Author: Andrew Thaler

Marine science and conservation. Deep-sea ecology. Population genetics. Underwater robots. Open-source instrumentation. The deep sea is Earth's last great wilderness.

Help Support Ocean Conservation this Holiday Season and Promote your Ocean Conservation Organization!

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 2 Comments on Help Support Ocean Conservation this Holiday Season and Promote your Ocean Conservation Organization!
Conservation

With Thanksgiving in the rearview mirror, we have entered the season for charitable giving. In America alone, there are thousands of ocean conservation organization that rely on donations and grants for their continued operation. Rather than list out our favorites, which tend to get quite a bit of promotion through Southern Fried Science’s various platforms, this year, I am inviting representatives from any ocean conservation organization to promote themselves in the comment thread. So, if your NGO is doing an end of the year fund raiser, if you have an “adopt-a-critter” programs going for the holidays, or if you just want to get the word out about your organization, feel free to leave a comment and let us know a bit about you organization and its goals.

Southern Fried Science has a large, dedicated, and ocean literate audience. Let us know what you’re up to. I promise it will be worth your time.

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The last climate change refugees fight for survival in this grim view of our future ocean – Fleet: The Complete Collection

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Popular Culture

Fleet: The Complete Collection  “The sea is big. The sea is cruel. She takes more than she gives. That’s how it’s always been.” The world has changed. Coastal cities lie abandoned as the encroaching sea rises, drowning and reshaping the land. Violent plagues, impervious to antibiotics, sweep across the planet, erasing entire communities in a … Read More “The last climate change refugees fight for survival in this grim view of our future ocean – Fleet: The Complete Collection” »

A deep-sea ecologist over-analyzes Aquaman #25

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 2 Comments on A deep-sea ecologist over-analyzes Aquaman #25
Popular Culture

Today marks the end of Geoff Johns’ 25-issue run as lead writer  for Aquaman. It is not hyperbole to say that he revitalized the king of Atlantis and helped cast off the stigma of the Superfriends. Aquaman was no longer a one-trick hero floundering about for relevance, trying to find his plaice in the DC Universe. Johns’ Aquaman had depth. The characters were compelling, the stories engaging. And, after more than 2 years, it was clear that this new Aquaman wasn’t just a fluke.

All puns are most definitely intended.

In honor of Johns’ 25 issue run, it’s time to plumb the depths of his ultimate issue and do what I do best: over-analyze a comic book and dredge up as much tenuous symbolism as possible. This is Southern Fried Science and I’m talking about Aquaman, what else would you expect?

The anglerfish symbolize Aquaman’s relationship with Mera

Aquaman and Anglerfish, Aquaman #25, DC Comics
Aquaman and Anglerfish, Aquaman #25, DC Comics

Here we find Aquaman diving deep into the Trench, searching for an army of lost Atlanteans to command. During the course of his dive, we discover that, though Aquaman is fighting to reclaim Atlantis, his one overarching goal is to find his wife, Mera. It is not a coincidence that we see him surrounded by deep-sea anglerfish — Melanocetus johnsonii to be precise. In many ways, the life-history of the anglerfish mimics Aquaman’s relationship to Mera.

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Announcing Fleet: The Complete Collection

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Popular Culture

completesmallThe Fleet serial is coming to a close. The final installment, Horizon, will be available December 2 via Amazon’s Kindle store. In addition to Fleet: Horizon, this December I’ll be publishing Fleet: The Complete Collection. The Complete Collection will include all four installments plus all of the bonus stories that appeared on Southern Fried Science. The Complete Collection will also be available on e-reader platforms other than Amazon Kindle and as a real, actual, book made of dead trees and bookbinder’s glue. If you’ve been waiting for the complete series before checking out Fleet, The Complete Collection is the edition for you.

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On being an ally and being called out on your privilege

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 13 Comments on On being an ally and being called out on your privilege
Uncategorized

Privilege — within any given community, whether formal or ad hoc, social or professional, members will express varying levels of privilege. Some people will be playing the game on easy mode, others will be struggling with subtle and overtly oppressive societal and institutional structures. If you are a person of privilege who recognizes the reality of this imbalance and strives to make your community a more accessible and welcoming place to those who aren’t as privileged, you might identify yourself as an ally.

You are wrong.

