Southern Fried Science

Science in the Fleet: The Promise of Technology as a Panacea for Human Impacts

October 7, 2013October 27, 2013 Andrew Thaler

Today marks the release of Fleet: Wide Open, part 2 of my serial maritime science fiction adventure. With half the story revealed, we now see the roll technology plays in both the history and the day-to-day operations of the fleet. Specifically, we see three major technological advances that seem as though they would have been major solutions to the environmental problems facing the fleet, yet somehow, the world continues to fall apart.

In our world and the world of the fleet, we often hold up technological innovation as a panacea for global problems. It’s easy to look towards the next big advancement as the solution to our current woes — from alternative energy sources to groundbreaking trash removal devices — but what is often lost in the hype is the human component. Yes, technology is a necessary component of global environmental solutions. You can even look at the arc of human advancement as one long series of bootstrap-hoists — we need to utilize dirty tech to access environmentally sustainable tech (i.e. you can’t develop the ability to produce solar panels without first harnessing the energy locked in fossil fuels). But technology alone is useless without also changing human behavior. This creates a major problem, as technological innovation is often used as a tool to bypass human behavior entirely, the assumption being that it doesn’t matter what the individual does, so long as the tech is in place to mitigate it.

The horse piles of New York

Around the turn of the last century, New York City was in crisis. Horses, the primary means of transportation for people and products within the city have an unfortunate byproduct — feces, lots and lots of feces. At its peak, more than 60,000 horses were depositing upwards of 500 tones of manure every day. The horse crisis itself was the result of a major technological innovation — more efficient fertilizer based on mass produced phosphate. Where once there was a major economic incentive to collect the manure and resell it as fertilizer, now there was also no incentive. And so, the mountains of feces piled up. It got so bad that one editorial expounded that, by the 1930’s piles of horse manure would stand three stories tall and the city would be awash in an unending tide of feces.

Fleet: Wide Open now available in the Amazon Kindle Store!

October 6, 2013October 27, 2013 Andrew Thaler

Popular Culture

“The sea is big. The sea is cruel. She takes more than she gives. That’s how it’s always been.” Fuel is the lifeblood of the fleet and it is running out. It has been months since the crew of Miss Amy brought home a catch big enough to feed the fleet. With fuel rationed, there … Read More “Fleet: Wide Open now available in the Amazon Kindle Store!” »

TGIF: 250+ videos from the deep sea for you to enjoy

October 4, 2013October 27, 2013 Andrew Thaler

InDEEP and the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative have compiled a massive database of more than 250 online videos featuring ecology, biology, oceanography, and conservation of the deep ocean: Deep-sea Online Videos. There’s a ton of videos in there to explore (especially if you find yourself with an abundance of shutdown related free time). Here’s just one … Read More “TGIF: 250+ videos from the deep sea for you to enjoy” »

Updated covers for Fleet: The Reach and Fleet: Wide Open

October 1, 2013October 27, 2013 Andrew Thaler

Popular Culture

After receiving some great feedback on my first foray into indie publishing, I’ve decided to redo the covers for Fleet, my maritime science fiction serial. Take a look and let me know what you think. And, of course, check out Fleet: The Reach on Amazon’s kindle store. Fleet: Wide Open will be available on Monday!

Your Ocean Science Shutdown Open Thread

September 30, 2013October 27, 2013 Andrew Thaler 6 Comments

Blogging

Are you an ocean scientist suffering from government shutdown? Are you furloughed for the foreseeable future? Do you have friends, colleagues, co-workers, collaborators, rivals, or sworn enemies feeling the sting? You better believe we do to. Here’s your open thread to talk about how the government shutdown is affecting you and affecting the ocean. Here … Read More “Your Ocean Science Shutdown Open Thread” »

Climate Change is Moving Fish Around

September 30, 2013October 27, 2013 Chuck Bangley 2 Comments

Uncategorized

Back in the day, I worked as an intern at Rhode Island Marine Fisheries, where my job was basically to provide general field work help with whatever survey needed an extra pair of hands (yes, it was an awesome job). One of these was a beach seining survey looking at juvenile fishes using Rhode Island’s coastal salt ponds as nursery habitat. Among the usual silversides, mummichogs, and juvenile flounder, two of the ponds were also home to entire schools of something that I was only familiar with due to having relatives in Virginia: spot. These little Scianids, a member of the same family as Atlantic croaker and red drum, are caught in droves in the waters of Virginia and the Carolinas but traditionally have been rare north of the Chesapeake Bay. They were one of the more common species we caught in these two Rhode Island salt ponds, and occurred so consistently that we could actually observe them growing over the course of the summer. It isn’t unheard of for stray tropical fishes to get swept into Narragansett Bay on Gulf Stream eddies, where they’re either collected by aquarists or die during their first winter. However, these were populations of spot that we were seeing. I don’t know if these fish survived their first winter or have come back since I moved down to North Carolina, but even at the very beginning of my interest in fisheries ecology I knew this was odd.

