Andrew Thaler

Monday Morning Salvage: January 30, 2017

January 30, 2017January 29, 2017 Andrew Thaler

Weekly Salvage

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

Ensuring that our friends and colleagues who are legal residents of the United States of America, and those suffering under oppressive regimes who heard the promise of the Mother of Exiles and chose to find a better life in our country, can still trust us with the privilege to fulfill that promise.
Rejecting the triumph of cruelty.
Also, these incredible thousand-year-old windmills, still in use today, milling grain in Iran.

Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)

Monday Morning Salvage: January 23, 2017

January 23, 2017January 23, 2017 Andrew Thaler

Weekly Salvage

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

Come back to the Mariana Trench with me! I’ve taken the almost ten hours of assorted dive footage from our adventures in Saipan, Tinian, Rota, and Guam and edited it down to just the best four minutes. Share, subscribe, and enjoy!

Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)

How I talk about science in fiction.

January 18, 2017January 18, 2017 Andrew Thaler

Uncategorized

The science of Aquaman. How deep is Rapture? The ecology of Middle Earth. Here at Southern Fried Science, we love taking a hard-science detour into some of our favorite works of fiction. It’s good practice projecting known phenomena into hypothetical universes and figuring out how the mechanics of those worlds shape and are shaped by the principles of ours. And it’s darn fun, to boot.

But diving into “The Science of…” series comes with some pretty huge pitfalls. Not the least of which is the wet blanket nature of criticizing a work of fiction for scientific inaccuracy. Push too far in one direction and you’re left with a dry dissertation on why an obviously fictional world couldn’t work. It’s like being the kid in the room pointing out that professional wrestling isn’t real. No kidding?

There’s a craft to commenting on the science in fiction. After walking this line for a few years, here the simple set of guidelines I use when constructing a commentary.

Monday Morning Salvage: January 16, 2017

January 16, 2017January 15, 2017 Andrew Thaler

Weekly Salvage

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

Ruby Sea Dragons! For the First Time, a Ruby Sea Dragon has been filmed in the wild, and it is magnificent.

Some SFS deep history: I got my start in marine science working in a seahorse lab. Seahorses are among my favorite animals.

Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)

Micronations and poop dreams: Strange tales from the Guano Islands Act of 1856

January 11, 2017 Andrew Thaler

Popular Culture

I’m just going to lay this out there right now: This story ends with Ernest Hemingway’s brother sitting on a 30-foot raft in the middle of the Caribbean.

But first, let’s talk about Bill Warren.

Bill Warren is an entrepreneur, treasure hunter, Frank Sinatra impersonator, former Christian music host, and about 30 other descriptors. He’s probably a huckster, but he’s our kind of huckster. You’ve almost certainly seen something about him: This Treasure Hunter Says He Has Located Bin Laden’s Body. I could spend the next 2,000 words just writing about Bill Warren, but you’re here for the guano, so just read this exhaustive, entertaining, hilarious article bout him by CJ Ciaramella: The Nearly Astonishing Tale Of Bill Warren, Treasure Seeker.

How Millard Fillmore reshaped the oceans in a quest for guano.

January 10, 2017January 11, 2017 Andrew Thaler

Conservation

The numbers are in, and over the last eight years, President Barack Obama has protected more ocean than any other president in history. His expansion of NOAA and implementation of a National Ocean Policy will impact ocean health and fisheries management for generations. By almost any measure, he has had the biggest impact on the ocean of any modern presidency. Which raises the obvious question: is President Obama the most influential ocean president in history? Not by a long shot. That honor has to go to the president who’s policies have fundamentally shaped and reshaped how we view and control ocean territory, who laid the foundation for almost all the ocean protections we currently enjoy, and who set the precedent for the American Empire. That man is President Millard Fillmore, and he did it all for bird poop.

1850.

Agricultural science is beginning to understand that soil is not just soil, but a collection of nutrients that are slowly drawn from the ground by growing crops. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are crucial ingredients. The Industrial Revolution is pushing agriculture away from passive crop re-nourishment processes and towards intensive, fertilizer-driven farming. Fertilizer producers can’t keep up. At the same time, the American whaling industry had reached its zenith and began to fall. Coastal whales were harder to find and the bold men of Nantucket ventured out across the Pacific in search of the last great whaling grounds.

In these voyages, the whalers found numerous tiny, often uncharted islands in the Pacific. These remote islands were refuges, not just for weary sailors, but for generations of seabirds. From these seabirds rose great mountains of guano, guano rich in the nutrients plants crave. Guano was the solution to the fertilizer crises.

Monday Morning Salvage: January 9, 2017

January 9, 2017January 9, 2017 Andrew Thaler

Weekly Salvage

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

Roman Fedorsov, a Russian fisherman who posts all the weirdest bycatch from deep-sea trawls to his twitter account.

Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)

Small changes and new faces at Southern Fried Science

January 6, 2017 Andrew Thaler

Blogging

We’ve got some small changes and new additions to the growing Southern Fried Science family. Due to their long and consistent commitment to maintaining the blog, Drs. Kersey Sturdivant and Chris Parsons have been promoted to the lofty and prestigious rank of Senior Correspondent. Congratulations! We’re also thrilled to announce the addition of a new … Read More “Small changes and new faces at Southern Fried Science” »

When I talk about Climate Change, I don’t talk about science.

January 3, 2017January 6, 2017 Andrew Thaler

Conservation, Science

Climate Change is real. It’s happening now. And the best available data points to us as the cause.

That the foundational science is settled is a point of unending frustration to scientists, science writers, and policy advocates who face continuous partisan push back, from whitewashing government websites to threatening scientists with legal repercussions for reporting the data. During my International Marine Conservation Congress keynote last year, I argued that Climate Change denial is not a science literacy problem, but rather a product of increasing political bifurcation. Political ideology is a much stronger predictor of Climate Change understanding than science literacy.

The term “Climate Change” is now loaded with so much political baggage that it becomes almost impossible to hold a discussion across political lines. In stakeholder interviews, people generally understand and acknowledge the impacts of climate change on local and regional scales, as long as you don’t call it “Climate Change”. This has been my experience working in rural coastal communities, which tend to be strongly conservative and intimately connected to the changing ocean.

Which is why, when I talk about Climate Change, I don’t talk about science.

Monday Morning Salvage: January 2, 2017

January 2, 2017January 1, 2017 Andrew Thaler

Weekly Salvage

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)