Category: Popular Culture

Check out the cover for Fleet: Dereliction, part 3 of my maritime science fiction serial!

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Popular Culture

FleetCover1-derelictionFleet: Dereliction premiers next Monday! With the fleet split in two and its most valuable ship stolen, the Admiral has to deal with the fallout from the first mutiny in recent memory. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Reach, the trio of mutineers finally discover the dark secret behind a mysterious shipwreck.

This has been my favorite installment to write. You’re going to finally learn the truth about several characters. Motivations will be revealed. Most importantly, the story that’s been hinted out throughout the last two installments will finally be told. This was also may favorite cover to design. There’s a great story behind that image, which I can’t tell yet as it might give away some of the plot.

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Science in the Fleet: What would your hometown look like with 80 meters Sea Level Rise

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 33 Comments on Science in the Fleet: What would your hometown look like with 80 meters Sea Level Rise
#DrownYourTown, Popular Culture

UPDATE: These posts, and the hashtag are getting a lot of attention, so I’d like to reiterate, Caveat Tweetor (twitter beware) — these models are being generated on the fly as request come in. They are not validated and there are many variables that influence sea level rise which are not taken into account. This is a fun way to visualize potential sea level rise but it would be inadvisable to use it for real estate speculation. 

The central conceit in the world of Fleet–my dystopian maritime science fiction serial adventure–is that sea level has risen 80 meters, an extreme maximum projection under global climate change prediction (INSERT LINK TO USGS DATA HERE AFTER SHUTDOWN ENDS – UPDATE: Oh, neat, we have a federal government again. Here’s the source). Since 80 meters is pretty hard to visualize, I turned to Google Earth to help me simulate what our world would look like under those conditions, starting with my new residence in San Francisco:

FleetSanFran
San Francisco, 80 meters

Oh, but we’re not done yet.

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Science in the Fleet: The Promise of Technology as a Panacea for Human Impacts

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Popular Culture, Science

FleetCover1-REACHToday marks the release of Fleet: Wide Open, part 2 of my serial maritime science fiction adventure. With half the story revealed, we now see the roll technology plays in both the history and the day-to-day operations of the fleet. Specifically, we see three major technological advances that seem as though they would have been major solutions to the environmental problems facing the fleet, yet somehow, the world continues to fall apart.

In our world and the world of the fleet, we often hold up technological innovation as a panacea for global problems. It’s easy to look towards the next big advancement as the solution to our current woes — from alternative energy sources to groundbreaking trash removal devices — but what is often lost in the hype is the human component. Yes, technology is a necessary component of global environmental solutions. You can even look at the arc of human advancement as one long series of bootstrap-hoists — we need to utilize dirty tech to access environmentally sustainable tech (i.e. you can’t develop the ability to produce solar panels without first harnessing the energy locked in fossil fuels). But technology alone is useless without also changing human behavior. This creates a major problem, as technological innovation is often used as a tool to bypass human behavior entirely, the assumption being that it doesn’t matter what the individual does, so long as the tech is in place to mitigate it.

The horse piles of New York

Around the turn of the last century, New York City was in crisis. Horses, the primary means of transportation for people and products within the city have an unfortunate byproduct — feces, lots and lots of feces. At its peak, more than 60,000 horses were depositing upwards of 500 tones of manure every day. The horse crisis itself was the result of a major technological innovation — more efficient fertilizer based on mass produced phosphate. Where once there was a major economic incentive to collect the manure and resell it as fertilizer, now there was also no incentive. And so, the mountains of feces piled up. It got so bad that one editorial expounded that, by the 1930’s piles of horse manure would stand three stories tall and the city would be awash in an unending tide of feces.

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Fleet: Wide Open now available in the Amazon Kindle Store!

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Popular Culture

“The sea is big. The sea is cruel. She takes more than she gives. That’s how it’s always been.” Fuel is the lifeblood of the fleet and it is running out. It has been months since the crew of Miss Amy brought home a catch big enough to feed the fleet. With fuel rationed, there … Read More “Fleet: Wide Open now available in the Amazon Kindle Store!” »

Shift: an adventure in marine science from the not-too-distant future

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Popular Culture

FleetCover1-REACHAs I never stop telling you, I’m writing a book. 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 per 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 second of these distractions, Shift, a story that takes place before the main events of Fleet and fills in some of the backstory surrounding the fleet.

A version of Shift appeared last year in Eno Magazine, but this iteration has been revised to fit into the world of Fleet.

150 years before the Great Hurricane.

The old winch groaned under the strain of a full net. Captain Willis sighed. A heavy haul was a bad sign.

“Well, that’s the last cast this season, probably the last I’ll ever do.” He said the same thing last year.

The net cleared the ship’s deck. It bulged with the unmistakable quiver of a thousand tire-sized jellies, each one a tiny ecosystem. We dumped them into the shaker tray that violently separated the worthless goo from the precious catch.

I grabbed a few jellies to measure before tossing them over the side. They were smaller this year, a good sign. Something was eating them.

I turned back to the shaker. The captain was smiling. At the bottom of the catch bin were eight hollow-eyed shrimp, the largest haul we’d had all week. Hollow-eyes were a luxury, favored by the new international elite, who, despite living in massive floating cities that circled the world, imported more seafood than any other demographic. Hollow-eyes were particularly desirable, as they had the dual caché of being both new to the world market and already extremely rare. At current market price, they would cover the repairs to the winch, with a little left over for fuel. We counted sixty-seven hollow-eyes in the Miss Amy’s hold. It had been a very good week.

