Andrew Thaler

The ongoing wonder of hagfish, deep-sea mining’s race to the bottom, saving whales with lineless lobster traps, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: January 21, 2019

January 21, 2019January 22, 2019 Andrew Thaler

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

It’s month two of the longest shutdown in US history and there’s only one party who won’t allow a vote to reopen the government proceed. Have you called you senator today?

The Shutdown Is Making the U.S. Less Prepared for Hurricane Season

And while I have your attention, FYI:

Thousands of Scientists Endorse Study Proclaiming Trump’s Border Wall a Disaster for Wildlife

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)3-D Printing the Ulitmate Deep-Sea Christmas Tree

Oceans Warming Faster Than Predicted, Scientists Say and Ocean Warming Is Accelerating Faster Than Thought, New Research Finds.
Ministry hints Putin’s Arctic ambitions are not realistic. There is unease in several Russian government ministries as officials start to understand that the President’s objectives for the Northern Sea Route can not be reached. The only way to please the president might be to expand the sea route itself.
Hagfish are so good. We don’t deserve hagfish.
- How hagfish launch slime missiles that swell 10,000 times in size.
- How hagfish can make enough slime to clog a shark’s jaws in seconds

A lost continent, rich in cobalt crusts, could create a challenging precedent for mineral extraction in the high seas.

January 18, 2019January 18, 2019 Andrew Thaler

Science

[This article originally appeared yesterday in the Deep-sea Mining Observer. ~Ed.]

The Rio Grande Rise is an almost completely unstudied, geologically intriguing, ecologically mysterious, potential lost continent in the deep south Atlantic. And it also hosts dense cobalt-rich crusts.

The Rio Grande Rise is a region of deep-ocean seamounts roughly the area of Iceland in the southwestern Atlantic. It lies west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge off the coast of South America and near Brazil’s island territories. As the largest oceanic feature on the South American plate, it straddles two microplates. And yet, like much of the southern Atlantic deep sea, it is relatively under sampled.

Almost nothing is known about the ecology or biodiversity of the Rio Grande Rise.

Booms that go boom, a deep-sea mining spiral, dying to go green, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: January 7, 2019

January 7, 2019January 7, 2019 Andrew Thaler

Weekly Salvage

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

The US Government enters it’s third week of shutdown over Trump’s Border Wall. Democrats in the House passing funding bills identical to the one unanimously passed by the Senate. Despite that, McConnell won’t let those funding bills come to a vote in his Senate. The Republicans own this travesty.
‘Appalling’ toilets and rule-breaking as US shutdown hits national parks.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

How a Seaweed-Eating Microbe Could Help Fight Plastic Pollution
Apple finally admits what we basically all knew: being able to repair electronics is bad for the iPhone’s bottom line and that’s really bad news for the environments. Tim Cook to Investors: People Bought Fewer New iPhones Because They Repaired Their Old Ones.
Snow at sea is lovely.

I built an open-source robot that steps your steps when the steps you stepped weren’t counted by your step counter: Frequently Asked Questions

January 6, 2019January 7, 2019 Andrew Thaler

Uncategorized

The future of fitness tracking is here! reStepper is an open-source, arduino-powered machine to walk your fitness tracker after those unfortunate workouts when your steps didn’t get logged. Did you have the audacity to take you child for a walk in a stroller? Get those steps back! Were you foolish enough to go swimming when you could have walked in aimless circles around the pool? Don’t let the credit drift away! Reckless enough to do something, anything, that might require you to take off your jewelry before working up a sweat? Let the reStepper sweat it all back! Maybe you just don’t want third parties to know where you run, or where your secret morel patch is, or how fast they need to make the people harvesting machines in order to catch Charlton Heston.

Ummm.

It’s funny.

So what is it?

The reStepper is an open-source machine that “walks” a fitness tracker for you.

All the slime that sticks, we print: 2018 in Hagfish Research

December 27, 2018December 27, 2018 Andrew Thaler

Science

Hagfish. You love them. I love them. Of all the fish in all the seas, none are more magnificent than the hagfish. Across the world, children celebrate the hagfish by making slime from Elmer’s glue, their own mucous, or just, like, something. Seriously, how is is that toddler hands are always coated in some strange, unidentifiable slime?

And never, ever forget:

Your car has just been crushed by hagfish: Frequently Asked Questions.

2018 was a big year in hagfish science. Below are just a few of my favorite studies.

Biogeography

A hagfish in the high Antarctic? Hagfish have previously never been observed in the shallow waters around Antarctic, but a photograph from 1988 was determined this year to be a hagfish feeding on a large pile of clam sperm in shallow water. Neat!

Possible hagfish at 30 m in Salmon Bay in 1988. The white patch is *Laternula elliptica* sperm.

Incidentally, the reason the photo languished for so long is that it was originally though to be a Nemertean. Because Antarctic Nemertean worms are huge and horrifying.

