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.

Pseudoscience Redux: Greenwashing – Is there really a sustainable Orange Roughy fishery?

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 6 Comments on Pseudoscience Redux: Greenwashing – Is there really a sustainable Orange Roughy fishery?
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This post was originally published on September 6, 2010 as a part of our first Week of Ocean Pseudoscience. Enjoy!

Wandering through the grocery store the other day, I noticed something strange in the fish bin. Now, in general I’m pretty conscious of where my fish comes from, how it was caught, whether the fishery as a whole or the specific population is sustainable. I pay attention to those details and I can usually tell when a company’s branding is legitimate and when it’s just greenwashing.

Imagine my shock when I found a packet of Orange Roughy, sold by the Full Circle brand, and marketed as sustainable.

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Misunderstood Marine Life # 3 – Cryptics and Cryptids

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Science

In my mind, where I imagine people are so interested in what I do that they hang on every carefully chosen word I write, I imagine some unspecified mob of readers looking over my I *heart* cryptozoology post and going “Whoa now, pardner!” (yes, you all sound like cowboys in my mind) “You just said there was a difference between cryptozoology and real zoology, but you deal with cryptic species all the time! What’s up with that?”

Cryptic hammerhead shark. Photo from http://www.physorg.com/news68994294.html

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I *heart* cryptozoology

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 5 Comments on I *heart* cryptozoology
Science

Cryptozoology, the study of animals whose existence is unproven, lies just south of the boundary between science and pseudoscience. Unlike most psuedoscientific movements, which require adherents to suspend disbelief and ignore the realities of physics, chemistry, medicine, and, well, reality, the foundational principals of cryptozoology – that there are remnant populations of thought-to-be-extinct species and that there are still large, charismatic animals that have not yet been discovered – are grounded in ecology. In deep-sea biology, we discover new species all of the time, some of which are far more fantastical than humans can imagine. Some times, we even discover once extinct species. So it is not much of a leap to go from exploratory zoology to cryptozoology.

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Ethanol additives will destroy your boat, ruin your marriage, and cause California to calve off into the sea

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 5 Comments on Ethanol additives will destroy your boat, ruin your marriage, and cause California to calve off into the sea
Science

A non-ethanol gas station in coastal NC. Price per gallon across the street is $3.45. People are willing to pay a premium for their ethanol fears. Photo by Andrew David Thaler

Ethanol. For many boat owners in coastal North Carolina, it’s a dirty word. Since the mid 2000’s, various federal and state regulations have mandated the addition of up to 10% ethanol in gasoline. The reaction has been a combination of legitimate concern and hyperbolic declarations of doom (ecoterrorist have taken over our government and it’s a vast conspiracy to force you to buy a new car every three years – yes, someone said that too me). The rationale for federal mandates come primarily from the Energy Policy Act (2005), the Renewable Fuel Standard Program (2006), and the Energy Independence and Security Act (2007), while state mandates tend to deal with air quality and the recent appearance of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) in the drinking water (ethanol fulfills the same role as MTBE in gasoline). Renewable resources, energy independence, national security, and clean air and water, it would seem that ethanol has a little something for everyone.

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Unraveling the mysteries of Steller’s Sea Ape

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Science

Last year for our Week of Ocean Pseudoscience, we counted down our top seven marine cryptids. Number seven was the elusive Steller’s Sea Ape, documented only once by renowned naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller. Even though the Sea Ape has not been seen since, Steller’s deserved reputation as a world class naturalist has kept the Sea Ape story alive. In his journal, he reports that:

During this time we were near land or surrounded by it we saw large numbers of hair seals, sea otters, fur seals, sea lions, and porpoises…. On August 10, we saw a very unusual and unknown sea animal, of which I am going to give a brief account since I observed it for two whole hours. It was about two Russian ells in length, the head was like a dog’s, with pointed, erect ears. From the upper and lower lips on both sides whiskers hung down which made it look almost like a Chinaman, The eyes were large; the body was longish round and thick, tapering gradually towards the tail. The skin seemed thickly covered with hair, of a grey color on the back, but reddish white on the belly; in the water, however, the animal appeared equally reddish and cow colored. The tail was divided into two fins, of which the upper, as in the case of sharks, was twice as large as the lower.

source 

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Misunderstood Marine Life # 7 – The Living Fossils

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 3 Comments on Misunderstood Marine Life # 7 – The Living Fossils
Science

Horseshoe Crabs - Andrew David Thaler

Horseshoe Crabs, Coelacanths, Seven-gilled sharks, hagfish. Throughout the oceans there are creatures whose primitive bodies hearken back to earlier days in our evolutionary history. They possess basal characteristics that are more akin to those of the ancestors of our contemporary phyla. Because we can look into these organisms and learn something about our own deep past, we think of them not as modern descendants, but as living fossils, relics of a primeval state.

This is, of course, a misnomer.

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