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How Pandemics Changed History

How will the COVID-19 pandemic end? Will it change the world? Will some countries emerge stronger, while others appear weak due to their inability to handle the virus? Will the pandemic force long-term impacts on economies and cultures?

Wars carve our history. They lead to the downfall of some civilizations and the rise of others. Pandemics have also changed history, and pandemics and wars often coincide. Disease can weaken a strong civilization, allowing its lesser foe to prevail in battle. Also, many times over the millennia, marauding warriors have returned home from war bringing with them a terrible disease. Sometimes, an infectious disease gains a foothold during battle, and soldiers confined together in close quarters provide the perfect breeding ground for the virus to spread.

Around 430 B.C., Athens and Sparta went to war, and soon after, a strange disease developed in Athens. According to the Greek historian Thucydides, people in good health suddenly became ill with red and inflamed eyes and a bloody throat and tongue. Experts do not know what caused this epidemic, but they have suggested everything from typhoid fever to Ebola. As the deadly infection spread, the war raged. As many as 100,000 people died from the disease, and Athens finally surrendered to Sparta.

In A.D. 165-180, Roman soldiers returned from a campaign, carrying home a pandemic, known as the Antonine Plague. The disease, which might have been smallpox, killed over 5 million people. The epidemic caused instability and war throughout the Roman Empire, leading to the beginning of its downfall.

The Plague of Justinian from A.D. 541-542 was the bubonic plague, and it ravaged Constantinople before spreading to Europe, Asia, North Africa, and Arabia. This plague marked the beginning of the decline of the Byzantine Empire.

The bubonic plague also caused the Black Death from 1346-1353. This devastating pandemic wiped out over half of Europe’s population, but it also changed the course of Europe’s history in a positive way. Large numbers of laborers died from the plague, and those who remained demanded higher wages. The surviving laborers had access to better food, and the loss of cheap labor led to technological innovation.

In the 16th century, European explores brought smallpox and other Eurasian diseases to the Americas, wiping out as many as 90% of the indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere and causing the collapse of the Inca and Aztec civilizations. After disease weakened the Incas and Aztecs, the Europeans easily conquered them.

While the previous examples stem from far back in our history, the 1918-1919 flu presents a more recent case. This pandemic began during WWI. Experts disagree about where the flu originated, but most agree the lethal virus spread quickly due to the cramped conditions of soldiers in barracks and the poor nutrition during the war. President Woodrow Wilson was so intent on boosting morale and keeping the country focused on patriotism and winning the war that he refused to talk about the deadly influenza virus spreading like wildfire among the troops. By the end of WWI, more soldiers died from the flu than on the battlefield. The 1918-1919 flu killed 675,000 Americans and between 50 and 100 million people worldwide.

In April 1919, just as the war ended, President Wilson caught the flu. When it was time to sign the peace treaty in Paris, an extremely ill and weakened Wilson caved to demands of the French for a punishing peace agreement with Germany. In return for conceding to the French on the tone and content of the treaty, the French agreed to Wilson’s wishes to form the League of Nations. Many historians believe the harsh treatment toward Germany at the end of WWI lead the country down the path to hyperinflation, chaos, nationalism, militarization, the rise of Adolf Hitler, and WWII.

A major world event such as a pandemic is bound to leave lasting impacts. We can already predict some changes in our lives. Online virtual meetings, education, and doctor’s visits have become more frequent and likely will remain so, even once the pandemic ends. Will a move away from working at the office toward working at home decentralize our cities? Will our hypervigilance over avoiding infection continue once we have a vaccine for COVID-19, or will we again display indifference in the presence of pathogens? Will our economy recover, or will we suffer a damaging and possibly fatal blow from this virus? How will other countries fare?

Perhaps the final chapter on the COVID-19 virus will not be written for decades when scholars can look back from a distance and see the effect the virus had on our lives, our cultures, and our countries. Other pandemics have caused the fall of empires. Will this one cause significant harm in the long run?

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Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Coronaviruses

My series of posts on infectious diseases has, of course, been inspired by Covid-19, the coronavirus currently spreading to every corner of the world. What is a coronavirus, though, and what path will Covid-19 take? Will we tame it with a vaccine, will it mysteriously disappear, or is it here to stay for a while? We know Covid-19 is a novel virus, a pathogen never previously identified in humans. When Covid-19 began to spread around the world, no one was immune to it.

