Atoms of the ocean: In what is almost certainly the first TED talk to be given by a fish, the oft-hidden -- and visually stunning -- world of plankton is revealed, and its essential role in the ecology of the sea is celebrated. TED

Gotta love Jim Hansen: Here's a preview of the speech that the NASA scientist will give today when he accepts the Edinburgh Medal, in which he'll liken inaction on climate change to the refusal to end the slave trade -- and also call for a global tax on carbon emissions, just for controversial good measure. The Guardian

Getting another quack at it: Madagascar pochards, the world's rarest ducks, are launching something of a comeback thanks to some unorthodox breeding efforts. (Hotel bathrooms as incubators?) WARNING: Explicitly cute baby duck images. Huffington Post

Oil goggles: Thanks to new technology, the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico -- once thought to be drained of oil -- are starting to look attractive again to drillers. Wall Street Journal

Fighting pollution, gorgeously: Giant vertical gardens -- literal walls of CO2-sucking green -- are Mexico City's latest improvised salvo in a years-long battle against the capital's notoriously horrendous air quality. New York Times

California cover-up?: Has the earthquake-prone state of California turned a blind eye to unregulated fracking -- and could it really be possible that the administration of Governor Jerry Brown is so embarrassed about it that it would try to drive the data, er, underground? Salon

Pacific rim radiation: Radioactive particles emitted from the post-earthquake meltdown of Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected in kelp growing along the southern California coastline, where they could potentially harm crustaceans, sea urchins and fish. Los Angeles Times

Torch song: Gas flaring permits surge in Texas, in yet another marker of the huge increase in Lone Star State natural gas production. Houston Chronicle/Fuel Fix

Please don't pose the bears: How an online photo editor's search for some grizzly bear pictures to accompany a writer's story sucked her into the fascinating Yellowstone National Park photo archive -- where five hours of her life disappeared, blissfully. (Hey, OnEarth executive editor and Yellowstone historian George Black, where's the photo of you done up in mountain-man garb?) Slate

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