Fog Horn (A Call to Action)
- This is you last day to submit public comments in defense of the Environmental Protection Agency! The time to save the EPA is now! If you don’t know quite what to say, I’ve prepared a script for you.
- 27 National Monuments are under review by the Department of the Interior. Our Nation Monuments are our National Treasures. Don’t let them be sold to the highest bidder! Submit formal public comments on the DOI Monument Review and make your voice heard.
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
- This bony-eared assfish, courtesy of Sheldon Comics. Go show the some love on Twitter and Patreon.
- “You are paddleboarding next to approximately 15 great white sharks… exit the water in a calm manner.” When paddleboarding, this is not what you want to hear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5SPMrmRMjE
- But, of course: The Viral Video of 15 Sharks Circling Near Surfers in California Shows a Much Bigger Problem.
Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)
- Big boats, big boats, Andrew loves big boats: First 20,000 TEU ‘Megaship’ Docks in UK and Largest Ship to Visit U.S. East Coast Arrives in Savannah and First Zero-Emission, Fully-Autonomous Container Ship Planned for 2020.
- Meanwhile: All at Sea: Foreign Fishing Fleets Drain West African Waters.
- Randall over at XKCD sings the praises of the Okeanos Explorer.
- The end of the line for ocean plastics by the superstars at oceanbites.
- As the Northwest Passage becomes more and more reliably navigable, cruise ships will have to cope with their impact on Arctic Inuit communities.
- Eat bugs, save the world. Trading beef for insects—or even chicken—would save a third of arable land.
- How To Fix a Jellyfish Sting? Pack tweezers and vinegar in your beach bag—and forget what you’ve heard about the pee cure.
- Check out this great little documentary on the people who build Venice’s iconic gondolas: The Gondola Maker.
- More about our Make for the Planet Hackathon a few weeks ago: Make for the Planet Challenge: Transforming Conservation for the Better.
- Totally biodegradable electronics could help solve e-waste problem. Neat!
- The Molecular Industrial Complex: What shrimp exoskeleton formation can tell us about life’s building strategy.
- The Ocean Cleanup is back in the news (with a new design and still no successful field trials): Critics say plan for drifting ocean trash collectors is unmoored.
Lagan (what we’re reading from the peer-reviewed literature)
- Langston and Spalding (2017) A survey of fishes associated with Hawaiian deep-water Halimeda kanaloana (Bryopsidales: Halimedaceae) and Avrainvillea sp. (Bryopsidales: Udoteaceae) meadows. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.3307.
- Benham (2017) Aligning public participation with local environmental knowledge in complex marine social-ecological systems. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2017.04.003.
- Ahmed and friends (2017) Solutions to blue carbon emissions: Shrimp cultivation, mangrove deforestation and climate change in coastal Bangladesh. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2017.05.007.
- Erler and friends (2017) The impact of suspended oyster farming on nitrogen cycling and nitrous oxide production in a sub-tropical Australian estuary. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecss.2017.05.007.
Driftwood (what we’re reading on dead trees)
- Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken. And read this great Vox interview with the author: A new book ranks the top 100 solutions to climate change. The results are surprising.
Derelicts (favorites from the deep archive)
A refresher on past criticism about the Ocean Cleanup:
- Three facts (and a lot of questions) about The Ocean Cleanup.
- There is 10,000 times more plastic in the deep sea than in surface waters.
- The Ocean Cleanup, Part 1: Alternatives to reduce ocean plastic.
- The Ocean Cleanup, Part 2: Technical review of the feasibility study.
- Where is the best place to put your ocean cleanup device? Not where currently proposed.
- The Ocean Cleanup deployed a prototype and I honestly have A LOT of questions.
- What did the Boyan Slat and the Ocean Cleanup do last summer?
Feel free to share your own Foghorns, 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.