Kiran Johnson

Kiran Johnson is a New England environmental journalist. She studied journalism and environmental science at Northeastern University, in Boston, and has written for various science publications, a local newspaper on Massachusetts' Cape Cod, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Sea Grant and various environmental non-profits.

Recent Writing

One Fish Foundation •

Coast to coast collaboration on emerging green crab markets - One Fish Foundation

In 2020, invasive green crabs arrived on Haida Gwaii—an archipelago with two main islands, located off of British Columbia, Canada.

“We have a traditional sockeye salmon fishery,” he said. “And we were starting to see green crabs actually crawling up the net and eating the eyes out of our salmon. And so we would have to check the nets way more often so that green crabs didn’t eat our harvest.”
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution •

Is underwater noise from construction affecting the American Lobster?

The life of American lobster (Homarus americanus) is shaped by a web of interconnected variables. These crustaceans navigate the ocean floor, scavenging for food, searching for mates and hunting for shelter from predators like large fish — and human fishers. Now, as the ocean becomes increasingly industrialized, another challenge has arisen: noise pollution. 
As the ocean warms, lobsters have been moving farther offshore where the water is cooler — and where a growing number of wind farms are be...
The Provincetown Independent •

Scientists Measure an Ecological Transition at Duck Harbor - The Provincetown Independent

WELLFLEET — Duck Harbor, enjoyed by visitors as a bayside beach, is returning to its 19th-century roots as a salt marsh, according to Tim Smith, a restoration ecologist at the Cape Cod National Seashore who is studying the ecological transition here. And Smith doesn’t mean “roots” as a metaphor: the seeds of saltwater plants that have lay dormant for more than 100 years are sprouting there, including glasswort, seablite, and seaside orach, he said.
After seawater repeatedly breached a coastal du...
The Provincetown Independent •

Cannabis Toxicity in Dogs Is Increasing on Cape - The Provincetown Independent

TRURO — After a morning walk on Ballston Beach over the July 4th weekend, Heather Murray noticed her four-year-old Portuguese water dog, Maple, behaving strangely.
“She was just sort of staring past me while her head was wobbling,” said Murray. Her dog seemed unable to focus, and Murray worried she might be poisoned.
Her vet’s office in Wellfleet was closed, so Murray drove Maple to Cape Cod Veterinary Specialists in Dennis. Maple’s body temperature was two degrees below the normal range for a d...
The Provincetown Independent •

Punk Kids Playing Jazz - The Provincetown Independent

Eight members of the Dirty Rotten Vipers came to Provincetown for the season last year, and the band made the alleyway next to Marine Specialties on Commercial Street their summer stage. This year, most of the musicians could not find housing here — but two of them are back, with a third on the way, bringing a slice of New Orleans jazz to the Outer Cape.
Twelve musicians made up the group when it first got together two years ago on a corner on Royal Street in New Orleans. Like Commercial Street,...
The Provincetown Independent •

When a Farmer Favors Flowers - The Provincetown Independent

Paula Erickson walks among delicate dots of yellow, purple, and white. She is searching for something with a touch of wildness to complete her bouquet. Rows of sweet pea, foxgloves, anemones, and ranunculus — all early summer flowers — stand, still lush and tall under her care, despite the midday heat. She settles on adding a long lacy frond of fennel for the finishing touch.
Before Erickson grew flowers at her Truro farm, she lived in Wellfleet, where she worked at Hatches with Lauren McClellan...
The Provincetown Independent •

Beach Access Limited When Plovers Nest Near Trails - The Provincetown Independent

PROVINCETOWN — Mildred Champlin remembers a time when piping plover chicks were in constant danger of being run over by cars on Race Point Beach. She has spent every summer since 1957 at the dune shack she calls Mission Bell, and she recalls guides from Art’s Dune Tours planting sticks in the sand to mark the birds’ tiny nests so that drivers wouldn’t accidentally squash them.
The federal Endangered Species Act has been the law since 1973, and rangers in the Cape Cod National Seashore are now in...
The Provincetown Independent •

Provincetown’s Matriarchs Are Due for a Reprint - The Provincetown Independent

PROVINCETOWN — Almeda Segura, Eva Silva, Mary Jason, Bea Cabral, and Frances Raymond. Since 2003, these five women have kept an eye on Provincetown Harbor — or rather, their portraits have. Printed in black and white and gazing calmly from the Provincetown Marina’s outermost building, their kind, creased faces are a vivid reminder of the town’s Portuguese fishing heritage.
They and women like them kept the town afloat while fishermen were at sea, working as telephone operators, mail carriers, an...

The Lotterhos Lab is predicting species’ biodiversity, starting with oysters.

Climate change is altering ecosystems, and organisms will have toadapt. Temperature-sensitive species, like
cod and pollock
, areshifting their habitats to colder waters. Other species have changedtheir behaviors, like
humpback and fin whales
, which have adjustedtheir feeding patterns because of diminished food supplies. And somespecies are quite literally adapting, in the evolutionary sense: amongthem, oysters.
DCReport.org •

Climate Change Also Impacts Humans Through Disease

Climate change is exacerbating the spread of diseases.
The lone star tick is a prime example of this. The species is taking advantage of climbing temperatures by widening its territory in the southeastern and southcentral U.S. and expanding as far as the northern U.S. and eastern Canada. More people are being affected by the pathogen it carries, which results in a condition called alpha-gal syndrome (AGS) and causes an allergy to meat and dairy.
During the summer of 2022, the CDC issued a report...