Fog Horn (A Call to Action)
- Hurricane Harvey is sitting over the city of Houston, dumping biblical amounts of rain and flooding nearly the entire metropolitan area. There’s lots of great organizations to donate to, but in the immediate aftermath, it’s often best to donate to local relief programs that already have a ground team in place, rather than national groups that will take weeks to build up their infrastructure. I’m a fan of the Texas Diaper Bank and Portlight Inclusive Disaster Strategies, both of which serve communities that tend to be particularly vulnerable during natural disasters.
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
- Dr. Katharine Hayhoe has become one of the most important voices in Climate Change over the last few years. Her latest, I was an Exxon-funded climate scientist, is a sober look at who where the money really goes and who pulls the strings in the climate change denial industry.
- Bandai and Nintendo once made a SONAR that runs on a GameBoy Pocket, and I want one. Has anyone ever encountered one of these rare and wondrous techno chimeras?
Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)
- A new paper (see Lagan, below) discusses what we do and don’t know about the deep sea. It turns out, not much: We Hardly Know Anything About Deep-Sea Life, And Our Ignorance Is Damaging It.
- Deep Sea News is a bit more frank: We don’t know jack about the deep sea.
- Meanwhile, the New York Times celebrates some of the amazing biodiversity in the deep sea: The Deeps Seas Are Alive With Light.
Helicocranchia, a genus of tiny transparent squids. Some have light-emitting cells near their eyes.
Steven Haddock/Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
- 2017 has officially been declare an Unusual Mortality Event for the extremely rare North Atlantic Right Whale.
- Japanese team films fish at deepest-ever depth in Mariana Trench. Motherboard has more: This Adorable Little Creature Is the Deepest Living Fish Ever Seen.
- Futurama: Building scenarios to sustain oceanic ecosystems and fisheries.
- This is an A+ headline: Baby Humpback Whales Whisper To Their Mums Because The Ocean Is Terrifying.
- I love a good shipwreck story. These True Stories Behind the Shipwrecks on Lake Superior Will Give You Goosebumps.
- I hate a bad missing diver story. Burlington diver dies exploring Lake Superior shipwreck.
- Zinke’s recommendations are out, and our National Monuments are in trouble! See National Monuments: “The Teddy Roosevelt Cure” and Zinke Submits National Monuments Review Proposal and Marine monuments legally established by presidents must be preserved.
- Wandering copepods can’t find their way home in acidic oceans.
- Aquaculture and Mariculture could save us (but they won’t). By farming fish in the ocean, the world could far surpass its seafood needs.
Image: Asc1733 via Wikimedia Commons
- Is Your Sunscreen Poisoning the Ocean? Probably, yes.
- Hakai Magazine continues to be the Lord of All Fish Puns: The Foragin’ of Species.
- Yes, that’s not normal. First tanker crosses northern sea route without ice breaker.
- Have you been wondering whether US Navy accidents are suddenly more frequent or just more frequently reported? Unfortunately, they actually are more frequent this year. U.S. Navy Provides Details of Surface Fleet Review In Wake of ‘Disturbing Trend’ of Accidents.
- Creating a League of Citizen Scientists for the Ocean: A playbook for turning administrative headwinds into lasting marine conservation and protection by the inimitable David Lang.
- Do you want to buy a lighthouse in the Chesapeake Bay? I want to buy a lighthouse in the Chesapeake Bay. Let’s all go in on a lighthouse on the Chesapeake Bay!
Lagan (what we’re reading from the peer-reviewed literature)
- Taylor and Roterman (2017) Invertebrate population genetics across Earth’s largest habitat: The deep-sea floor. DOI: 10.1111/mec.14237.
- Machado and friends (2017) Tourism impacts on benthic communities of sandy beaches. DOI: 10.1111/maec.12440.
- Ngugi and friends (2017) Genomic diversification of giant enteric symbionts reflects host dietary lifestyles. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1703070114.
- Supran and Oresekes (2017) Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change communications (1977–2014). DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f.
- Ellis and friends (2017) Environmental management frameworks for offshore mining: the New Zealand approach. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2017.07.004.
- Munger (2016) Tweetment Effects on the Tweeted: Experimentally Reducing Racist Harassment. DOI: 10.1007/s11109-016-9373-5.
Shipping News (academic and ocean policy wonkery)
- The Fisheries Blog has some good advice on how (not to) fail grad school.
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 my Patreon campaign to help us keep the servers humming and support other innovative ocean science and conservation initiatives.