iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

My fave botanical find in Cape Scott’s muskegs: the carnivorous, round-leaved sundew. I’m grateful these deceptive, meat-eating bog dwellers stay tiny! #littlebogofhorrors

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“Peatlands cover just 3-4% of the Earth's land surface but store roughly 30% – an estimated 450-650 gigatonnes – of global soil organic carbon, and almost twice the carbon stock of the world’s entire forest biomass.”—UN FAO h/t @queenofpeat.bsky.social www.fao.org/forestry/new...

King!s scepter gentian at Cape Scott, B.C.

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Muskegs (northern peat bogs) are also bonsai-like wonderlands. Here, shore pine, swamp gentian, common cottongrass, and northern red-legged frog at Cape Scott.

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Peatlands, like this “muskeg” bog in Cape Scott Provincial Park at the northwest tip of Canada’s Vancouver Island, are major carbon storehouses. 🧵

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Each of the federal orders claims there is an emergency need for electricity. Despite the orders and supposed emergency, federal grid data reveals that the TransAlta Centralia plant has produced virtually zero power since December.

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

INBOX/Friday 4:56p.m.PT news dump: US DOE issues its 4th 'emergency' order that the TransAlta coal-burning power plant in Centralia, Wash., stay open another 90 days. Order comes same day a federal court found DOE's similar coal mandate in Michigan illegal, b/c there's no emergency.

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btw here's a delightful bog (and swamp gentian and northern red-legged frog) at Cape Scott Provincial Park on Vancouver Island in August.

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

It strikes me as odd to have a wildfire next to a glacier. Or maybe that’s just 21st-century life at Mount Rainier.

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

All right! Back from vacation and the 3-day weekend. Let’s see what this work week can throw at me. I’m 72% confident I can handle it.

Intimidating signage on the road to Cape Scott Provincial Park on Vancouver Island.

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Logging-road signage on the way to Cape Scott Provincial Park

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At the Friday Harbor lab, I learned the Samish Indian Nation—a tribe that has no reservation or fishing rights and reveres a kelp goddess—would be helping release lab-raised stars into the wild. I thought, “I want to be there for that.”

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Critically endangered, sunflower stars are apex predators of kelp forests and eelgrass beds.

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Here are sunflower stars I saw on a very low tide off Alaska’s Admiralty Island (famous for a different apex predator, the brown bear) in 2008.

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I’d been covering sea star wasting disease for about a decade, but I hadn’t seen a sunflower star in the flesh for 17 years, until I visited UW’s Friday Harbor Labs last fall. 🧵

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"I do feel like a parent," Knopf said. "You raise them, you take care of them, you want the best for them, but then you know the best for them is letting them go out in the wild, just like letting your kid go out into the world." www.npr.org/2026/08/16/n...

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

The ferry service here on Ganymeade (the largest moon of Jupiter) is surprisingly good.

A fuschia sun hangs low in the sky above a Washington State Ferry near Edmonds on Aug. 13, 2026.

A fuschia sun hangs low in the sky above a Washington State Ferry and a Canada goose near Edmonds on Aug. 13, 2026.

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Its one of those summer days where you just feel lucky to live in Seattle

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

The Pacific Northwest is the wildfire smoke capital of North America this morning #wawx gispub.epa.gov/airnow/?cont...

AQI heat map showing very unhealthy air in parts of the Cascades and unhealthy or unhealthy for sensitive groups in much of the lowlands.

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Awful smoke around Leavenworth and Wenatchee right now, near the Little Giant fire #wawx

Heat map of air quality showing hazardous air around Wenatchee, WA

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I guess you could say he was born for that line of work.

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Or perhaps Lucy got excited, hoping to hear me on the national @npr.org airwaves today. I'll have a fun story on this astounding creature--the sunflower star--and a tribe's work to bring the apex predator back to kelp forests in WA's San Juan Islands. Airing 4:50 or 5:50pm on your local NPR station.

University of Washington researcher Jason Hodin holds a sunflower star, upside down, at Friday Harbor Laboratories. Willem Weertman photo.

Adult sunflower sea stars in a fjord on the central British Columbia coast in 2020. Grant Callegari/Hakai Institute photo.

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

I stepped away from my desk briefly and was delighted upon my return to see that my cat/intern Lucy Mew had stepped up to help me finish my story. Teamwork, dreamwork etc.

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

If the sun has to set before 9pm (8:58pm tonight) for the next 10 months or so in Seattle, Carkeek Park is a good place to watch it set.

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Lightning struck not once but... 5,078 times in Washington last week! 🌩️🔥 wasmoke.blogspot.com

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Last week, after 6 days backpacking up the Elwha basin, we stopped at the Harbinger Wine Bar for a gentle reentry to civilization. Great views across the Strait to Canada there. (I hope we weren’t too stinky!)

The Black Ball ferry enters Port Angeles harbor.

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

For fun, here’s the tiny wreckage of that dam, Glines Canyon, from afar and up close, the day of the helicopter video. (“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" etc. etc.)

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The Samish Indian Nation, from Washington's San Juan Islands, has jumped in to help the kelp that has helped feed the tribe for millennia. Here's kelp-haired deity Ko-Kwal-Alwoot, protector of the Samish people:

In a cedar sculpture, Ko-Kwal-Alwoot, the immortal protector of the Samish people, holds a salmon aloft in Deception Pass State Park

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Researchers have been raising the pizza-sized predators in labs up and down the West Coast and have started releasing them to revive the species, the productive kelp forests, and the Native cultures they anchor.

University of Washington research assistant Tess Chapman measures a sunflower star at Friday Harbor Labs

Researchers lower a plastic tub of sunflower stars into the water off Decatur Island, WA

But sunflower stars are apex predators of West Coast kelp beds. The 24-armed beasts' near-demise has led to many kelp forests being stripped bare by their proliferating prey (sea urchins). (Willem Weertman pics)

Sea urchins grazing in a kelp forest off San Juan Island

Sea urchins in an "urchin barren," the remains of an overgrazed kelp forest off San Juan Island.

John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

✴️🧵 When you hear the term "apex predator," this is probably not the image that springs to mind:

sunflower stars in a plastic bin at UW Friday Harbor Labs

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1910, in Astoria: www.kuow.org/stories/why-...

John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

I’ve got buoys on the brain

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Sigh. I mean, I’m glad to have gotten a scoop for @kuow.org (by working my sources), but I don’t get why other reporters didn’t catch on, even after NSF confirmed it yesterday. Maybe they didn’t get that “Endurance Array” is the name of the now-warehoused system off OR/WA.

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Most coverage of this issue (NYT, AP, Guardian…) over the past two weeks has missed the fact that the system off the Pacific NW coast was dismantled months ago. www.kuow.org/stories/ocea...

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John Ryan @heyjohnryan.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

That picture makes me think of Spinal Tap!