Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

• Protect the Outer Continental Shelf! Last week, the president announced a plan to open up significant portions of the outer continental shelf for oil and gas exploration. Call you representative! The public comment period opens today and runs through August 17. We’ll have a template script prepped for your use by the end of the week.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

• Deep-sea mining. It’s closer to happening now than ever before, and scientists, conservationists, and ocean stakeholders are very concerned.

• Can deep-sea mining avoid the environmental mistakes of mining on land? As an industry, probably not.
• Experts Warn that Seabed Mining Will Lead to ‘Unavoidable’ Loss of Biodiversity. And check below for the primary source, co-authored by several leaders in deep ocean science.

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

• Social issues are always, inevitably, ocean issues. The Men Who Catch Your Lobsters Are Self-Medicating with Heroin.
•  A $78-million experiment aims to reinforce the rapidly eroding coastline, while avoiding the ecological damage common with other nourishment schemes: In the Netherlands, a Better Way to Rebuild the Beach.
• 9 Amazing Examples of Sea Life Street Art From Around the World.

• Lionfish are trickier than you think. The trouble with lionfish control from Anthropocene.
• USS Fitzgerald – Stop, Analyze, Dissect And Let’s Figure Out What Went Wrong.
• Me gusta que oceanbites está haciendo blogs en español. Los tiburones y otros depredadores oceánicos dominantes: Aliados improbables al combatir el cambio climático.
• SeaWorld Stock Sinks Amid Federal Probes; Care of Key Orca Kasatka Debated.
• Our oceans contain enough energy to power the planet—if we could just get our hands on it. More great stuff from Hakai Magazine.
• Great #SciComm from the Great Lakes, with tons of great outreach pros to follow at The Fisheries Blog.
• In Alabama, climate change and poor infrastructure provide hospitable conditions for diseases typically found in the developing world: In the American South, an Inequity of Diseases.
• Cyber Security at Sea – Microsoft XP on Carriers, Hacking Tridents & Spoofing GPS from gCaptain.
• Fireproofing the Arctic at oceanbites.

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

• McClain (2017) Practices and promises of Facebook for science outreach: Becoming a “Nerd of Trust”. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2002020.
• Gibert and friends (2017) The ecological consequences of environmentally induced phenotypic changes. DOI: 10.1111/ele.12797.
• Oriol and friends (2017) Abrupt changes in the composition and function of fungal communities along an environmental gradient in the High Arctic. DOI: 10.1111/mec.14227.
• Bisconti and friends (2017) Revision of “Balaena” belgica reveals a new right whale species, the possible ancestry of the northern right whale, Eubalaena glacialis, and the ages of divergence for the living right whale species. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.3464.
• Brady and friends (2017) Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1618923114.
• Ikeuchi and friends (2017) Non-bleached colonies of massive Porites may attract fishes for selective grazing during mass bleaching events. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.3470.
• Van Dover and friends (2017) Biodiversity loss from deep-sea mining. DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2983.

Derelicts (favorites from the deep archive)

Past interviews and articles I’ve done on the impact of deep-sea mining:

• Undark: Living With Deep-Sea Mining.
• Nautilus: We Are About to Start Mining Hydrothermal Vents on the Ocean Floor.
• Beyond the Edge of the Plume: understanding environmental impacts of deep-sea mining.
• One-fifth of all known hydrothermal vents are threatened by deep-sea mining.
• A selection of primary literature on the ecology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents in Manus Basin.
• VentBase – securing the conservation of deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems.
• Mining the Deep Sea: what’s it worth?
• Rumors from the Abyss: visions of a future without deep sea conservation.

Feel free to share your own Foghorns, Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Driftwood, and Derelicts in the comments below. And, of as always, if you enjoy Southern Fried Science, consider contributing to my Patreon campaign to help us keep the servers humming.