably goes wrong then the coast guards of two nations come try to save them? Yeah great business planning there.

“Why is there so much hate around this?

Scott: In our highly unequal world, this was a look over the fence between the haves, and have-nots for a lot of people.

Trips of this cost are happening all over the world, all of the time. It’s crude to say, but $250,000 to go to the bottom of the ocean and see the Titanic is an incredible bargain. Right now, as we speak, dozens of ultra-wealthy people are paying that just in jet fuel to hop back and forth across the Atlantic in their Gulfstreams.

In my opinion, this Netflix-special-waiting-to-happen has clearly triggered people’s feelings, but it’s not really about submarine travel—it’s about the perceived differences in treatment between the poor and the wealthy.

Dr. Necefer: This is just an easy target for justified frustrations about society.

The post Why All the Hate for Billionaire Explorers? appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

The race to save five passengers aboard the OceanGate submersible Titan came to a sad end on Thursday afternoon.

Officials with the U.S. Coast Guard announced that searchers had found debris from the missing craft on the ocean floor, approximately 1,600 feet from the wreckage of the °Őľ±łŮ˛ą˛Ôľ±ł¦.ĚýAmong the parts was the Titan’s nose and tail cones.

“The debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion on the vessel,” said Rear Admiral John Mauger. “On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families.”

The depth of the debris—it was located at approximately 12,500 feet below the surface—make it virtually impossible for any of the five passengers to have survived the incident, officials said. At the time of the sub’s disappearance, it was being piloted by Stockton Rush, the CEO and founder of OceanGate, which is based in the Seattle suburb of Everett, Washington. Also aboard were British aviation billionaire Hamish Harding; British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman; and French maritime explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

The announcement ends a massive four-day search for the missing vessel, an endeavor that roped in more than a dozen ships and multiple aircraft from various U.S. government agencies, as well as boats from Canada, France, and the UK.

The discovery occurred early Thursday morning. A remote-operated vehicle from a U.S. ship named Horizon Arctic found the nose cone first before locating four other pieces of the °Őľ±łŮ˛ą˛ÔĚýin a large debris field on the ocean floor. Mauger said images of the pieces were the analyzed by undersea experts working with the search and rescue team Paul Hankins, a salvage expert with the U.S. Navy, said the robot later located a second smaller debris field, where other parts of the sub were located, including the tail cone. The fields, he said, were a sign of a “catastrophic event.”

According to Carl Hartsfield, an expert with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the vessel did not collide with pieces of the °Őľ±łŮ˛ą˛Ôľ±ł¦.ĚýThe arrangement of the debris, he said, was a sign of an “implosion in the water column.”

°Őłó±đĚýTitan was on its third expedition to the Titanic on Sunday when it went missing, having completed similar visits to the wreck in 2021 and 2022. OceanGate hoped to develop a tourism business to take passengers down to see the wreck, and the company was charging $250,00 per person to ride on the submersible. In 2022, writer Alexandra Gillespie interviewed Rush for °żłÜłŮ˛őľ±»ĺ±đ.ĚýThe CEO told her he hoped to create a business for adventure travelers “who want to do something different than just sit and then get a tourist experience.”

Rush received ample criticism for his boat. and in 2018 a nautical-industry group wrote OceanGate a letter stressing the firm to have its craft analyzed and regulated by international-vessel firm Det Norske Veritas, which is based in Oslo, Norway, and conducts safety testing on new boat designs. According to The New York Times, Rush shrugged off the request and told one of the letter writers that protocols stifled innovation. Also in 2018, a former OceanGate staffer filed a wrongful termination suit against the firm, alleging he was let go for raising red flags about the safety of the carbon-fiber hull and the monitoring system used to measure its strength at extreme depths.

In 2019, OceanGate pushing back on critics, arguing that its futuristic design could not be adequately measured by industry standards. “By definition, innovation is outside of an already accepted system,” the post reads. “Innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm.”

At Thursday’s press conference, reporters asked Mauger if rescuers had any plans to recover the bodies of Rush and the four others.

“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment,” he said. “We will continue searching the area down there.”

The post The OceanGate Saga Has Come to a Tragic End appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.