CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Eventually, Dad slowed the boat and Ana took over at the wheel. Elle sat huddled against the stern with Erik next to her, explaining how a chase scene could pick up the pace of her novels.

“A little pizzazz would take your franchise into a whole new stratosphere. Big money,” Erik said. “It’s what people want.” He used his hands to create an imaginary marquee. “Big. Bold. Edgy. The world at stake.”

Was that really what people wanted? Jane Austen didn’t have any explosions in her books, and they’d been popular for hundreds of years. I didn’t argue, though. My attention was distracted by my mother, who stood with her arms folded, glaring out at the dark green sea as if it were her mortal enemy.

“Jane?” Dad said. “Are you paying attention?”

Dad knelt beside a pile of equipment as Devon took photos of each item.

“Okay. Here’s how we take samples . . . We’re going to attach this jar onto our plankton net, like so.” Dad screwed a long jar onto the end of a large triangular net. The net was designed with a jar attachment at the bottom. “See these filters along the top of the jar? They’ll allow water to flow out, but they’ll keep the plankton in.”

Dad handed Devon a clipboard and pen. “You’ll need to keep track of our GPS coordinates, time, date, temperature, weather conditions . . . Most importantly, you’ll need to write down how deep we’re going to drop our nets.”

My father picked up the net and line. “Look here. The nets are weighted to allow them to sink. We’ll measure out a certain length of line depending on how far down we want the net to go. We’ll also keep track of how fast the boat is moving and how far we drag the netting. That way, when we get back to the lab and the machines determine how many organisms are in each sample, we’ll know how much water we filtered. Understand?”

Devon’s face stretched into a huge grin. “Yeah. It’s math.”

My father laughed. “That’s right. Math, not magic. Science is much more concrete than most people think. We take a measurement. Chart it. Repeat. Then we watch to see if there’s a trend.”

“But won’t your results be different every day?” I asked.

Dad nodded. “Of course. Nature is always changing. That’s why we’re not as interested in day-to-day numbers as we are in the rate of change—that means how fast or slow changes are happening and what direction they’re taking. We’re less concerned about a week or a month’s worth of data. Instead, we look at five years or ten years . . . sometimes even more. The time series for the sampling we’re doing today is ten years.”

Devon and I both gasped. “You’ve been working on this for ten years?” That meant he’d started when I was two years old. The same year Mom had left.

“That’s right,” Dad said. “I’m just one of several scientists responsible for these measurements, but they’re important because so many species depend on plankton.”

“Like whales?” Devon asked.

“Yes. Whales are one,” Dad said. “There’s a species called the right whale that’s on the verge of extinction. There are only about four hundred of them left. They come to Maine to feast on the plankton where it ought to be most abundant, but as the ocean warms up, the plankton are no longer thriving, so their food source isn’t here.

“But humans are another species that depends on plankton,” Dad said. “Not only do we eat the fish that eat the plankton, but we also need them to take carbon dioxide out of the air. Did you know that plankton remove more carbon dioxide from our atmosphere than trees do?”

I frowned. “Really?”

“Yup,” Dad said. He held out his hand with his palm cupped as if he were holding an imaginary rock. “Think about a lump of coal. Now imagine that lump of coal getting thrown into a fire. After a while, it’s gone, right? Where did it go?”

“It changed form,” Devon said. “Into a gas.”

“Exactly.” Dad nodded. “Just because we can no longer see something doesn’t mean it isn’t still there. Now, imagine the Earth as a battery and the sun is our power source. Photosynthesis is the way plants turn the sun’s light into the battery’s energy.

“Phytoplankton—that’s the kind of plankton that’s made up of plants—absorb the sun’s energy through photosynthesis, and when these tiny plants die, they sink down to the bottom of the ocean. After millions of years, buried under a lot of pressure, they become what we call fossil fuels . . . like coal and oil. Everywhere we find fossil fuels, it’s because that piece of land was once covered by an ocean.”

“Fossil fuels were once alive?” Devon said.

“Yup. It took millions of years to create them, but guess when their energy gets released.”

“When we use them?”

“Exactly. So . . .” Dad stuck out both hands palms up as if he were measuring two objects. “Millions of years to store the energy . . . but less than a hundred years to release it. As all that carbon dioxide goes back into the air so rapidly, that’s bad news for humans.”

“Is there any way to take the carbon out again?” I asked.

My father grinned. “There is,” he said. “Lots of scientists are working on this problem, but can you guess one of the things that could help?”

Devon answered immediately. “More plankton.”

“You got it.”

My whole life I’d never understood what my father did all day—why he brought sample jars home and stored them in our refrigerator and why he cared so much about stuff we couldn’t even see. How was it possible that something so important had been right in front of me this entire time and I’d never appreciated it?

“By studying plankton,” Dad continued, “we can learn how to keep our oceans and our planet healthy for a long time to come.” He paused. “So, on that note, let’s get our nets into the water. Ana, what’s our location and speed?”

She hollered back the answer and Devon wrote it on our clipboard.

“Jane?” Dad said, handing me the net. “Do you want to do the honors?”

Dad had rigged up a pulley system for raising and lowering the net. It jutted out from the side of the boat. I fastened on the net and lowered it into the water, watching as it disappeared beneath the waves. Ana kept the boat moving at a steady speed and we timed how long the net was in the water. When Dad gave the signal, we hauled it back in again. The whole time I could hear the click of Devon’s camera shutter.

“I’ve got a hose hooked up to the bilge,” Dad said, “so we can get any plankton off the inside of the nets and into the jar. Devon, put that camera down and get your hands dirty.”

Devon handed me the camera and clipboard. He hosed off the net until it looked clean and then we unhooked the jar and screwed on the cap.

“Store the sample in the cooler,” Dad said. “We don’t want to expose it to sunlight or heat. Then let’s throw our net in again.”

We worked steadily, taking sample after sample at different depths and locations, labeling each jar, and I found that my attention was so focused on what we were doing that I didn’t even notice the whip of the wind, the cresting of the boat, or the gray clouds overhead. That is, I didn’t notice until Elle lurched out of her seat and threw up off the port side.

“Enough already,” Mom snapped. “You have plenty of seawater. Your guests are miserable. Let’s go home, for god’s sake.”

Looking around, I noticed that Erik had stopped talking and sat with his head between his knees. Dad glanced at me and Devon, but finally he nodded. “I guess that’s enough for today. Jane, pull in the net and I’ll tell Ana we’re heading back.”

I worked the pulley just like Dad had shown me. When the net was out of the water, dangling in the air, I leaned forward to haul it on board.

At that exact moment two things happened. One was that we got smacked by a large wave that lifted the boat up and then slapped us down again. The other was that The Clam lurched sharp to the starboard side. Under normal circumstances, a sharp turn like that wouldn’t have hurt a thing.

But these weren’t normal circumstances. In one second flat I’d gone head over heels, landing with a splash in the bitter cold of the Atlantic Ocean.