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News from the Fleet, plus the cover unveiling for episode 2: Wide Open

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Popular Culture

Last month I debuted Fleet: The Reach, the first part of my dystopian maritime science fiction adventure.  Part Two: Wide Open will be hitting the Amazon Kindle store in a few week. If you’ve read Fleet: The Reach and are are looking for a way to get your Fleet fix, you can check out the … Read More “News from the Fleet, plus the cover unveiling for episode 2: Wide Open” »

Eleven Marine Organisms that would make Amazing Aquaman Villains

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 2 Comments on Eleven Marine Organisms that would make Amazing Aquaman Villains
Popular Culture, Science
Physalia_physalis1
Physalia physalis. Public domain.

Black Manta. Ocean Master. The Trench. Scavenger. King Shark. Toxin. The Fisherman. Aquaman has had some pretty memorable villains over the last 80 years. Also, the Fisherman. This is Southern Fried Science, a blog famous for two things – inspiring the world with our unique blend of marine science and conservation and doing horrible, horrible things to Aquaman.

Catch me flounder for I have finned. It has been 98 days since my last Aquaman is Awesome post.

Sure, Black Manta has some pretty sweet gear, a compelling back story that justifies his hatred of the Atlantean king, and he looks like he’s poised for some serious awesome during DC’s Villains Month. The Trench even appear to be able to utilize chemosynthesis, when they’re not trapping dogs in cocoons. You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?

That’s right. No matter how ridiculous Aquaman’s comic book foes become, you can bet all your clams I’ll find real marine organisms that would make equally amazing villains. Here’s eleven of them.

Meet Man-o-War, the colonial killer that understands the value of teamwork.

Imagine a super villain composed of thousand of individual organisms that form one giant super-organism. Rather than a body filled with vital organs, this villain can take massive damage without a loss of ‘self’, only to spawn new minions to replaced the damaged parts. Now give this deadly foe 60-foot long venom-filled tentacles whose sting brings excruciating pain. Such a villain would certainly assume the identity ‘Man-o-War’.

The Portuguese Man-o-War (Physalia physalis), arguably the best known of the siphonophores (it is a cnidarian, but it is not a jellyfish) possess tentacles that unleash an unbelievably painful sting, the weapon of choice for our newest menace. But the weapon does’t make the man (o-war), and our villain has a strategic secret. Man-o-Wars are not singular animals, they are a colony of highly specialized polyps — each one an individual animal that combines to form a deadly super-organism.

The pneumatophore is a polyp the creates a gas-filled bladder for flotation. This produces the distinctive ‘sail’ of the Man-o-War, a bilaterally symmetric air sac that allows the colonial to remain at the surface and provides some propulsion by catching the wind. The sail is not just a sac of air, it also has defensive capabilities. When attacked, the sail is able to deflate, allowing the colony to sink below the surface and avoid predators. The gonozooids, which occur in tight clusters, are responsible for reproduction. Man-o-Wars engage in both asexual and sexual reproduction. Young colonies can reproduce clonally by budding, but as the colony becomes more mature, that gonozooids become sexually differentiated and release eggs and sperm to form new colonies. The gastrozooid takes care of all the digestion-related needs and surround the dastardly dactylozooids. Finally, the dactylozooids produce 10-meter (or longer!) tentacles that capture prey and drag them towards the gastrozooids. This is some serious teamwork.

Man-o-War even has minions. The shepherd fish is immune t the stinging tentacles and hangs out within the tentacles. The fish gains the protection of its lethal ally while the Man-o-War gets to use the shepherd fish as bait to lure other fish into its deadly trap.

Imagine Aquaman facing off against a colony of polyps that combine to form a deadly super-organism with massive stinging tentacles. Siphonophores have no nervous system, so Aquaman’s fish-talking power are useless. No matter how many dactylozooids, gatrozooids, and pneumatophores he destroyed, the gonozooids are there, churning out more.

But Man-o-Wars are not without their own predators, the largest of which is the enormous, cnidarian nom nom-ing Leatherback Turtle. Despite their size, leatherbacks are the largest live sea turtle, they survive exclusively on large numbers of jelly-like organisms — to the tune of the equivalent of eating 16 cucumbers per day. Leatherbacks aren’t the only animals that prey on Man-o-War, the salacious siphonophore has many foes, two of which join this list as super-villains in their own right.

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Blackfish: the Science Behind the Movie

Posted on By Chris Parsons 13 Comments on Blackfish: the Science Behind the Movie
Conservation, Popular Culture, Science

Blackfishn649728329_1260668_3283

The Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove” told the story of the dolphin hunt in the Japanese town of Taiji. Dolphins there are driven into a shallow cove and killed for meat and other products, with a select few set aside alive for sale to dolphinariums. Many are now saying that this year’s documentary on killer whales (Orcinus orca) in captivity, “Blackfish,” will be nominated for next year’s Oscar. Documentaries rarely get many viewers in movie theaters, but Blackfish, which cost only $76,000 to make and was initially released at only five movie theaters, has already grossed about $2 million nationwide and has been ranked among the 10 best performing nature documentaries, which include “March of the Penguins” and the much vaunted IMAX-friendly “Earth” and “Oceans” documentaries.

Blackfish focuses on the four people who have been killed by captive killer whales, bad corporate behavior by marine theme parks (especially SeaWorld) and the ethics of keeping killer whales in captivity. The film focuses particularly on the story of Tilikum, a 12,000lb male killer whale who was captured from Iceland in the early 1980s, has been living at SeaWorld of Florida since 1992, and to date has been involved in the deaths of three people. His last victim, his trainer of six years Dawn Brancheau, was brutally dismembered after he pulled her into the tank with him on February 24, 2010.

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