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Shark Conservation: What’s New and What’s Next? The text of my UN Early Career Ocean Professionals Day talk

June 1, 2021June 3, 2021 David Shiffman 1 Comment

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On June 1, 2021, I was invited to speak at Early Career Ocean Professionals Day, part of the kickoff for the United Nations Decade of the Ocean. The text of my remarks, with links to relevant references, is provided below.

Greetings to everyone watching virtual Early Career Ocean Professionals Day around the world! My name is Dr. David Shiffman, and I’m an interdisciplinary marine conservation biologist based in Washington, DC. I study threatened species of sharks, and how to effectively protect them. I also study the causes and consequences of public misunderstanding of these issues. In addition to research and teaching, I am a public science educator, and I invite you to follow me on twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @ WhySharksMatter, where I’m always happy to answer any questions anyone has about sharks.

Today I’d like to talk to you a little bit about my work on why we should protect sharks, how we can most effectively do that, what people think about this issues, and why all of this is important. First of all, no, sharks are not a threat to you or your family, despite what you may hear in inflammatory fearmongering news reports. Hundreds of millions of humans enter the ocean every year, and a few dozen are bitten—more people are killed by flowerpots falling on their heads from above in a typical year than are killed by sharks. Sharks also play vital roles in the healthy functioning of marine and coastal ecosystems, ecosystems that humans depend on for food security, livelihoods, and recreation. In short, people are better off with healthy shark populations off our coasts than we are without them.

To Achieve 30% Ocean Protection Governments Can Look Beyond Conventional Tools

May 18, 2021May 18, 2021 Angelo Villagomez

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Although understanding of the most effective design and implementation of MPAs has evolved in recent decades, decision-makers are only just starting to consider OECMs as a marine conservation tool. If properly delivered, OECMs could be a powerful means of improving ocean health.

Build Your Own 3D-printed Ring Light to Upgrade Your Remote Meetings

February 9, 2021February 9, 2021 Andrew Thaler 1 Comment

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We are entering year two of pandemic lockdowns and remote meetings, teach from home classes, and teleconferences are hear to stay. Early last year we addressed some of the basics of perfecting a decent space for teaching from home: The true, essential, and definitive guide to looking like a professional while teaching from home.

But some folks want a little extra edge, a little something that dramatically improves how you look in the camera while teaching your class, giving a talk, or holding a meeting. And not just because of vanity. The better and clearer your camera image, the easier it is for your audience to see and understand you (though vanity is a perfectly fine reason too, we have all spent far too much time this year staring at ourselves in the little Zoom box).

You could buy a ring light to provide the best possible light source for looking good on a webcam, but why buy something when you can spend several hours soldering and coding your own custom, addressable, RGBW ring light.

The good nerds at Southern Fried Science are here for you. I spent the last month polishing up my coding, soldering, design, and 3D-printing skills to bring you a 3D-printed, DIY ring light that you can build and code yourself.

Is it cheaper than a commercial ring light? No.

Does it work better than a ring light designed and manufactured by a professional team of engineers? Also no.

Can you independently control each color channel so it looks like you’re in the Matrix, under water, of cosplaying the This Is Fine dog via a large, bulky box that sits on you desk? Yes.

Does it come with a panic button that lets you bail out of Zoom calls by pretending that you’re being pulled over by the police? You better believe it does.

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What Johnny Mnemonic got right about 2021: we keep trying to build housing out of old shipping containers.

January 25, 2021January 25, 2021 Andrew Thaler 1 Comment

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From a global pandemic to information overload to out-of-control drug prices, 1995’s Johnny Mnemonic made a lot of bold predictions about 2021 that landed a bit too hard. Among the hits that landed hardest? The rise of containerized housing and a chaotic kludge of weird construction welded together in a way that doesn’t exactly scream stability and permanence.

The year is 2021. Can we put to rest the idea that a shipping container home is anything but an aesthetic choice?

Donald Trump secures his legacy as the worst ocean president in American history.

January 11, 2021January 12, 2021 Andrew Thaler 1 Comment

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Donald F. Trump hates sharks. We learned that in 2013, when, during an entirely uncontroversial discussion about shark conservation foundations on Twitter, the would-be President of the United States of America blocked a small cohort of marine scientists.

Gracing David Shiffman and myself with a timeline blissfully free of his insufferable Tweets for eight years was the only good thing he has ever done for the ocean.