Coronaviruses represent a large family of viruses, including the common cold and other mild to moderate upper-respiratory tract illnesses. Over the past few years, three serious coronaviruses, causing severe illness and death, have emerged. In addition to Covid-19, these are Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). SARS appeared in 2002 and disappeared by 2004. MERS was transmitted by camels and first identified in humans in September 2012. MERS continues to cause localized outbreaks.

Covid-19 emerged from China in December 2019 and quickly spread throughout the world. Like the viruses that produce SARS and MERS, Covid-19 can cause serious illness and death, but its extreme virulence makes Covid-19 even more dangerous than its viral cousins. Covid-19 spreads easily between people who are in close contact when one person inhales small, infected droplets produced by the infected person. The droplets can be spread by talking, yelling, coughing, sneezing, or singing. Scientists still aren’t certain how long small aerosol droplets containing Covid-19 remain suspended in air or how far they can travel. Covid-19 can also spread when infected droplets fall onto a surface, and a person then touches the contaminated surface and subsequently spreads the infection to their eyes, nose, or mouth.

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No vaccine for Covid-19 currently exists, but we all remain hopeful that scientists will soon develop one. Until then, we can only protect ourselves by following basic public health protocols. These might not seem like cutting-edge science, but they have been the best weapons used to fight infectious diseases through the centuries. By now, we all know them well: Wash your hands, maintain a physical distance from others, and wear a mask to cover your nose and mouth.

Infectious disease experts wait and watch this virus. We would like these experts to tell us what will happen next, but how can they possibly know? The Spanish flu virus mutated partway through its run and became much more deadly in the fall of 1918. Could this happen with Covid-19? Most experts believe it will again peak in the fall, but it shows no sign of slowing now as summer progresses and draws to a close.

We cannot yet write the story about Covid-19. How many people will get sick, and how many will die? How did it start spreading, and could national leaders have stopped it if they ignored politics and acted sooner?  Most importantly, how can we better prepare for the next pandemic when it occurs? Will we take a moment and remember to turn around and study the past, or are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes with each pandemic we encounter?

I decided to write one more post about pandemics, and then I promise to move back to covering Kodiak wildlife and life in the wilderness. In my next post, I’ll discuss how plagues have changed history. While researching pandemics, I was fascinated to learn the many ways, both good and bad, that pandemics have shaped our history, and I began to wonder what lasting impacts Covid-19 will leave on the world.

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Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Influenza: The Flu

While the flu is something we would rather avoid, most of us don’t fear the flu virus. But maybe we should. Influenza viruses are complex, containing strands of RNA twisted together. When the strands untwist to replicate, they break and sometimes recombine with fragments of other viruses, resulting in new viral forms. Virologists cannot predict these mutations. Flu viruses reside in a variety of host species, and the virus can pick up nasty tricks as it moves from animal to animal, recombining with other flu viruses before moving on to infect a host of another species. By the time the virus reaches man, it might be highly contagious, extremely lethal, and nothing humans have ever seen before. The novel virus could quickly race around the planet, leaving destruction in its wake.

For those infected with the influenza virus, symptoms range from mild to severe. The most common symptoms include high fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle and joint pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. The influenza virus occasionally causes severe illness, including primary viral pneumonia and secondary bacterial pneumonia.

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Three types of influenza viruses affect humans. These are known as types A,B, and C. A fourth type (D) has not been known to affect humans, but virologists believe it could. Influenzavirus A is the most worrisome of the four types, because wild aquatic birds are the natural hosts for influenza A, and the virus sometimes jumps to other species, causing massive outbreaks of infection in domestic poultry and creating pandemics of influenza in humans. Recent human pandemics caused by the influenza A virus include the 1918/1919 flu, the 1957 Asian Flu, and the 2004 bird flu.

Most experts consider the 1918/1919 flu (Spanish flu) pandemic one of the most baffling and terrifying pandemics of all time. Approximately 250,000 to 500,000 people worldwide die from the flu each year. The 1918/1919 (Spanish) flu, though, killed an estimated 20-50 million humans over the course of a year. Some estimates range as high as 100 million deaths. More terrifying yet, though, was who the virus killed. The very old, very young, or those with underlying health conditions usually succumb to the common flu, but the Spanish flu killed young, otherwise healthy adults.

