Category: Science

Bonehenge – Community action in science outreach

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Science

The following is a repost from the old Southern Fried Science WordPress blog. The original can be found here.

spermwhalelyd501-135

If a 33.5 foot Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus) stranded on your beach, what would you do with it? Leave it to rot? Drag it out to sea? Blow it up? Keith Rittmaster of the North Carolina Maritime Museum decided to do one better.

This blog has never been known for heaping praise on marine mammals, but these creatures are the exception. Sperm whales are extremely strange animals. There are some fantastic online resources available that do a great job covering basic sperm whale biology, so I’d like to skip the intro and talk about some sperm whale features I find fascinating.

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Louis Agassiz and a brief history of early United States marine biology

Posted on By David Shiffman 6 Comments on Louis Agassiz and a brief history of early United States marine biology
Science

ResearchBlogging.org

Happy birthday, America, and happy Fourth of July to all of our readers! Today marks the 234th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and many in the media are spending the day talking about life in the early United States. I’d like to take this opportunity to discuss an aspect of early American life that’s near and dear to my heart-  marine biology.

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Introducing the Summer SharkTakular photo contest!

Posted on By David Shiffman
Conservation, Science

I am pleased to announce that I will be working with Cindy and Alexa of Oceans 4 Ever during their Summer Sharktakular! The week of July 19th will be dedicated to shark conservation education. As with most things involving Oceans 4 Ever, a major component of the SharkTakular is a contest- specifically a shark conservation photo contest. Here are the rules:

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Whale Quotas and Sea Shepherd

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 37 Comments on Whale Quotas and Sea Shepherd
Conservation, Popular Culture, Science

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.

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Ghosts in the Molecular Machine

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 5 Comments on Ghosts in the Molecular Machine
Conservation, Science

ResearchBlogging.org

The extent of migration among populations drives population structure. With enough migration, populations become homogeneous and behave as a single larger population. As migration rates decrease, populations drift apart and become differentiated. By measuring the amount of differentiation, we can determine the extent of migration between them. But what happens when there are unsampled populations also exchanging migrants?

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