Redux: Climate Connections In Hawaii, Japan, Palmyra

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ALEX COHEN, host:

This is Day to Day. I'm Alex Cohen.

MADELEINE BRAND, host:

I'm Madeleine Brand. And Alex, we just have about two weeks left for the show.

COHEN: That's right.

BRAND: But it's giving us a chance to revisit some of our favorite stories. We've been re-airing them, and we're about to re-air a couple more of them, some of my favorites.

COHEN: And some of these from destinations far away. The show has given us great opportunities to travel. I can now say, I've been to Paris, Texas, Des Moines, Iowa, and let's not forget the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer.

BRAND: Really, really fun and interesting. I went a little further…

COHEN: (Laughing) Yes.

BRAND: Afield to Japan, and this was for our climate connection series.

COHEN: And Alex Chadwick got to go all the way to Palmyra. That's an atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for a story did - that he did also part of climate connections.

BRAND: That's right, the tiny little spit out there in the ocean, and he and I chatted a little bit about it and we talked about how the goals of both of our trips was to look at the themes of nature.

(Soundbite of pre-recorded story)

MADELEINE BRAND: So I visited the ancient city of Nara, it was Japan's capital back in the year 710. And I went there to see these famous deer, these deer that are allowed to roam free in the middle of the park.

ALEX CHADWICK: The deer of Nara.

BRAND: The deer of Nara. And tourist like me, well, we're allowed to feed them some rice crackers.

CHADWICK: That's very nice.

BRAND: It's very nice, yes. Here's a little snap shot of what I saw.

(Soundbite of recording in park)

BRAND: Some of these deers are making these strange sounds. Sounds like a baby crying. Listen to this.

(Soundbite of deer crying)

BRAND: I didn't know deer made that kind of noise. All right. I just bought some wafers to feed this deer, and they come running up to you and then they'll bow if you bowed at them before they get a rice cracker, they'll bow back. And they're so polite, even the deer in Japan are polite. Oh, you're so sweet, you. OK. Are you bowing? Oh, here, bow, bow (laughing). Here they come. Hello, hello, ooh, hello. You're very, very hungry. (Laughing) He bit me. Ow! You're very aggressive. OK, here. Here you go. Oh, I know. You're very cute but not when you bite. Ah, OK. All done, all done, no more. All done.

CHADWICK: (Laughing) Here you are risking life and limb with the maddened wild deer of Nara.

BRAND: Alex, these things are man-eaters.

CHADWICK: Ah, well, you're certainly a very brave woman, Madeleine, to undertake this journey.

BRAND: All I can say is beware of this so-called wild deer of Nara, but you - you had your own animal adventure.

CHADWICK: I did and I had my companion, producer Steve Proffitt along with me. We traveled to a little atoll. This is just a spit of land about a thousand miles south of Hawaii. It's called Palmyra. It's about as isolated and pristine as any place on earth, and that happens to make it a very good place to study climate change. So, we're going to have a series of reports from there later this month. We had an encounter there although I want a place for you, because you have this little deer treat for me. We had an encounter with an animal that I think is a little more wild than the deer of Nara.

(Soundbite of pre-recorded story)

STEVE PROFFITT: Here comes one. Here comes one right for you, Chadwick. Oh, there's two. You got them. You got them.

(Soundbite of water splash)

CHADWICK: OK. The him here, Madeleine. It's not a deer, it is a shark. We were out fishing for sharks.

BRAND: Fishing for sharks.

CHADWICK: Because you have to put these - scientists want to put these little tags in them that will monitor where the sharks go and what happens to them, ocean temperature, that kind of thing, very useful for learning about the climate.

PROFFITT: OK, Yani(ph), it's...

CHADWICK: So that's Yani Papasamatu(ph). He is one of the shark researchers, a post-grad student at the University of Hawaii, and once they have the shark tethered to the boat, they turn it over to Yani, and he pulls out a scalpel.

Yani, explain what you're doing.

Mr. YANI PAPASAMATU (Shark Researcher): I'm making a small incision on the abdomen, so it's just going through the muscle and into the body cavity.

CHADWICK: They have these little tags, these little instruments. They insert them into the belly of the shark. It's about the size of a disposable cigarette lighter and - Yani then, he puts in a couple of stitches, they turn the shark over and they let it go.

(Soundbite of electronic beeps)

Unidentified Man: Send her on her merry way.

CHADWICK: And that little beep that you hear that's the sound produce by the tag.

COHEN: That was Alex Chadwick doing a story that was part of NPR's Climate Connections series. That was back in 2007. And Madeleine, you got to go to a sushi market in Tokyo.

BRAND: Mm hmm.

COHEN: But it was for a meal that you wouldn't expect, right?

BRAND: Well, it was early, early morning dining on raw fish when my producer and I went to the biggest sushi market in Tokyo, the Tsukiji Fish Market.

(Soundbite of pre-recorded story)

MADELEINE BRAND: The demand for tuna is so great now that even though it seems like there is a glut of tuna standing here in the Tsukiji Fish Market just looking at the hundreds of tuna lying here on pallets, they really are being over fished, and it's a big problem for the tuna worldwide.

ALEX CHADWICK: Now, Madeleine doesn't really know her way around this market yet, so she went with a guide. His name is Tim Horniak(ph). He's a freelancer writer, a big sushi fan. He had all kinds of statistics about the fish in this market fished from all over the world.

Mr. TIM HORNIAK (Freelance Writer): Two thousand five hundred tons of fish worth over $23 million that are sold here everyday, and tuna can fetch prices up to 20 million yen, which, correct me if I'm wrong, it's something like $200,000 for a single fish.

BRAND: I feel kind of sorry for them. Lying here, they look like sad little porpoises with their tails cut off, a big gash under their fin.

Mr. HORNIAK: And you can see the tails are sliced off in kind of 90-degree angle cuts so that the traders can directly inspect the meat with their flashlights, and they're looking for the freshest, fattiest tuna that will fetch the highest price.

BRAND: OK. And this is where it all ends up. We're sitting in a sushi restaurant right next to the fish market. It is seven o'clock in the morning, and we're having sushi.

(Soundbite of foreign language spoken)

Mr. HORNIAK: This is the best sushi in the world right here. Tsukiji Fish Market, ground zero for sushi.

BRAND: OK. Eat your heart out, Alex, because I'm about to eat some delicious sushi. Bye-bye. Sayonara.

Nearly two years ago and I still remember the taste of that sushi. Mmm. Delicious.

(Soundbite of laughter)

COHEN: It sounds lovely. Well, stay tuned over the next few weeks, we'll share some more of these stories.

NPR's Day to Day continues.

Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.