Over 15 years of ocean science and conservation online
Yes, I would call this a FAILboat. Hat tip – about 20 people who e-mailed this to me.
In my ongoing Philosophy of Activism series, I describe tactics used by various advocacy organizations and solicit feedback from our readers to determine if those tactics are effective or not. For the latest edition, I wanted to pick all of your brains about a tactic that I personally used this week.
Hat tip to Deep Sea News. Pretty much sums up how we all feel right now.
I was excited to see that today’s Charleston Post and Courier has a shark on the front page. The content of the article, entitled “Sharks Swarming“, inspired entirely different emotions. Much of the information it contains is either exaggerated to make the situation appear scarier than it is or is simply wrong. Here are some examples:
The Discovery Channel needs your help! They are hosting an online contest to help promote Shark Week. Film yourself singing about sharks to the tune of their wildly successful “Boom de ya deh” ads , and you could find yourself on the air during Shark Week! Let’s get some conservation-friendly humiliating singing on there! I’ll … Read More “Shark Week video contest” »
The following is a repost from the old Southern Fried Science WordPress blog. The original can be found here.
I finally got the chance to watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog last week. After watching and enjoying, I started thinking about something. We have our heroes, the stalwart defenders of whatever, mostly absolute in their righteousness; often torn by by their duties, their beliefs, their past; sometimes high and noble, sometimes darker and more base; but almost always connected in some primal way to our own sense of self. We love our hero’s because we see some of who we could be in them.
But then there are the villains. Sometimes twisted by a painful life, torn by lost loves, driven by revenge, and corrupted by power. Often they are deeper, more complex than the heroes; capable of great evil, but sometimes redemption. We hate them, fear them, sometimes empathize with their plight. They are what we could become, if we allow ourselves to fall from grace. Most of them have PhD’s.
We sparked a good debate over the effectiveness of direct action conservation movements over at the post “Is Sea Shepherd really saving whales?” One of the most difficult questions raised was if Sea Shepherd wasn’t there, would the Japanese make their full quota? The data presented in that post was inconclusive, because the quota increase corresponded to the beginning of SSCS’s Southern Ocean campaign, so we have no time period in which the Japanese quota was increased while Sea Shepherd was absent.
Over Memorial Day weekend, Animal Planet aired a marathon of it’s new hit show “River Monsters”. The show focuses on self-described “biologist and extreme angler” Jeremy Wade’s attempt to find some of the largest freshwater fish on Earth. I’ve heard good things about the show in the past but had never seen it before. After discovering that there were two episodes that dealt with bull sharks, and I immediately DVR-ed them to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I was absolutely shocked at what I heard Jeremy Wade say about sharks:
Last week, I wrote about National Geographic’s Expedition Great White. In that post, I mentioned that the practice of removing great white sharks from the water for research was controversial, and that I would ask the lead scientist in the show about it. Here are answers to my questions from Dr. Michael Domeier and his colleague Nicole Lucas. They also wanted me to point out that their website has an FAQ page about this technique, which can be found here.
Read More “Expedition Great White: A response from Dr. Michael Domeier” »