Andrew Thaler

Congressional Republicans hold Ocean Science Hostage Over Failed Anti-health Care Bill

September 25, 2015September 25, 2015 Andrew Thaler 1 Comment

Conservation

All summer and into the fall, Congressional Republicans have been attempting to pass a bill to defund Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides critical health care needs to women across the country. After the latest bill failed, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised to put forth a “clean bill” that would avoid an October government shutdown. With news breaking today that Speaker John Boehner will quit his post at the end of October and fresh predictions the the shutdown is now unlikely, you might think that this recent quixotic quest has foundered, at least for the moment.

You would be wrong.

S.764 is originally An Act to reauthorize and amend the National Sea Grant College Program Act, and for other purposes. This was the bill that authorized funding for the National SeaGrant program, one of the flagship marine science, conservation, and fisheries agencies in the United States. Funding for Sea Grant is a truly bipartisan issue. Both sides see the value in continuing this support for ocean issues. How bipartisan? In an era of increasingly schismatic politics, the SeaGrant reauthorization bill passed the senate with unanimous support.

If you wanted to read S.764 today, however, you would be met with this:

Resolved, That the bill from the Senate (S. 764) entitled “An Act to reauthorize and amend the National Sea Grant College Program Act, and for other purposes.”, do pass with the following Amendment: This Act may be cited as the “Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015”

source

Fish tales: Combating fake science in popular media

September 23, 2015September 22, 2015 Andrew Thaler

Uncategorized

Yesterday, after months of waiting, David and my magnum opus on our efforts to stem the tide of fake documentaries was, at last, made available online: Fish tales: Combating fake science in popular media. What role should scientist play in correcting bad science, fake science, and pseudoscience presented in popular media? Here, we present a case … Read More “Fish tales: Combating fake science in popular media” »

A Natural History of the Starwhale

September 21, 2015September 20, 2015 Andrew Thaler 1 Comment

Popular Culture, Science

space_whale_by_ovitan-d8cc9en — Space Whale, by OvitaN – http://ovitan.deviantart.com/art/Space-Whale-504456863

Whales, those magnificent leviathans of the deep, have an uncanny knack for ending up in space. Science fiction is flooded with stories of starwhales–sometimes entirely new creatures that happen to resemble terran cetaceans in either behavior or appearance, sometimes evolved leviathans from our own world, and occasionally hapless, confused, ordinary whales. This is no fluke. Space is big, whales are big, so why shouldn’t there be whales in space?

Science fiction loves its tropes, and particularly loves comparing space to the golden age of maritime exploration, to the point where starships sometimes have sails. And then, of course, there’s The Narrative. You know, the one where a captain is consumed by obsession and revenge to hunt some semi-mythical mcguffin. If you’re going to do Moby-Dick-in-Space, you better have a starwhale. SciFi loves the Moby Schtick.

So what is a starwhale, and why is it different from other giant space creatures like the exogorth of Empire Strikes Back? Like terran whales, star whales are intelligent creatures that often exhibit some form of emotion. Unlike other space monsters, they often act with a purpose that goes beyond “eat space people, wreck ship”. Nowhere is this more clearly highlighted than in the Doctor Who episode The Beast Below, in which the Doctor encounters the last living starwhale, now supporting the remnants of the British Empire on its back. In the story, the whale endures tremendous suffering in order to protect ‘the children’, and chooses to stay even after being freed from its captors.

Giant whales providing the backbone for mysterious islands traces its roots back to the ancient Greeks, at least in the Western canon. Aspidochelon was a sea monster said to resemble either a turtle or a whale, with a craggy back the carried sandy beaches and sometimes even trees and jungles. Sailors who wandered ashore would find their ships crushed as they were pulled down into the deep. Later incarnations of the whale-as-island made explicit its connection to Satan, the ultimate deceiver. And, of course, Herman Melville makes explicit the modern civilization rests on the back, or, more accurately, the oil, of the whale.

Interestingly, starwhales are, at worst chaotic neutral, but more often lawful good. Their connection to the devil abandoned back on Earth.

The Star Trek universe is resplendent with starwhales, from numerous Enterprises have encountered numerous starwhales, from benign travelers passing through to confused infants looking to the ship for survival, to aggressive bulls threatened by incursion into their territory. Bull sperm whales were documented by early Earth whalers as solitary, especially aggressive male whales, some of which had tasted the bite of many harpoons and continued to charge. It was a bull sperm whale the sunk the Essex, the inspiration for Moby Dick.

