I have been using Hakai Magazine articles with students in all of my courses, especially my coastal issues and oceanography courses. I am a huge fan of supporting independent journalism, especially with articles freely available from such a reliable and credible source. My students have also shared their enjoyment from reading Hakai Magazine news stories, exploring the multimedia material, and especially learning about careers new to them through the Coastal Jobs column.

It is an understatement to say how crushed I was when learning the news in July 2024 that Hakai Magazine would be closing in December 2024. There is no news source that compares with the high quality and range of content for those of us that teach oceanography! For my Coastal Issues, Hazards and Society course in Fall Semester 2024, I knew I was going to have my students do an exercise to have them construct a story on a coastal topic – then, we would generate a collaborative quilt like we did for my course last fall semester (those quilts focused on Project Drawdown Coastal Solutions).

We started with each student selecting a Hakai Magazine article of interest, collecting additional sources on the topic, then using the COMPASS Message Box to outline then write their own, expanded story. The final step was for each student to draw an image that represents their story on a blank, white fabric square.

This is our resulting collaboration!

Below are close-ups of each square. The squares are based upon the Hakai Magazine foundation article each student started from:

• Top row, left to right
  • Weather Forecasting Is Deadly for Marine Wildlife (October 11, 2024, by Danielle Beurteaux)
  • Iceland’s Quest to Use 100 Percent of Its Fish Waste (July 19, 2023, by Lela Nargi)
  • Biodegradable Fishing Gear Isn’t Good Enough (September 14, 2023, by Alastair Bland)
  • Seabirds Can Help Predict the Size of Fish Stocks—If Only We’d Listen (December 11, 2023, by Abby McBride)
• Second row, left to right
  • Iron Fertilization Isn’t Going to Save Us (January 12, 2024, by Jack McGovan)
  • In Tanzania, the Fight against Blast Fishing Is Ramping Up (January 19, 2024, by Scarlett Buckley)
  • In Hot Water, Clownfish Grow Up Quick (September 20, 2023, by Elizabeth Landau)
  • Six Months After the Heat Spiked, Caribbean Corals Are Still Reeling (March 11, 2024, by Lisa S. Gardiner)
• Third row, left to right
  • New Nests Help African Penguins Beat the Heat (November 23, 2022, by Ryan Truscott)
  • This South African Wildcat Has a Taste for Endangered Seabirds (May 6, 2024, by Ryan Truscott)
  • So Long Triploids, Hello Creamy Oysters (May 22, 2024, by Devon Fredericksen)
  • Do Marine Animals Need Wildlife Bridges, Too? (September 10, 2024, by Jack McGovan)
• Fourth row, third square
  • Get Ready for the Robotic Fish Revolution (March 25, 2024, by Annie Roth)

I am very happy that all of existing the Hakai Magazine articles will be accessible, as the site will remain online moving forward. The Hakai Magazine staff is now joining bioGraphic from the California Academy of Sciences, which is excellent news. It is great that I will still find coastal reporting – but I am also hoping that we do not lose the short news articles that myself and my students have found on the Hakai Magazine website, which have been so essential for in-class discussions and exercises. And so many students have told me how much they have enjoyed reading the Coastal Jobs column!

We will see where this new journalism journey takes us readers to, but before we move along, we want to say thank you to Hakai Magazine for the hundreds (I bet even thousands!) of students that have read your material and learned so much about our coast and its communities.