"Turning sewage into drinking water gains appeal as drought lingers."

California gets ready for "indirect potable reuse."

Instead of flushing hundreds of billions of gallons of treated sewage into the Pacific Ocean each year, as they do now, coastal cites can capture that effluent, clean it and convert it to drinking water.

"That water is discharged into the ocean and lost forever," said Tim Quinn, executive director of the Assn. of California Water Agencies. "Yet it's probably the single largest source of water supply for California over the next quarter-century."...

"You know, toilet to tap might be the only answer at this point," said Van Nuys activist Donald Schultz. "I don't support it, but we're running out of options. In fact, we may have already run out of options."

"Long-forgotten shipwrecks of Lake Michigan revealed as unusually clear waters shed light on what lies beneath surface."

"The unusual transparency has been caused by surface ice melting, unveiling the boat graveyard at the bottom of the Great Lake, before organisms like plankton conceal them once more."

"Seventy percent of the world is coated with goo."

"At the very top of oceans and inland waters lies a distinct micrometer-thick microbial habitat. It influences climate change, fosters unusual and deadly bacteria, and is made of jelly. It is the surface microlayer."

"For hundreds of years, women in the South Korean island province of Jeju have made their living harvesting seafood by hand from the ocean floor."

"Known as haenyeo, or sea women, they use no breathing equipment, although a typical dive might last around two minutes and take them as deep as ten metres underwater. Wearing old-fashioned headlight-shaped scuba masks, most dive with lead weights strapped around their waists to help them sink faster...."

Great photos by Hyung S. Kim.