Ocean Kickstarter of the Month: The OpenROV Trident

September 14, 2015October 6, 2015 Andrew Thaler

Education, Science

The future of ocean exploration is here.

OpenROV Trident – An Underwater Drone for Everyone by OpenROV

I’ve been watching, exploring, and working with the folks at OpenROV since their last Kickstarter, way back in 2012. Today they announce the launch of Trident, the next generation underwater vehicle, and one of the most capable microROVs that I’ve ever seen. I had the rare pleasure to join them in Lake Tahoe this May to test fly one of the earliest prototypes, and it surpassed all of my expectations.

You don’t need to hear me sing the praises of one of the most important emergent technologies in marine science and conservation. The rise of affordable, capable, portable underwater robots will fundamentally change the way we think about exploring the ocean and monitoring ocean health.

Onward to the Ocean Kickstarter criteria!

1. Is it sound, reasonable, and informed by science? You bet. OpenROV have been building underwater vehicles for upwards of four years. I use their robots in my research and education programs. The first peer-reviewed publication using OpenROV as a research platform will be coming out at the end of the month.

Ocean Kickstarter of the Month: Recycled Fishing Net Sunglasses

August 18, 2015 Andrew Thaler 2 Comments

Conservation

Yesterday on twitter, I discussed what I look for when assessing ocean-themed crowdfunding projects. Before I fund a crowdfunding campaign, I do quite a bit of due diligence, looking at the past success of the creators, the soundness of the project, and whether or not the goals, rewards, and timelines are reasonable. My criteria are:

1. Is it sound, reasonable, and informed by science?

2. Is there a clear goal, timeline, and budget; and are they partnering with the people who have experience hitting those marks?

and;

3. Do some of the parties involved have a successful record with other crowdfunding projects and experience delivering on rewards.

It seems a shame to go through all that work and not pass it on to the rest of Team Ocean. Rather than keep it to myself (or, more likely, just tweet it out), once a month I’ll highlight my favorite ocean crowdfunding campaign. These campaigns are vetted in accordance with the above criteria, are likely to succeed, and are likely to result in a net positive for the ocean. Unsurprisingly, this month it’s the campaign that inspired this post:

The Ocean Collection – Recycled Fishing Net Sunglasses by Bureo

Can we turn discarded fishing nets into something meaningful? This project is both simple and elegant. the ocean is filled with discarded fishing nets, most of which have decades left on their material usefulness. Nets are durable and malleable, so why not collect and reform these nets into something of value.

Is it sound, reasonable, and informed by science? Yes. Bureo has already demonstrated that recycled nets can be formed into usable products, discarded nets are a real problem and this is a reasonable solution which can have a measurable, if potentially only small and localized, impact. Plus, they have a vision for end-to-end recycling. Once your sunglasses reach the end of their useful life, you can send them back to the company to have them re-recycled.

A 3D-printable, drone and ROV-mountable, water sampler

August 10, 2015August 11, 2015 Andrew Thaler 2 Comments

Education, Open Science, Science

The Niskin bottle, a seemingly simple tube designed to take water samples at discrete depths, is one of the most important tools of oceanography. Coupled with a CTD, an array of Niskin bottles fit into the rosette, a Voltron-esque amalgamation of everything an oceanographer needs to profile the ocean. Niskin bottles are neither cheap nor particularly easy to use. A commercial rosette requires a decent-sized winch to launch and recover, which means you need a vessel and a crew to deploy. For Rogue Ecologist and citizen scientists, getting a high-quality, discrete water sample is a perpetual challenge. With tools like the OpenROV and the soon-to-be-completed EcoDrone, I wanted a Niskin bottle that was light weight and capable of being mounted on both underwater robots and quadcopters with ease.

Until now.

After a few months of brainstorming and planning, I sat down this Friday and began building a 3D printable Niskin bottle that could be hand deployed or mounted on an OpenROV or drone. While this version is designed around a 1.25 inch acrylic tube, the trigger mechanism can be expanded to fit any size pipe. The trigger is driven by a waterproof servo developed by the good folks over at OpenROV. Everything else can either be purchased off-the-shelf or printed on you home 3D printer. Later this month, I’ll be taking my prototypes out on the RV Blue Heron for field testing in Lake Superior.