Dayton and Hammerstrom (2018) A hagfish at Salmon Bay, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica? DOI: 10.1017/S0954102018000202.

Get into the spirit of Adventure: 10 Expeditions to follow in 2019

December 26, 2018December 26, 2018 Andrew Thaler

Exploration, Open Science

The Aquarius Project: The First Student-Driven Underwater Meteorite Hunt

Pirates! Robots! Meteors! A team of plucky teenage explorers! If this doesn’t end up as a feature film, I’ll eat my red watch cap.

On Monday, February 6, 2017 a meteorite dropped out of space and dropped right into Lake Michigan. Since then, a team of young explorers sponsored by the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium have been combing the lake for the lost meteorite. Catch up with this epic adventure through their podcast and on OpenExplorer. The search continues into 2019.

Iceland’s Shallow Hydrothermal Vents

Not all hydrothermal vents emerge in the deep sea. Of the coast of Iceland, shallow water vent spew forth their hydrothermal plumes in the shallows, where small underwater robots can easy access. You’d think we’d know more about them than their deep ocean counterparts but we actually know less.

Iceland’s Shallow Hydrothermal Vents hopes to fill in some of our understanding of these weird and wonderful ecosystems.

Search for Slave Shipwrecks

On a hot summer day in the murky waters of the man-made Millbrook Quarry in Northern Virginia, a group of about 25 people outfitted in scuba gear take turns going down to a depth of 30 feet, testing their compass reading skills, flooding their masks and practicing emergency ascents without air. The sight is not so unusual since Millbrook is the main training and certification site for scuba divers in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area and often hosts such groups. What might give folks pause, however, is that upon closer look they may notice that all 25 of the divers are African American. And if they chat with this unexpected bunch, they might also find that a majority are certified and qualified to search for, document and help excavate slave trade shipwrecks.
Search for Slave Shipwrecks

Divers with Purpose and the Slave Wrecks Project will be traveling across Africa and the Caribbean documenting the stories of underwater archaeologists working to preserve the history of the Atlantic slave trade buried at sea.

Doodles from the deep sea, a mining company founders, finding lost warships, rogue scientists, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: December 24, 2018

December 24, 2018December 24, 2018 Andrew Thaler

Weekly Salvage

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

‘We Are Not Prepared to Die’: Island Nations Push Ambitious Plan at UN Climate Talks.
This is beautiful: What the ocean floor can tell us about climate change.

The Science of Aquaman: The Complete Anthology

December 21, 2018December 21, 2018 Andrew Thaler

Popular Culture

We have written a lot about Aquaman over the last 10 years. With our favorite ocean master is finally getting his big screen debut, we’ve collected everything Aquaman and Southern Fried Science in one place. Enjoy!

It’s the Aquaman Trailer!

First, the brutal takedown that started it all and its follow-ups:

Snacking at vents, snorting eels, eating too much plastic, charming snails, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: December 10, 2018

December 10, 2018December 9, 2018 Andrew Thaler

Weekly Salvage

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

Trump moves toward offshore oil testing in Atlantic and while almost every elected representative up and down the Atlantic seaboard is opposed to allowing offshore oil exploration in our waters, Andy Harris, who represents the Maryland eastern shore from his home in Cockeysville, far from any fisheries (not a lot of crabs on Loch Raven, FYI), still thinks it would be a grand idea to trash Maryland’s coastal economy.
Residents of MD 1, call your representative and remind him that he actually represents someone.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

Start with some optimism: 5 Awe-Inspiring Ocean Discoveries of 2018.

5000 dives under the sea, plastic nomming fungi, scanning Belize’s Blue Hole, the thawing Northwest Passage, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: December 3, 2018.

December 3, 2018 Andrew Thaler

Weekly Salvage

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

With ice melting in Canada’s Northwest Passage, the area will soon be a new route for international shipping. Follow Life Under the Ice on OpenExplorer!

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

Legendary submarine pilot Erika Bergman is exploring Belize’s Blue Hole using state-of-the-art SONAR scanning tools and ROVs. A couple floppy-haired dudes are going too.
DSV Alvin made its 5000th dive. Way to go, little submarine!

A boon to ocean conservation? Certain fungi can degrade marine plastics.
I missed this over the summer, but Nash was an incredible guide and touring ancient Chamorro caves with him was the highlight of my time in Guam. He will be missed by many: Traditional seafarer Ignacio ‘Nash’ Camacho dies.

Ignacio R. "Nash" Camacho, a Traditions About Seafaring Islands member, and codesigner of the Chamoru Sakman outrigger replica canoe "Tasi," talks about his creation during a ceremony at the Guam Museum on June 29, 2017. — Ignacio R. “Nash” Camacho, a Traditions About Seafaring Islands member, and codesigner of the Chamoru Sakman outrigger replica canoe “Tasi,” talks about his creation during a ceremony at the Guam Museum on June 29, 2017.