Conservation – Page 44 – Southern Fried Science

Seeing Green

April 21, 2010April 21, 2010 Bluegrass Blue Crab

Conservation

Did you ever meet that gear-head who had a shelf full of Nalgenes or a trunk full of those reusable shopping bags? At the time, did you stop and think about the environmental impact of these eco-friendly products? In honor of Earth Day, I’d like to take a moment to step back and evaluate the state of our environmental movement.

Yes, at some level these things reduce your personal environmental impact. They save millions of plastic bags and cups from entering the waste stream and therefore our biosphere. At the same time, they promote the consumer culture that created many of our environmental issues in the first place.

Crowdsourcing ConGen – Effective size of a population in flux

April 21, 2010June 16, 2010 Andrew Thaler 2 Comments

Conservation, Science

When presented with a threatened population in need of conservation, the simplest and most basic question a manager can ask is “how big is it?” Unfortunately, this is one of the most challenging questions to answer. Determining the number of individuals in a population is fundamental to effective management. Small, concentrated populations can be destroyed in a single sweep, while large, broadly distributed populations require more resources and complex management involving many stakeholders.

A population that is easy to sample is rare. Animals move – sometimes over enormous distances. Habitats are difficult or impossible to access. Entire popualtions may be adept at avoiding capture. For most populations, it is impossible to count every individual. In marine ecosystems populations can span the entire globe, and the cost of mounting an expedition to systematically sample all members is huge. In order to get accurate estimates of the number of individuals, ecologists have had to devise statistical techniques to estimate the size of a population.

A different perspective on the CITES disaster

April 7, 2010 David Shiffman 2 Comments

Conservation

Lots has been written about the recent failure of CITES to protect marine species. Most of it focuses on blaming countries like Japan and China for putting commerce ahead of science and conservation. However, SCUBA operator and blogger Mike Da Shark has a different perspective- he criticizes the NGOs who advocated for conservation.

Grounded Bulk Carrier Ship Leaking Oil

April 6, 2010 Andrew Thaler

Conservation

from The Right Blue ~Southern Fried Scientist

Reader mail: Sustainable shark finning?

April 5, 2010April 5, 2010 David Shiffman 5 Comments

Conservation, Science

Our latest reader mail comes from my friend Mike, who writes for the conservative political blog SaveTheGop. Though we don’t agree on much, he’s usually a reasonable guy. His question concerns a post I recently wrote about Hawaii’s proposed bill to ban the sale of shark fins within their state.

Shifting Sands: The Fight for the Outer Banks

April 4, 2010 Andrew Thaler 1 Comment

Conservation

A documentary produced by Ashwin Bhandiwad and premiered at the Benthic Ecology 2010, enjoy! Shifting Sands: The Fight for the Outer Banks from Ashwin Bhandiwad on Vimeo.

Might as well eat ’em: A semi-serious April Fool’s Day ethical debate

April 1, 2010April 4, 2010 David Shiffman 38 Comments

Conservation

Bluefin tuna are some of the most endangered fish in the sea. Prized by the sushi industry for their delicious flavor, populations of bluefin have declined precipitously in recent decades.

They also may be the first species of fish to be driven to extinction by commercial fishing. Normally, when populations of fish get low, it isn’t profitable to fish for them anymore- thus they are not driven to extinction. However, a single bluefin tuna can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, so it is still profitable to fish for the last one.

Has President Obama broken a promise on offshore drilling?

March 31, 2010 David Shiffman 15 Comments

Conservation

I received an e-mail from Oceana today encouraging me to “tell President Obama to keep his promise”. The e-mail claims that while running for President, he campaigned against offshore oil drilling, which would make his recent announcement about allowing offshore drilling a broken promise indeed. However, I seem to remember that Obama as a candidate was for offshore drilling. I went to my favorite non-partisan fact check website, Politifact, to sort this out.

WhySharksMatter in College of Charleston magazine

March 30, 2010April 4, 2010 David Shiffman

Conservation, Science

The most recent issue of the College of Charleston magazine came out this week, and it features an article about sharks by yours truly! Check it out below. Suggestions and critiques are appreciated. I know it’s hard to read- here is a link to the online article.

Crowdsourcing ConGen – Populations in Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium

March 27, 2010April 4, 2010 Andrew Thaler

Conservation, Science

This post is part of the Crowdsourcing ConGen project. Crowdsourcing is the process of opening up a resource to a community for input and contributions. Throughout the coming year I’ll be posting manageable pieces of this document for the audience of Southern Fried Science to read and review. Please visit the main post for an overview.

“I have never done anything useful. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world.” ~ Godfrey Harold Hardy

The simplest model for a population is one in which the frequencies of alleles and genotypes remains constant from generation to generation. Under this model, there are no outside forces influencing selection, there is no tendency for any allele or genotype to be favored over any other, diploid alleles will recombine randomly in accordance with Mendelian inheritance. A population that behaves this way is said to be in Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium. This almost never happens.