#OceanOptimism | Southern Fried Science

Fun Science FRIEDay – The Moby Dick of Sperm Whale Encounters

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Kersey Sturdivant

Happy FSF Folks!

So this news has been making the rounds, and it is too amazing not to include for FSF. So if you missed it, you are in luck because we highlight it again here. A giant sperm whale was captured by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) piloted as part of Bob Ballard and the Corps of Exploration’s Nautilus cruise. The whale was captured by the ROV Hercules at 598 meter (1,962 ft) below the sea surface in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana.

Sperm whale captured at 598 meter (1,962 ft) depth by the ROV Hercules. (Photo Credit: Ocean Exploration Trust)

How a 10 Million Year old fossil, a smart phone, and a 3D printer recharged my #OceanOptimism.

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Andrew Thaler

Last week, we launched a novel little experiment in crowdfunding marine science and conservation – Buy David Shiffman a Less Ugly Pair of Sunglasses – ostensibly about replacing David’s legendarily hideous sunglasses with something a bit more aesthetic. Of course, anyone digging into the stretch goals quickly realized that this was less about sunglasses and more about funding some cool research and outreach projects we’re currently working on; projects like a hammerhead conservation genetics analysis, building a marine ecology drone, and sending students from underserved schools of a shark tagging trip. This was made more explicit when we hit our first goal in the first 36 hours of funding.

With the first funding goal achieved, I decided we needed a cool perk, something not particularly expensive to produce but completely novel and cool enough to justify making a heftier donation. And, of course, it needed to be thematically related to the spirit of the project.

Enter the Megalodon.

David Shiffman wears ugly sunglasses. We need to fix that. For the sharks.

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Andrew Thaler

David is a legend in the online ocean conservation world, but that doesn’t mean he’s a legend of style. Everywhere, in every picture, he wears these:

Just terrible.

Let’s be clear: these sunglasses, if you can even call a second pair of glasses worn over his normal glasses that, are ugly. Really ugly. Distractingly ugly. In an non-parametric, multivariate analysis of his outreach effort, David is 7% less effective* at disseminating ocean content than he should be, given his follower base and content stream. I believe that the majority of this deficit can be directly attributed to his sunglasses.

It’s time to change that.

Buy David Shiffman a less ugly pair of sunglasses.

David Shiffman has spent his life saving sharks. Isn’t it time he did so in style? I think so. And I hope you do too. Let’s buy him some sunglasses that reflect how cool his shark conservation work really is. Support our efforts to buy David less ugly sunglasses on Indiegogo.

Sizing Sizing Ocean Giants: Patterns of #scicomm outreach in a marine megapaper

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Andrew Thaler

Last week, Craig McClain and many friends published Sizing Ocean Giants: patterns of intraspecific size variation in marine megafauna, a research paper that would better be described as a monograph. The response to the paper has been overwhelming.

Since it’s publication last Tuesday, Sizing Ocean Giants has been viewed almost 44,000 times by 38,000 people and downloaded 1200 times. If this seems like a lot for what is essentially a natural history monograph, you are correct. According to Altmetric, a service that measures the non-citation impact of scientific papers, Sizing Ocean Giants is the most discussed and shared article in the history of PeerJ. With a score of 546 (most papers average a score of 5, PeerJ papers average about 20), our paper has climbed into the 99th percentile of all articles ever tracked.

We’ve been covered in the Washington Post, Newsweek, National Geographic, and Scientific American, as well as numerous non-English media outlets from Mexico to Greece. Opa! We’ve seen a small attention spike on twitter and tons of shares (almost 12,000) via Facebook.

So how do we account for the huge success of this massive paper?

The era of the million-dollar tuna is over.

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Andrew Thaler

For the last several years, we’ve been following the first-of-the-year Tsukiji Tuna Auction. In the past, this auction has served as a (often questionable) benchmark for the demand for Bluefin Tuna. At its peak, the price of Bluefin Tuna broke the scales at nearly $1,800,000. As the price continued to inflate, last year we even released an early warning to journalists covering the auction, cautioning them against drawing too many conclusions about the expectedly massive auction price. We we’re all caught off guard when the price of the first fish barely topped $70,000 dollars, kilo-for-kilo not even the most expensive fish sold that day.

Today, the numbers are in, and the first Bluefin of the year sold for a measly $37,500, barely enough to cover the cost to fuel for a fishing boat.

The era of the million-dollar tuna is over.