Experts today still argue over why the Spanish flu killed the young and healthy, but many believe the virus triggered a cytokine storm, which is an overreaction of the body’s immune system. This storm proved particularly deadly for young adults with robust immune systems.

Historians and virologists also argue over where the Spanish flu originated, but everyone agrees it did not come from Spain. Since Spain remained a neutral nation during WWI, it did not censor its press, and reporters freely documented early accounts of the disease, causing many people to think the flu originated in Spain. Some experts believe the 1918 flu pandemic began in Haskell County, Kansas, and quickly spread from there to Fort Riley when an enlisted man went home to Haskell for a few days, became infected, and returned to the army base. In the overcrowded barracks on base, the flu quickly spread.

The Spanish flu suddenly burned out in the Spring of 1919. While this H1N1 influenza A virus has not returned since, epidemiologist fear it will reappear. This pandemic occurred over one-hundred years ago, so few people alive now have immunity to this strain, and it could again exact a nasty toll.

Flu experts study the world and watch carefully for the next possible flu epidemic. Infectious disease experts say it is not a matter of if but when the next flu pandemic will occur.

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Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Pandemics

While Covid-19 is a novel virus, pandemics are nothing new in human history. In my last post, I wrote about the plague, and in this post, I’ll cover some of the other major pathogens that have not only inflicted disease upon humans but have caused pandemics affecting much of the globe.

Smallpox

[image error]Smallpox

For centuries, smallpox threatened Europe, Asia, and Arabia, killing three out of every ten people it infected. While smallpox menaced the old world for millennia, humans did not experience its full fury until European explorers introduced it to the New World. The indigenous inhabitants of Mexico and the United States had no immunity to smallpox, and tens of millions died. Anthropologists estimate smallpox decimated 90 to 95 percent of the indigenous population of the Americas.

The variola virus causes smallpox, and it is the only infectious disease humans have eradicated. Once they had a vaccine for smallpox, World Health Organization workers searched the most remote areas of the world, tracking down and vaccinating infected individuals and their contacts. The last natural case of smallpox occurred in Somalia in 1977. Unlike most viruses, smallpox only infects humans. No other species play host to the virus. Once all humans were vaccinated against smallpox, the virus had no place to go. Most human viruses can also infect other animals or insects, making these viruses impossible to find and demolish.

Cholera

[image error]Vibrio cholerae

Cholera is an infection caused by strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, which attack the small intestine, causing watery diarrhea, vomiting, and muscle cramps. Cholera has wreaked havoc over the centuries and is the scourge of developing countries. Cholera is often spread through dirty drinking water, and it still kills nearly 30,000 people a year worldwide.

In the 19th century, cholera ravaged England and killed tens of thousands of people. No one understood how the disease spread until a doctor named John Snow linked the illness to a Broad Street pump in London, where many of the citizens obtained their drinking water. While cholera is no longer a problem in stable nations, it still lurks in developing countries that lack adequate sewage treatment and access to clean water.

AIDS

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The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes AIDS. Experts believe the virus originated in chimpanzees and began infecting humans in West Africa in the 1920s. AIDS became a pandemic in the late 20th century, killing an estimated 35 million individuals. Sixty-four percent of the estimated forty million people worldwide infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa. Medication can now control HIV, and most HIV-infected individuals with access to the medication can live an average lifespan.

In my next post, I’ll cover the flu, an illness we all know well and carelessly dismiss as a minor inconvenience. Influenza has caused terrible pandemics in our past, and the flu virus keeps epidemiologists awake at night. These experts will tell you, “It’s not a question of ‘if’ we will have another flu pandemic but of ‘when’ the next flu pandemic will occur.

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Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Plagues and Pandemics: What Can History Teach Us?

We find ourselves in the middle of a pandemic, but how dangerous is Covid-19? Should we stay at home? Do we need to wear masks? We listen to the biologists and politicians debate, and we weigh what they tell us. I think when trying to see the future, though, we must first turn around and look at the past. What cautionary tales does history provide us about plagues and pandemics? Let’s investigate the worst epidemics humans have endured, and maybe we’ll understand why we should take Covid-19 seriously.