Being an ally is not something you are, it’s something you do. “Ally” is not an identity, it is a set of behaviors that help acknowledge and promote underprivileged members of your community. But you have privileges that they do not and not all of your words and actions will fall under the banner of “being an ally”. Even if you consider yourself well-versed in your understanding of oppression and privilege, you will, eventually do or say something that reveals your privilege and is offensive, insensitive, or callous, if not outright cruel. The whole point of privilege is that it’s largely invisible to those who have it — including you. If you have colleagues that respect you, if people in the broader community value the work you do, if you are recognized as an important voice, people will call you out on your privilege.

How you respond to that criticism makes the difference between self-identifying as an ally, and actually being an ally.

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Stories from the Fleet: The Sea-Above

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Popular Culture

Fleet is a dystopian maritime adventure in which sea level rise and disease has driven the last survivors of the human race to sea. I’m releasing the story in serials — 3 chapters on the first Monday of each month — on Amazon. Loyal readers who can’t wait for the next installment can slate their thirst with a series of short stories set in the world of Fleet that will be published on Southern Fried Science every few weeks. Please enjoy the forth and final of these distractions, The Sea-Above, where we find out how one of my favorite side-characters survives the fire on Gallant and what happened to the sailors who journeyed into the sea-above.

Amberjack was trapped. There was only one way out of the hold and fire raged beyond the bulkheads. Remembering his training, he found a rag to cover his face and, creeping low, felt along the walls until he found a cool spot.

There were no cool spots.

The fire spread through the ship. It blazed on the decks above and the decks below. He was trapped like a chicken in Gill’s diesel stove.

No, he thought to himself, not diesel. Fizzle.

He laughed at his own joke, then choked as the smoke seeped through the sealed hatch. He was roasting! He coughed again. The smoke surrounded him, permeating the hold. His rag reeked of it. He tore it from his face in disgust. He coughed again and again. He couldn’t stop. He wanted to panic, knew he should panic, but he couldn’t. His head was light. His mind felt clear. He began to drift, backwards. The flames reminded him of his great-grandfather, a man who lived for over a century, and a story he would tell the young Amberjack; a story about other ships, their fleets, and the sailors who rode fire into the sky.

“Did you know, Jack, that not every ship sails on the sea?”

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Ships of the Fleet: the vessels that inspired the covers for Fleet

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Popular Culture

We’re approaching the home stretch. Fleet: Horizon, the conclusion to my ongoing science fiction serial novel, premiers on December 2. Each installment features a distinctive cover, featuring one of the ships in the Fleet. The ship on each cover is a real vessel, photographed during one of my many field expeditions. In honor of the completion of Fleet, here are the real stories behind the four vessels featured on the covers.

FleetCover1-REACHFleet: The Reach features the ship that inspired (loosely) NC-3502-WM. The actual vessel is an ocean tugboat that I encountered in Antigua, at the conclusion of JC82/83 — my research cruise to the Mid-Cayman Spreading Center and tag-along cruise to the seas around Montserrat. The noticeably aging vessel was living out its latter years as a pilot boat, delivering pilots to cruise ships and other large vessels so that they could navigate into Antigua’s port.

Maritime Pilots are an old and honored profession. Many ports are dangerous, with local hazards that shift, sometimes as often as the tide. Because of this, large vessel require a local mariner, someone who knows their waterways, to guide ships into port.

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One-fifth of all known hydrothermal vents are threatened by deep-sea mining

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Conservation, Science
Tube worms and anemones on the Galapagos Rift. NOAA Ocean Explorer.
Tube worms and anemones on the Galapagos Rift. Photo Credit: NOAA Ocean Explorer.

Few moments have so profoundly altered our understanding of what it means to be a living thing on Planet Earth as the discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vents and the organisms that thrive around them. The first vents visited were dominated by Riftia pachyptila, the giant tube worm, whose magnificent ruby plumage parted to reveal an entire community adapted to harness the chemical energy that poured from the vents. It is almost poetic that the first vents were found on the Galapagos Rift; the same tectonic feature contributed to another great, formative moment in biology — the Voyage of the Beagle. Hydrothermal vents provided the first evidence that the sun was not the only source of energy that living organisms could harness. They opened our eyes to the potential of chemosynthesis and hinted at an ocean of unfathomable wonders waiting to be discovered.

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