Welcome to 2017 and the ninth year of marine science and conservation at Southern Fried Science!
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
- Alex Warneke knows exactly how to push all of my ocean outreach buttons: Low-cost teaching tools? Check! Hands on student engagement? Check! Open-source materials and datasets? Check! 3D Printing? Check! Meet 3D Cabrillo:
- Learn more about this awesome project from the National Park Service: How to Build a Better Biomodel.
Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)
- “As long as I’m breathing, I’ll be diving.” Sylvia Earle looks back at 81 years in the ocean.
- Want to save the oceans with drones and remote sensing? This is the perfect post-doctoral fellowship for you: The Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab, part of the Division of Marine Science and Conservation in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, invites applications for a 2-yr Post-Doctoral position, based at the Duke Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina.
- From the annals of I did not see that coming: Navy dolphins to help locate rare vaquita porpoise.
- Reinforce and Build: The vicious cycle driving development on Florida’s most fragile beaches. More greatness from Hakai and John Platt.
- Three years ago, Science published a sting on predatory open access journals. Neurodojo looks at the fallout: The open access “sting” by Science, three years on.
- Kinder Morgan Inc. will have to address the fate of one more group before completing its Trans Mountain pipeline expansion: killer whales.
- Casper octopod under threat from deep sea mining. Yet another reason to stick with the precautionary principal when it comes to experimental seabed mining.
Lagan (what we’re reading from the peer-reviewed literature)
- Tekman and friends (2016) Marine litter on deep Arctic seafloor continues to increase and spreads to the North at the HAUSGARTEN observatory. Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers. doi:10.1016/j.dsr.2016.12.011.
- Canessa and friends (2016) Fishery maps contain approximate but useful information for inferring the distribution of marine habitats of conservation interest, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science. doi:10.1016/j.ecss.2016.12.016.
- Brown and friend (2016) Clones or clans: the genetic structure of a deep sea sponge, Aphrocallistes vastus, in unique sponge reefs of British Columbia, Canada. Molecular Ecology. doi:10.1111/mec.13982.
Driftwood (what we’re reading on dead trees)
- It looks like today everything’s coming up Warneke. The infamous Alex Warneke has also published her first book, a children’s sticker book about all the inter-tidal critters she loves. You can only get it at the Cabrillo National Park, but maybe if you’re really nice to her on twitter, she’ll send you a copy (Hi Alex!).
Since we’re on a children’s book kick, here’s two more additions to our list of the best ocean-themed baby books, this time a little bit more advanced:
- The Wonderful Dogfish Racket by Tom Dawe and Anne MacLeod. It’s a children’s book about the complex socio-ecologic systems that dominate Newfoundland dogfish fisheries.
- The Blobfish Book by Jessica Olien. It starts with the zones of the ocean, and gets better and better from there.
Derelicts (favorites from the deep archive)
What you read on Southern Fried Science in 2016:
- Did monster hunters find a 120 meter long giant squid on google maps?
- Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine is a fake documentary
- How to build a canoe from scratch on a graduate student stipend
- The Trouble with Teacup Pigs
- 10 fish weirder than the fish in the 10 weirdest fish in the world list
- 10 reasons why marine mammals aren’t as cute as you think they are
- Megalodon: the New Evidence is a fake documentary
- Mermaids: The New Evidence is a Fake Documentary
- Surviving Grad School: What to expect from your stipend
- Ocean Anti-Kickstarter of the Month: Triton Gills is almost certainly a scam
If you were wondering what the most read Southern Fried Science article of all time is, it’s Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine is a fake documentary.
Feel free to share your own Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Driftwood, and Derelicts in the comments below. And, of as always, if you enjoy Southern Fried Science, consider contributing to my Patreon campaign to help us keep the servers humming.