I’ve thought and read a great deal about pandemics lately (hmmm, I wonder why?). What did we learn from the great influenza pandemic of 1918, or how did humans respond to the bubonic plague or smallpox?

Over my next three posts, I plan to discuss the worst plagues and pandemics the world has faced. Only one of the deadliest diseases ever to attack humans has been cured. Several of the others can now be treated, but a few infectious diseases remain elusive to us, even today with our advancements in science and medicine.

Let me begin with a plague I’m sure many of you think only belongs in the history books.

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Yersinia pestis

The bacterium Yersinia pestis caused three of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history. This organism spawns the bubonic plague, septicemic plague, and pneumonic plague. The bacterium invades but does not harm fleas, and the fleas usually pass it on to small animals such as rats. Humans contract the plague either through flea bites or from exposure to the body fluids of dead animals infected with the bacteria. One to seven days after exposure to Yersinia pestis, a human develops flu-like symptoms, including fever, headaches, and vomiting. In the area where the bacteria entered the skin, painful lymph nodes swell and sometimes even break open. The plague poses a mortality rate of 30-90% if not treated. After the discovery and widespread use of penicillin in the 1940s, the death rate from the plague dropped to 10%.

The following represent three of the worst plague pandemics.

The Plague of Justinian

The Plague of Justinian hit Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in 541 CE. Historians believe the plague crossed the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt, brought by fleas carried on rats hiding in the grain holds of ships. The plague wiped out 40 % of the population of Constantinople and then raced across Europe, Asia, North Africa, and Arabia. In one year, this plague killed an estimated 30 to 50 million people or half the world’s population.

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The Black Death

From 1346 to 1353, the Black Death annihilated between 75 to 200 million people in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Between 25% to 60 % of the population of Europe died during this pandemic. Experts believe this outbreak began in Asia and again jumped continents, spread by fleas riding on rats aboard merchant ships. People referred to the plague as the black death because of the black skin spots associated with the disease.

Humans did not know what caused the plague nor how to stop the disease, but they understood it spread by proximity to infected individuals. In Venice, authorities required boats to remain isolated and away from port for forty days to ensure the sailors did not bring the disease to shore. The Italian sailors referred to this forty-day isolation as “quarantino,” from which we derived the word quarantine.

The Great Plague of London

From 1348 to 1665, the plague continued to ravage England. The Great Plague of 1665 was the last and one of the worst of the epidemics, killing 100,000 London residents in six months. The name “Bubonic” derived from the appearance of blackened swellings, or buboes, in the victim’s groin or armpits.

While some reports state that Yersinia pestis is now extinct and no longer a threat, nothing could be further from the truth. In 2007, a wildlife biologist working in the Grand Canyon found a dead mountain lion. Curious about what killed the lion, he performed a necropsy on the animal. A week later, the biologist died. Yersinia pestis had infected both the mountain lion and the biologist. This death was not an isolated incident. Since 2000, the CDC has received between one and 17 reports per year of cases of the plague. Luckily, today we know to treat the plague with antibiotics, and this treatment not only helps stop the spread of the dreaded disease but also usually saves those individuals infected with it. Should Yersinia pestis become resistant to modern-day antibiotics, though, we could again face an epidemic of the plague.

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In my next post, I’ll discuss smallpox, cholera, and AIDS. Until then, wear a mask, social distance, and wash your hands. From the Middle Ages to today, doctors have learned those are the only three sure actions humans can take to battle a pandemic.

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Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Osmoregulation in Salmon

Osmoregulation is the process of maintaining salt and water balance across the body’s membranes. Any fish faces a challenge to maintain this balance. A freshwater fish struggles to retain salt and not take on too much water, while a saltwater fish tends to lose too much water to the environment and keeps a surplus of salt. Fish have developed behaviors and physiological adaptations to survive in their environments, whether fresh or marine water, but how do fish manage to thrive in both fresh and saltwater?

A catadromous fish spends most of its life in freshwater and then migrates to the ocean to breed. Eels of the genus Anguilla represent catadromous organisms. Anadromous fish begin life in freshwater, spend most of their lives in saltwater, and then return to freshwater to spawn. Pacific salmon and some species of sturgeon are anadromous fish.

