Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

• The women fish sellers of West Africa, a great video from China Dialogue.

• How smart are octopuses? So smart! For Smart Animals, Octopuses Are Very Weird.

Jetsam (what we’re reading from around the web)

• Chemical analysis of the shells of long-lived North Sea ocean quahogs unveils hundreds of years of environmental change. A 450-Year Record of North Sea Herring, Pried from Clams
• High stakes for China as WTO fishing subsidies deadline looms
• Neoline Selects Shipyard to Construct Modern Sail-Powered Cargo Ship
• This week in our impending climate catastrophe:
  • The Gateway Protecting the Arctic’s Oldest Sea Ice Has Collapsed Months Ahead of Schedule
  • But don’t worry, capitalism will save us! Oil Companies in Alaska Refreeze Melting Permafrost to Keep Drilling and World’s First Battery-Powered Cruise Ship Sets Sail for the Arctic.
• Sperm Whale found on Krabi beach had digested plastic bottles.
• This is a wild story: Russia Says Fourteen Russian Sailors Killed in Submarine Accident. The “secret” submarine was likely the AS-12, a Soviet-era nuclear research sub designed to be Russia’s response to the US’s NR-1.
• Japan scrubs ‘research’ from its whaling ship as it returns to commercial hunting and Do people in Japan actually want commercial whaling to resume after three decades?
• How the Traditional Japanese Art of Fish Printing Inspired a Modern Art Form.

Lagan (what we’re reading from the peer-reviewed literature)

• Theodoridis and friends (2019) The role of cryptic diversity and its environmental correlates in global conservation status assessments: Insights from the threatened bird’s‐eye primrose (Primula farinosa L.). DOI: 10.1111/ddi.12953.
• Cruz-Castán and friends (2019) A possible new spawning area for Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus): the first histologic evidence of reproductive activity in the southern Gulf of Mexico. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.7187
• Rafiq and friends (2019) OpenDropOff: An open‐source, low‐cost drop‐off unit for animal‐borne devices. DOI: 10.1111/2041-210X.13231

Driftwood (what we’re reading on dead trees)

• LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking.
• Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World by Bruce Schneier.
• The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life by by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski.

So it’s a nice, light week of feel-good pleasure reading.

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