Over 15 years of ocean science and conservation online
Sunglasses are a critical piece of gear if you plan on spending prolonged periods of time in the sun. Not only do they protect your eyes, but the right pair can help you spot marine-life swimming below the surface or boost your bird-watching prowess. An enormous, multi-billion dollar industry has formed to produce and market the right sunglasses to the right people.
It’s all bullshit.
Read More “SFS Gear Reviews: Protecting your eyes without breaking the bank” »
Effective management of any landscape or seascape must attend to context such as unique attributes of the ecosystem, local cultural values and norms, and broader governance constructs. Conservation managers often joke that the best way to incorporate this context is to install a benevolent dictator at the helm. His or her role would be to see the big picture and make decisions based on expected community benefits. Others would call the term benevolent dictator an oxymoron – but there have been some documented cases of such idealistic planning. Sadly, it seems such “high modernism” is not the answer. In his book Seeing Like A State, James Scott documents cases of agricultural land, cityscapes, and whole communities that ended up having unexpected consequences to high modernist rule due to incomplete foresight and incorrect prediction of people’s reactions. He cites these examples as warnings for the modern conservation movement as they choose between philosophies to move forward.
Read More “State of the Field: Modergasm – The flaccid finality of modern erections” »
The time has come for Southern Fried Science to get its report card. At the top of the page there is a link to the Reader Survey. We want to here from you, find out what you like, what you don’t like, and how you think this site could improve. Please take the survey, it … Read More “Take the Southern Fried Science Readers Survey, win fantastic prizes!” »
As Science Online kicks into high gear, I’d like to give a shout out to the three new blogs that have joined the Gam this week! First up is the long-awaited People, Policy, Planet by Lyndell. The blogs focuses on environmental policy, science research, and ecology. Read her introductory posts Politics and Policy. Next up … Read More “Welcome three new blogs to our network!” »
I had the pleasure of seeing Roz Savage speak at the Nicholas School of the Environment last year. That talk was a slightly longer version of the one above, with the addition that she had finished her Pacific voyage in Papua New Guinea. The question I pose to our readers is, what effect do these … Read More “Weekly dose of TED – Roz Savage: Why I’m rowing across the Pacific” »
Any good field scientist needs a good camera. At the very least you have to document your sampling sites, record samples, and get good photographs of your methods for the inevitable presentations. A field camera needs to be compact, flexible, easy to use, light on batteries, and durable. Of course, the more advanced photographer may scale up to a robust Digital SLR, but at that point, you already know what you need. For the rest of us, a smaller point-and-shoot will suffice.
I shoot with both a heavy duty DSLR and a light-weight point-and-shoot, depending on the conditions, how much space I have available, and how much gear I have to lug around. When it came time to replace my 6-year-old point-and-shoot with something a little more modern, I wanted something that had more flexibility than the run-of-the-mill pointers while still being small enough to carry around in a pocket. I also put a priority on optical zoom (which is definately not the same as digital zoom). I chose the Cannon Power Shot SX130 IS.
Thanks to everyone who stuck around during our blog vacation. Our adventure into Moby Dick continues with chapters 37 and 38 – Sunset and Dusk. These two chapters have been consolidated from two soliloquies to a dialog between Ahab and Starbuck. Read along with us and discuss this chapter or the book as a whole … Read More “Finding Melville’s Whale: Sunset and Dusk (Chapters 37 and 38)” »
Science Online, the annual science bloggers conference, is this weekend! This will be my third Science Online, and Amy and David’s second, and this year’s is the biggest conference ever. You can follow me, Amy, and David on twitter or track the #scio11 hashtag. Talks will be recorded and made available online after the conference.
If you’re going to be there, you can find me at the following session:
This week for Biodiversity Wednesday, we bring you to the Sundarbans of Bangladesh and eastern India. They’re wild, wet, and full of mangroves and tigers. In fact, it’s the world’s largest mangrove forest at 140,000 hectares and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for cultural and ecological value. The area is perhaps most famous for housing the charismatic Bengal tiger, estuarine crocodile and Indian python among a habitat of endangered flora and fauna.
The Sundarbans are protected primarily for their unique ecological processes, making it on our list for their special kind of biodiversity. These processes include monsoon rains, flooding, delta formation, tidal influence, and plant colonization that are all part of the life of a dynamic mangrove forest.
Thanks to everyone who stuck around during our blog vacation. Our adventure into Moby Dick continues with chapter 36 – The Quarter-deck. Read along with us and discuss this chapter or the book as a whole in the comments. Visit this page for the complete collection to date: Finding Melville’s Whale. The Quarter-deck Ahab, standing upon … Read More “Finding Melville’s Whale: The Quarter-deck (Chapter 36)” »