How does a salmon maintain the composition of its body fluids within homeostatic limits? How does it reverse its osmoregulation physiology when it swims from a freshwater environment into the ocean or from the ocean to freshwater?

In the ocean, a salmon swims in a fluid nearly three times more concentrated than the composition inside its cells. In such an environment, the fish tends to take on salt from the water and lose water to the denser ocean. This exchange would result in severe dehydration and quickly kill the salmon if the fish did not adequately deal with the issue.

A Salmon faces the opposite problem in freshwater, where it lives in a solution nearly devoid of salts. In this case, the fish has more salt in its body than in its environment, presenting the problem of losing salt to the environment while flooding its body with water.

How does a salmon deal with these two warring issues of osmoregulation? The salmon has evolved behavioral and physiological adaptations to allow it to live in both fresh and saltwater habitats.

In the ocean, a salmon drinks several liters of water a day to maintain its water volume, but in freshwater, it does not drink at all, except for what it takes on during feeding. In freshwater, a salmon’s kidneys produce a large volume of very dilute urine to offset the excess water diffusing into its body fluids. In the ocean environment, though, a salmon’s urine is highly concentrated, consisting mostly of salt ions, and it excretes very little water.

A salmon also has a remarkable adaptation that allows osmoregulation by the fish in both marine and freshwater environments. A salmon uses energy to actively pump Na and Cl ions across the gill epithelial cells against their concentration gradients. In saltwater, the fish pumps NaCl out of its blood and into the surrounding ocean. In freshwater, the pump works in reverse, moving NaCl out of the water, over the gills, and into the blood.

These amazing behavioral and physiological adaptations allow a salmon to move from fresh to saltwater when the fish leaves its nursery area to travel to its ocean feeding grounds and then back from its marine habitat to freshwater when the salmon returns to spawn. The critical changes in osmoregulation are not immediate, though. When a salmon smolt first leaves its home stream, it must rest in brackish water for several days or weeks while it adjusts, and then it will slowly move into water with higher salt concentrations. As the smolt adjusts, its kidneys begin producing more-concentrated urine while the NaCl pumps in its gills reverse direction and start pumping NaCl out of the blood. When the salmon returns to its natal stream to spawn, it must again remain in brackish water for a period while its kidneys adjust, and the NaCl pump changes direction to pump NaCl out of the water and into the blood.

I am always amazed by how animals and plants adjust to the demands of their environment. Anadromous and catadromous fish, however, must adapt to two environments with opposite physiological requirements, and to do this, they flip the switch on osmoregulation from one extreme to the other.

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Save money on books—Fifty Percent Discount.

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Participate in monthly book club meetings.

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Participate in Monthly Book Club Discussion with Authors

Receive new and upcoming book club benefits.

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Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Incredible Spot Shrimp

Spot shrimp are the largest wild species of shrimp found in Alaska, with females reaching more than 12 inches (30 cm) in length. Because of their large size, marketers often refer to them as “spot prawns,” but they are not prawns.

What is the difference between a prawn and a shrimp? They might look similar, but shrimp differ from prawns in many ways. Prawns and shrimp are both decapod crustaceans, but they belong to separate sub-orders. Shrimp have plate-like gills and a set of claws on their front two pairs of legs, while prawns have branching gills and claws on three sets of their legs. Shrimp have three body segments, with the middle segment overlapping the front and rear sections, causing their bodies to curve. Prawns, however, lack the body segmentation and have straighter bodies than shrimp. Shrimp and prawns vary in many other ways too, including their reproductive habits. Prawns release their progeny into the water to survive on their own, while a female shrimp carries her eggs on her abdomen for five months.

Spot shrimp range from Southern California to the Aleutian Islands to the Sea of Japan and the Korea Strait. They occupy a variety of habitats and water depths from very shallow to 1510 ft. (460 m), but they most commonly live at approximately 300 ft (90m.).  They usually remain close to the bottom and stay near rock piles, crevices, under boulders, or in other areas where they can seek protection from predators. Juvenile spot shrimp remain in shallow, inshore areas and migrate offshore when they mature.

