Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

• Bob Ballard is off on a quest to find the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s Electra 10E. Many attempts have been made to discover the famed aviator’s fate, but never with the technological tools at Robert Ballard’s disposal.

• But make no mistake: behind the flashy headlines is a chance to test some of the most advance seafloor searching autonomous systems in the research armada.

• The motivating photo, however, is a bit of a stretch.

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

My Deep-sea Mining trade journal is on hiatus this month, so you get a super dose of the deep-sea mining beat!

• China extends domain with fifth deep sea mining contract.
• India to test deep-sea mining machine at 6000 meters by year’s end.
• International Seabed Authority under pressure over deep-sea mining impacts.
• Fiji calls for sea-bed mining moratorium as Nautilus restructures.
• Nautilus Minerals’ plans to mine the seafloor sink deeper.

There’s other stuff going on in the ocean, too.

• Brazil: a sea-floor battle.

• One quarter of the world’s population face extremely high water stress.
• Japanese Whaling Is Not the Greatest Threat to Whale Conservation.
• File under: Things the shouldn’t need to be said. Don’t feed that seal pup a chicken drumstick, please.
• This parasitic worm might hold the key to sustainable pesticides.
• Want to snap a perfect whale picture? Tips from a world-class photographer.

View this post on Instagram

The rain was crazy hard, we all got soaked, (my lens stayed dry, thank you @lenscoat cover!!!) the light was terrible, but we were rewarded with a couple of spectacular breaches. This sequence is about a second. ©Dave Howells 2019 #whales #humpbackwhale #humpbackbreaching #newfoundland #naturephotography #canonusa #canoncanada #eos1dxmarkii #canon400mmf28iii #lenscoat

A post shared by David Howells (@dave_howells_photo) on Jul 22, 2019 at 11:36am PDT

The Gam (ocean podcasts we love)

• Podcast: Marine species and the limits of international trade controls.

Lagan (what we’re reading from the peer-reviewed literature)

• Turgeon and friends (2019) Dams have varying impacts on fish communities across latitudes: a quantitative synthesis. DOI: 10.1111/ele.13283.
• Dai and friends (2019) Mechanical Tests and Numerical Simulations for Mining Seafloor Massive Sulfides. DOI: 10.3390/jmse7080252.
• THESIS: Auråen (2019) Low-cost CTD Instrument Arduino based CTD for autonomous measurement platform. University of Oslo.

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