Bill of Materials

Geese, snakeheads, and the ones that got away: Southern Fried Science Book Club, week 5

July 27, 2015 Andrew Thaler 1 Comment

Blogging

Fortunately, it turns out last week’s chapter was a fluke, and we come down the home stretch of Eating Aliens with some of the strongest sections since the beginning. Canadian Geese was particularly fascinating, as it’s clear this is the species Landers has the most experience talking about. Te chapter is rich with the details, backstory, and information that I was hoping to find throughout the book, with less cynicism about the role of local and national government than we’ve seen previous. If you haven’t caught up yet, I recommend just skipping Nutria and going straight to Canadian Geese.

Then we’re back in the water with numerous marine and freshwater invasives, many from the aquarium trade. Plecos and armored catfish, released by amateur aquarists, are booming in Florida’s warm, protected waters, while tilapia is a holdover from the aquaculture industry. Frankly, there wasn’t much new in these chapters, other than the species–at this point introduced fish are old news, and while the details of each animal are slightly different, the causes and consequences are often the same. Personally, I don’t think I’d eat a pleco, but it doesn’t sound particularly unpalatable. Even though the story is pretty much the same–Landers struggles to catch anything, hijinks ensues, they finally eat it–this was a fun part of the book.

Build a dirt cheap, tough-as-nails field computer in a Pelican case

July 21, 2015June 25, 2016 Andrew Thaler

Science

For and updated version of the BeagleBox, please go here: The BeagleBox 2: a dirt-cheap, tough-as-nails, 3D-printed, versatile field laptop.

Fieldwork is tough. You’re in the elements, facing wind, rain, and salt spray, sometime on an open boat far out in the Atlantic. You and your gear takes a beating. But you’re out there because there’s science that need to get done.

But your equipment is controlled via computer, and your data entry mandates a computer, which means your precious laptop needs to come with you. For graduate students and early career scientists, this can be a dilemma. I’ve see the calculations happen as my colleagues prepare for the field–do I take my one and only computer out into the field and risk damaging it, or do I leave it brute-force my way through sampling without it. That is, if they’re lucky enough to have alternative methods they can employ. For some gear, there’s no choice but to take the computer.

This equation is, counter-intuitively, getting worse. Our sensors, sampling devices, and scanners are getting cheaper and lighter. Rather than buying a $20,000 piece of equipment, you can get a $20 chip, but there’s a trade off, and the trade off is that chip based systems rely on external processing power, they need a general computer, and that means your laptop is coming with you.

I don’t like going out on the water with my laptop. Losing it would be frustrating and time consuming. It’s tough, but it’s not tough-as-nails. And it’s definitely not cheap.

So I tapped into the wealth of Maker experience I’ve accumulated over the last few years and build a new one, using a single board computer, some extra peripherals, and a 3D printer. And I shoved the whole thing into a Pelican case. Say hello to the BeagleBox, a dirt cheap, tough-as-nails field computer for about $200.

Hacking the Tractor: what the future of farming means for open science

July 20, 2015July 21, 2015 Andrew Thaler

Science

I took a gamble when I bought the tractor mower. It was old, but well-cared for and ran well, but it was wearing out. Still, I couldn’t get a quarter as much machine for twice the price. Two months later, the mower deck cracked, rusted out from ten years of hard use. A replacement deck would run into the thousands of dollars, there were no options for just the shell, a cheaper, but still pricey option, and there were no off-brand decks to be found. Those three facts alone should tell you that we’re dealing with a John Deere, here.

John Deere made headlines earlier this year when Wired ran an impressive (and rare) expose on farm tech: New High Tech Farm Equipment is a Nightmare for Farmer. Deere followed up with a rebuttal letter, declaring that farmers did, in fact, own their equipment, while simultaneously outlining all the ways in which they didn’t: John Deere: of course you “own” your tractor, but only if you agree to let us rip you off.

Here’s the short version: Tractors are complicated and increasingly controlled by onboard computers. These computers use proprietary software, and that software is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The software itself is encrypted to prevent copying or modding. Those encryption are also protected by the DMCA. Breaking that encryption is illegal, regardless of the state of the software. If you have to decrypt the software to remove it, you’re breaking the law.

Chasing the Elusive Nutria: Southern Fried Science Book Club, week 4

July 14, 2015 Andrew Thaler

Blogging

I’m going to have to start with an apology. I intended to get to this chapter before #JacquesWeek kicked off and sucked up all of my time, but I just couldn’t. This chapter was… not fun and not particularly informative. In the longest chapter of the book, Jackson’s fails to hunt Nutria for 90% of … Read More “Chasing the Elusive Nutria: Southern Fried Science Book Club, week 4” »