Initially, it appeared as though Trump’s war on the oceans would take a backseat to his other social, judicial, and environmental atrocities. Though a troubling selection for a host of reasons, Wilbur Ross’s appointment as Secretary of Commerce was seen as a relatively non-threatening move. His letter to NOAA staff, reassuring them that his department would continue to follow best-available science, was met with praise. His initial leadership appointments received bipartisan support.

It is clear now in hindsight, that that initial optimism was intensely naïve.

3 kid-friendly STEAM electronics projects that harness NOAA’s massive public databases

January 4, 2021January 4, 2021 Andrew Thaler

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This is the winter of finding as many good, educational projects to keep our kids as occupied as possible. If you’re anything like me, you probably have a stack of assorted electronics in various stages of disrepair, which is great for your hardware hacking dads and moms, but kids need projects with a little more structure and, especially for the younger ones, a lot less soldering.

We can’t build open-source CTDs every day.

Fortunately, the awesome folks at Adafruit have built up an absolutely massive collection of electronics projects using just about every component you can imagine. I’ve culled through the archive to find three kid-friendly (projects that don’t require soldering or involve particularly risky components) ocean and weather projects that take advantage of NOAA’s publicly available databases to help students learn a little bit about electronics and the natural world.

All of these projects were built with the help of my kiddo (age four), require no soldering or electronics skills to start, involve just enough coding to stay interesting, and use Adafruit’s CircuitPython ecosystem, which is fairly easy to learn. Adafruit does a great job compiling detailed instruction for every project. These can all be completed in a lazy afternoon.

Sharks, Squalene, and a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine

October 16, 2020January 4, 2021 Catherine Macdonald

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A bluntnose sixgill shark (*Hexanchus griseus*). Photo credit: *NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer*.

Hi, friends at Southern Fried Science!

You’ve probably seen in the media lately that there’s been a lot of coverage about whether sharks are being killed for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. With an awesome undergraduate co-author, I’ve tried to gather some facts about what is happening (or might happen) and what it means. You can read a preprint of that work here, or read on for a short FAQ in plain English.

Taking the bait, chopping up tankers, the calamari comeback, and some #scicomm advice– What’s up with the Ocean this week?

August 26, 2020August 26, 2020 Andrew Thaler

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August 26, 2020 Don’t take the bait. Baiting fish for the sake of tourists has always engendered a fair bit of criticism. New research out of the Cook Islands demonstrates that frequent baiting at popular snorkeling sites alters fish behavior and causes harm to the reef ecosystem. Just don’t do it. More trouble in Mauritius. … Read More “Taking the bait, chopping up tankers, the calamari comeback, and some #scicomm advice– What’s up with the Ocean this week?” »

#IMCCsharks : An IMCC Symposium on Current and Emerging Issues in European Shark Conservation

August 13, 2020August 14, 2020 David Shiffman

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On Tuesday, August 18^th please join us for a (now virtual) European shark conservation symposium as part of the (now virtual) 6^th International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC!) IMCC is a once-every-two-years event that brings together ocean scientists, conservation and management professionals, and educators from all over the world- register here for just $25 for the virtual version. Follow along on twitter with #IMCCsharks

We have 11 speakers from all over Europe and North America speaking on a variety of issues related to the conservation and management of sharks and their relatives in European waters, and ongoing efforts to scientifically study especially threatened species. The symposium will also feature a panel discussion and informal mingling via a Zoom happy hour with some of the speakers after the symposium ends. The symposium is broken into two 90 minute parts, be sure to check out them both!

Fun Science FRIEDay – A fish without blood

March 13, 2020March 13, 2020 Kersey Sturdivant 1 Comment

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Amidst all the hysteria surrounding the seemingly unstoppable COVID-19, we bring you a story of a fish without blood. In 1928 a biologist sampling off the coast of Antarctica pulled up an unusual fish. It was extremely pale (translucent in some parts), had large eyes and a long toothed snout, and somewhat resembled a crocodile (it was later named the “white crocodile fish). Unbeknownst at the time, but the biologist had just stumbled on a fish containing no red blood pigments (hemoglobin) and no red blood cells – he iron-rich protein such cells use to bind and ferry oxygen through the circulatory system from heart to lungs to tissues and back again. The fish was one of sixteen species of what is now commonly referred to as icefishes that comprise the family Channichthyidae, endemic around the Antarctic continent.