Spot shrimp appear reddish-brown to tan and have horizontal bars on the carapace. The distinctive white spots, from which they derive their common name, are located on the first and fifth abdominal segments. The slender body of a spot shrimp has five pairs of swimmerets on the underside of its abdomen. A spot shrimp repeatedly molts throughout its life and grows larger with each molt.

The most amazing fact about spot shrimp is, like some other shrimp species, spot shrimp are protandric hermaphrodites. They mature as males and later transform into females. They reach sexual maturity at age three when they can produce sperm and spawn as males. As they grow, they pass through a transitional stage and become females capable of producing eggs. Research indicates not all spot shrimp follow this pattern, though. Some skip the male-phase of the life cycle and develop directly into females.

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Before mating, a female molts into a shell specialized for carrying eggs. Each egg attaches to her abdomen by a hair-sized structure called a seta, and she carries the eggs from October to March. Biologists believe each spot shrimp spawns once as a male and one or more times as a female. They spawn at depths of 500-700 ft. (152.4 m to 213.4 m).

Spot shrimp are bottom feeders, and they feed at night. They eat a wide variety of bottom organisms, including worms, diatoms, dead organic material, algae, mollusks, and even other shrimp. Fish such as halibut Pacific cod, pollock, flounders, and salmon pursue and eat spot shrimp. Spot shrimp can live seven to eleven years.

Due to destructive fishing methods used to catch shrimp in many areas of the world, biologists consider the commercial harvest of shrimp to be one of the most unsustainable of all global fisheries. Bottom trawls destroy everything in their path. In Alaska, the shrimp harvest is mainly restricted to pot fisheries in certain areas.

In Southeastern Alaska, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game closed the spot shrimp fishery to commercial and sport fishermen in 2013, but the spot shrimp population in the area has continued to decline. Biologists wonder if recent warmer, more-acidic ocean waters could be the cause for dwindling spot shrimp numbers, and they are beginning to research the issue. Shrimp remain most vulnerable to acidification during early life stages when they rely on calcification to build their exoskeletons.

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Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Whale Season

Spring marks the beginning of whale season here in Alaska. The humpbacks and grey whales begin arriving from their long migrations north from their wintering grounds, and the north Pacific Ocean teems with life as the waters warm and phytoplankton blooms. Swarms of krill and other zooplankton feast on the abundant plant life, and fish such as herring, eulachon, and similar species follow the zooplankton into the bays on Kodiak Island. In turn, huge baleen whales, including fin, sei, and humpback, gather to eat the krill and small fish. I am thrilled any time I see a whale, but I think it’s a special treat to stand in my front yard and watch these magnificent creatures feed and blow.

[image error]Fin Whale

 Sea mammals evolved from land mammals, and they resemble us in many ways. Whales, like humans, have lungs and must breathe air to survive. They are warm-blooded, and they bear live young. Whales nurse their young with milk, and while you might not think of a whale having hair, all whales do have hair at some stage in their development. All members of the order Cetacea evolved 45 million years ago from hoofed mammals, such as cows, sheep, and camels. Comparisons of specific milk protein genes indicate the hippopotamus is the closest, living, land relative to whales.

The order Cetacea contains more than eighty species; although, taxonomists debate the precise number. Biologists have recorded thirty-nine cetacean species in the North American Pacific.

Cetacea comes from the Greek word “ketos,” which means “whale.” All cetaceans have forelimbs modified into flippers and no hind limbs. They have horizontally flattened tails, and they breathe through a nostril, or blowhole, located on the top of the head. A blowhole has a nasal plug that remains closed except when forced open by muscular contractions to breathe. This plug seals when the whale dives. A whale has internal sensory and reproductive organs to reduce drag while swimming, and they do not have external ears but instead have a complex internal system of air sinuses and bones to detect sounds.The lungs of a cetacean are relatively small, highly elastic, and elongated. A whale has a muscular diaphragm, allowing the animal to purge a large amount of air in a short time. With each respiration, a whale replaces 80% to 90% of the air in its lungs. During a deep dive, a cetacean slows its heart rate and decreases blood flow to peripheral tissues.

