Our drinking water is made from desalinated seawater. An impressive machine that smells like a swimming pool makes perfectly soft water with no taste. We use its bounty sparingly and bubble carbon dioxide through the water to hit the appropriate pH balance. Unfortunately, we are running out of carbon dioxide, and the water is becoming more alkaline. They tell us we’re safe, and that we’ll see damage to the pipes well before the enamel begins to flake from our teeth. We watch the pipes and brush with high fluoride toothpaste. As a climate scientist, I never thought I would be this exposed to a shortage of carbon dioxide.
Our station sits next to a large bay which freezes over as winter sets in. Until then, it’s warm enough for humpback whales to visit us. The weather is calm, the sky is clear, and the full moon lights up the glacial walls of the bay like a football stadium, the drifting icebergs like players. One night I fell asleep with the window cracked open, listening to the humpbacks call to each other through the still air. I woke up thinking that I’d never heard anything so beautiful.
I believe he did, because humpback calls kept me awake one memorable night in1980, by turning a steel-hulled Spanish tall ship into a whale sonar boom-box as it sailed over the Hudson canyon.
