Foghorn (A Call to Action!)
- Sign up for Make for the Planet Borneo and help push forward the next generation of conservation technology!
- Announcing the Con X Tech Prize for Hacking Extinction! Apply for funding to create a working hardware prototype and win up to $20,000 in awards.
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
- This is a totally ordinary, not at all alarming, call for government bidders on a contract to build “new systems that employ natural or engineered marine organisms as sensor elements to amplify signals related to the presence, movement, and classification of manned or unmanned underwater vehicles.” They even adorably call these Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors PALS. Normal!
- Here’s a video of anglerfish mating, because anglerfish are beauty.
- This week in science and conservation slowly, awkwardly coming to terms with their racist history: For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It and Environmentalism’s Racist History.
- Scientists in Survival Mode: After a disastrous hurricane season, scientists in the storms’ pathways struggle to return to work.
The Levee (A featured project that emerged from Oceandotcomm)
Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)
- Get ready for the decade of the ocean: United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030).
- The New York Times published an unfortunate OpEd trashing large remote MPAs. Fortunately, Deep Sea News’s Rick MacPherson is here to set the record straight: Embracing Yes/Also: Marine Protected Areas Are Not An Either/Or Proposition.
- 10 Billion Oysters: A Splashy Goal to Restore Chesapeake Bay. Bring it on!
- This week in robots fighting to save the ocean:
- Gimme shelter, says your new neighbor, the urban octopus.
- How can vulnerable marine species be protected when climate change is a reality? Designing Marine Protected Areas in a Changing Climate.
- Outside the safety of the kelp forest, California sea otters are being picked off by sharks: Sea Otters Are Walled in by Hungry Sharks.
- The Worst Containership Disasters in Recent History… In Photos.
- A “Sea Cucumber Mafia” operates along the Yucatecan coast. Why is there not an action-thriller about this starring Nic Cage?!
- Damn, I was hoping for an entirely different regime change: Arctic Birds Carry Signs of an “Atlantifying” Ocean.
- This week in ocean plastics:
- The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Has Way More Trash Inside It Than We Thought.
- The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Isn’t What You Think it Is.
- Oh, hey, we’ve got some good news, too. Adidas has sold 1 million pairs of sneakers made from ocean trash — and reveals a new normal in footwear. If only they weren’t $300 a pair…
- Fossilized tooth belonging to a giant ancient shark has been stolen from a secret location.
- It’s a basking shark. Scientists try to identify mysterious dead ‘sea monster’.
- The ongoing crisis in Puerto Rico will be an environmental disaster for generations: Six Months After Maria, It’s Clear Puerto Rico’s Terrible Grid Will Be a Lasting Legacy.
Lagan (what we’re reading from the peer-reviewed literature)
- Roterman and friends (2018) A new yeti crab phylogeny: Vent origins with indications of regional extinction in the East Pacific. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0194696.
- Nijen and friends (2018) A stochastic techno-economic assessment of seabed mining of polymetallic nodules in the Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2018.02.027.
- Victorero and friends (2018) Out of sight, but within reach: A Global History of Bottom-Trawled Deep-Sea Fisheries from >400 m depth. DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2018.00098.
- Zhang and friends (2018) Sexually dimorphic scale worms (Annelida: Polynoidae) from deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Okinawa Trough: Two new species and two new sex morphs. DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2018.00112.
- Havermans and friends (2018) A biodiversity survey of scavenging amphipods in a proposed marine protected area: the Filchner area in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica. DOI: 10.1007/s00300-018-2292-7.
- Johnson and friends (2018) Preventing plastics pervading an oceanic oasis: Building the case for the Costa Rica Thermal Dome to become a World Heritage site in ABNJ. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2018.02.022.
- Hart and friends (2018) Will the California Current lose its nesting Tufted Puffins? DOI: 10.7717/peerj.4519.
- Sigwart and friends (2018) Deep-sea video technology tracks a monoplacophoran to the end of its trail (Mollusca, Tryblidia). DOI: 10.1007/s12526-018-0860-2.
- Minin and friends (2018) Use of machine learning to investigate illegal wildlife trade on social media. DOI: 10.1111/cobi.13104.
Shipping News (academic and ocean policy wonkery)
- We have a budget, and it’s not a complete and utter garbage fire for science. US science agencies set to win big in budget deal.
- This month in the unending debate about fixing peer review:
- Apparently we can just post Facebook rants in peer-reviewed journals, now? Science published a disastrously bad OpEd about science outreach. Science Magazine publishes “opinion” piece targeting a specific student w/ sexist “critique” and then won’t publicly discuss what happened or what they will do about it. So you should definitely go follow Science Sam.
- Maps are good. Make more maps. Making maps of your study sites.
Driftwood (what we’re reading on dead trees)
- Psychic, space-faring dolphins in the midst of an ocean-driven cold war. Interstellar whale brains that commune with Jovian gas-leviathans. It’s a book that’s been called Dostoevsky, but, like, written by pissed off dolphins. Also, one of the dolphins is Jesus. A Deeper Sea by Alexander Jablokov.
Derelicts (favorites from the deep archive)
Feel free to share your own Foghorns, Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Shipping News, Driftwood, and Derelicts in the comments below. If you enjoy Southern Fried Science, consider contributing to our Patreon campaign. For just $5 per month, you can support the SFS Writers Fund, which helps compensate your favorite ocean science and conservation bloggers for their efforts.