[image error]Humpback

Cetaceans living in the cold ocean waters of the North Pacific must somehow maintain a body temperature nearly the same as a human’s body temperature. A whale uses several mechanisms to accomplish this feat. First, it has a thick layer of blubber with few blood vessels, reducing the heat loss at the body surface. A whale has a counter-current heat exchanger, with arteries surrounding veins at the periphery. Hence, vessels flowing from the cold periphery to the warm core partially absorb heat lost by vessels flowing from the core toward the surface. A cetacean also has a high metabolic rate to produce heat, and it has a low body surface to volume ratio, which conserves heat. Finally, a whale has a slower respiration rate than a land mammal, so the whale expels warm air less frequently.

Most cetaceans produce large calves, and the large body volume relative to surface area minimizes heat loss in the calf. Calves are born tail first, and as soon as the calf emerges from the birth canal, the mother or another whale nudges it to the surface for its first few breaths.[3] Cetacean mothers nurse their calves with a pair of teats concealed in slits along the body wall. The milk has a high-fat content, and the calves grow at a rapid rate. Whale mothers tend and guard their calves closely, and a calf often rides the bow wave or the convection currents produced by its mother or another adult when the whales travel. This method of travel is so efficient that the calf barely needs to move its flukes to keep up with the group.

[image error]Killer Whale (Orca)

Two suborders comprise the order Cetacea: The Mysticeti or baleen whales and the Odontoceti, or toothed whales. We most commonly see fin whales in Uyak Bay, but we also spot sei, humpback, minke, and killer whales. No matter the species, whenever I see a spout of water, excitement buzzes through me while I watch one of the largest animals on the planet.

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Mammalian Diving Reflex

The mammalian diving reflex is a fantastic biological adaptation intrinsic not only to marine mammals but also to land mammals, including humans, whose ancestors once lived in the ocean. I am currently editing my wildlife book and was once again awed by how deep some marine mammals dive and how long they can stay below the surface without breathing. I think the mammalian diving reflex represents one of nature’s most incredible adjustments for air-breathing mammals required to find food in an inhospitable environment void of air.

What is the mammalian diving reflex? Biologists mostly have studied the reflex in harbor seals, so I will use a seal to explain the elements of the physiological changes. A harbor seal can dive as deep as 1640 ft. (500 m) and stay submerged for over twenty minutes. When it dives, a harbor seal’s heart rate slows from its normal rate between 75 to 120 beats per minute down to just four to six beats per minute. Blood shunts from peripheral tissues tolerant to low oxygen levels and flows to the heart, brain, and tissues dependent on a constant supply of oxygen to survive. These adaptations allow the seal to conserve oxygen while it dives and searches for food.

Seals utilize additional adaptations to conserve oxygen and withstand the rigors of increased pressure when they dive. Before a deep dive, seals exhale several times to collapse their lungs, and they then store their oxygen in blood and muscle tissues instead of in the lungs. Harbor seals have a proportionately higher blood volume than land mammals of the same size, and seals also possess ten times more myoglobin than humans. This oxygen-binding protein helps prevent muscle oxygen deficiency.

Researchers originally believed the diving reflex was an automatic response triggered by breath-holding and submergence in cool water. In recent studies, though, scientists attached a device similar to a Fitbit to harbor seals. The device records blood flow and oxygen levels in the seal’s brain, and the study produced some interesting results. Seals can control their diving reflex. Seals contract their peripheral blood vessels beginning 15 to 45 seconds before they dive, and they restore normal blood flow to their blubber several seconds before they reach the surface. When seals are feeding, they return to the surface to breathe but often don’t stay there long enough to restore normal oxygen levels. Researchers also learned that seals slow their heart rates more if they plan to stay underwater longer.

Biologists hope to learn if other animals, including humans, can also consciously control their dive reflex. The world’s top freedivers can descend to a depth of 426 ft. (130 meters) and return to the surface, and the record for breath-holding without moving tops 11 minutes. Are these free divers able to control the physiology of the diving reflex to accomplish these incredible feats?

The next time you see a harbor seal, pause for a moment to consider the rigors this animal must endure just to eat dinner.

I hope you are well and navigating our changed world. Life remains quiet here in the wilderness of Kodiak Island, and we feel oddly removed from the biological havoc wreaked by this virus. Even here, though, we have been touched by the economic disaster the world faces. I look forward to better times for all of us soon!  Take care.

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Join the Battle of the Books contest, and you could win a $500 Amazon Gift Card! I am very excited to have my novel, Karluk Bones, included in this contest.

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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Writing

Are you thinking about writing a book, or maybe you’ve already started one? A few weeks ago, Dee S. Knight wrote a guest post for my blog, and in it, she offered great advice to beginning novelists. I know she learned much of this information the hard way, just as I did. As soon as I read her bulleted points, I decided to expand on Dee’s wise words and tell you about the emotions I experience when I write a book.

My education is in biology, and I knew very little about the mechanics of writing a novel. I love to learn, though, so I read every book and magazine I could find on writing. Much of the advice was good; some was not. I am still learning how to tell a story, build compelling characters, put it all together, and polish it. Writing a novel requires fortitude and diligence.

I jokingly tell friends that all authors are delusional. When I begin writing a novel, I’m confident I’m about to tell a fantastic story, and my creation will top the best-seller list. By the midway point, my book doesn’t seem so great anymore. Toward the end, I’m optimistic I’ve written a reasonably good book, but by edit number seven, I am sick of reading this piece of junk I wrote. When My publisher sends me the completed and published novel, I hold it in my hands and wonder if it’s any good and if anyone will read it. After this rollercoaster ride of emotions, you’d think I’d never want to write another novel, but I can’t wait to tell the next story bursting to escape my brain. It’s no wonder so many famous novelists had severe mental problems or were alcoholics or drug addicts. We authors lack sanity.

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Before I wrote my first novel, I read some great advice from a well-known author. I think the author was Mary Higgins Clark, and she said if you want to write books, begin by writing 15 minutes a day – every day. You might think you need great chunks of time to write, and perhaps a lack of time is your excuse for not writing a novel. Not many of us can carve out big pieces of our day to write. We have jobs, we have families, we have lives. I guarantee if you follow Ms. Clark’s advice and manage to write 15 minutes a day, soon you will find 30 minutes a day to write, and before long, you’ll manage to write an hour a day. You might not write for an hour in one sitting, but if you can write 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, and so on, you will make progress.

Writing is like exercise. You must do it consistently to keep your mind sharp and to stay focused on your story. I hear authors talk about “writer’s block,” and I don’t know what they mean. Somedays, my brain feels so sluggish I write mush, but I write something. I can always delete it the next day if it’s terrible.

In her post, Dee encouraged beginning novelists to spend time learning the craft of storytelling. Read books on the subject or take an online class. Storytelling has rules, and sure, you can break the rules, but you should know what the rules are before you break them.

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Once you complete your manuscript, you must edit it, and you cannot skip this step. You need to edit your book until you can’t stand to look at it anymore. Once I’ve read through it repeatedly, I send it to a professional editor. Yes, professional editors are expensive, but you want your masterpiece expertly polished before you send it out into the world. When the manuscript comes back from the editor, I go through it again and try to understand the changes the editor has made. I do this edit not only to make myself a better writer but also to be sure the editor hasn’t changed the voice or meaning of my book. Next, I send my novel to other authors I know will give me honest feedback. I then do one more read through and send it to my publisher. He will e-mail the galleys back to me for one or two more edits. Yes, editing is not for the faint-hearted, but skip any step in this process, and you risk releasing a book full of embarrassing errors. Even after you’ve done all the above, your novel will still have errors – I guarantee! I want to cry when I find a mistake in one of my published books, and it’s even worse when someone else points out the error to me.

If you want to write a book, and if you have a story you must tell, then I encourage you to do it. Dee is correct, though. Writing is a business, and you need to think of yourself as a professional. If you are determined to become an author, then you will succeed, but to be victorious, you must write every day. Nobody has enough time to write a novel, but if you plan to become a published author, you must find the time.

Thank you, Dee, for letting me borrow your wise advice!

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Happy Easter and Passover to everyone who celebrates these holidays. My wish for all the world is that a year from now, these terrible days will be only a hazy memory. Stay well!

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Join the Battle of the Books contest, and you could win a $500 Amazon Gift Card! I am very excited to have my novel, Karluk Bones, included in this contest.

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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