Farming Salmon in Hiddenfjord, Faroe Islands

September 30, 2013September 30, 2013 Bluegrass Blue Crab 5 Comments

Conservation

If you treat yourself to a salmon dinner in Manhattan, that delicious fish most likely came from the Faroe Islands. Should you be scratching your head and trying to remember your geography, you’re not alone. Yet, this tiny country in the North Atlantic is one of the world leaders in salmon aquaculture. While in the Faroes, I had the good fortune of a tour of a site run by the company Hiddenfjord in the town of Vestmanna by Jogvan Egholm. Since aquaculture is still a new and developing field, it’s always nice to see how things are done. Once I learned of the market connections to the US, however, I began to consider the tour the story of our food as well.

Salmon happily jumping for food in their pen. Soon to be on a plate near you. Credit: Andrew Thaler

The salmon we visited were destined for the US and China, countries with the best market price. Recently, we’ve had salmon on the brain after a controversial taste-test by the Washington Post revealed testers preferred frozen, farmed salmon. Bottom line of the controversy: understand where your fish come from and the environmental and health implications of certain production styles. Not all farming is created equal – Europe does a much better job using salmon from their native range than us westerners. So here’s a story of a fish. After fully grown in the Faroes, they’ll be shipped to the UK by boat and flown the rest of the way by plane. Smaller fish stay in the European market. But it starts with an egg…

An apology for my post on activists’ response to hotel guests eating a shark

September 30, 2013October 27, 2013 David Shiffman 7 Comments

Blogging

davesquare

Last week, in response to a viral image of hotel guests eating a shark, I wrote a post explaining why I felt that the response from many in the activism community was disproportionate to the degree of the problem represented by that photo (and how other more serious problems got much less attention). Based on feedback I received from people who have read the post, the points I was trying to make were lost among my exasperated, and sometimes hostile, tone. This is my fault as a writer and not yours as a reader. I am writing this follow-up post to both briefly explain what I was trying to say and to apologize for not saying it well. Additionally, like all blog posts, this represented a personal opinion and not any sort of official consensus statement from the scientific community, though I often consult with leaders of the scientific community when writing posts.

This was the first blog post in a very long time that I wrote in the proverbial “heat of the moment,” in the midst of a long argument with activists on Facebook and twitter. The discussion went way outside of the boundaries of polite conversation, and I received numerous personal attacks and a few threats. The hotel owners and the people who ate the shark in the photo also received plenty of threats, though all of the threatening tweets seem to have now been deleted. In short, I was exasperated. I was in “argument mode” and not “educator mode”.

This was also the first blog post in a very long time that I published the day it was written. I normally like to leave a post alone for a day or two after writing it before looking it over again. I will often have other Southern Fried Science writers or scientific colleagues read posts before I publish them. That did not happen in this case. I say all of this not to excuse my error, but to explain it.

Additionally, I was not saying that people eating a large Threatened species is totally insignificant. Many shark populations are being overfished, which is a big problem, and consumption is part of that problem. The point I tried to make was that he level of attention that this incident received was disproportionate to the level of threat it represented, that other issues that are much more serious get much less attention, and that some of the tactics that activists used in this case were inappropriate and even harmful.

People felt that I was mocking, belittling, or insulting activists who felt that a photo of resort guests eating a shark represented a major conservation issue. That was not my intent and I truly apologize for presenting myself in that way.

A photo of people eating a shark is upsetting activists for some silly reason

September 26, 2013September 30, 2013 David Shiffman 42 Comments

Conservation, Science

davesquare

Photo via activist Andy Gray on Facebook, original photographer unknown

A photo of a single thresher shark being served for dinner at a resort is making the rounds among shark conservation activists. The photo, shown on the right, has been shared more than 12,000 times. A petition written in response to the image (in French) has over 1,000 signatures. The story has even made it into the mainstream media. The original caption refers to this scene as “shameful and disgraceful”, while follow-up comments refer to it as “shocking,” “sickening,” “disgusting,” “beyond words,” “shameful,” and “barbaric.” 12,000 shares and a 1,000 signature petition is significantly more outrage than I’ve ever seen for any issue involving a single individual shark. Why, exactly, are activists so upset about it?

It can’t simply be reaction to the death of a single shark. If you believe that no sharks should be eaten ever (or that no animals should be eaten ever), that’s a perfectly valid belief system. You should be (and likely are) aware, however, that the overwhelming majority of the world, including almost all governments, the majority of the scientific community, and many NGOs, completely disagree with you. People have encountered photos of individual sharks being killed before, or pictures of sharks on a menu or for sale in grocery stores, and not reacted this strongly.

It likely isn’t the species of shark in question, either. This shark is either a pelagic thresher or a common thresher, and while both are considered Vulnerable to extinction by the IUCN Red List, they’re common components of shark fisheries. Thresher fisheries in U.S. waters are considered well managed (and that population is only “Near-Threatened”). Some of the comments say that “sharks are an endangered species,” which is nonsense, as there are over 500 species of sharks and most are not even Threatened. Regardless, a single individual animal doesn’t impact the population in any significant way.

Comments, Trolls, and Moderation

September 26, 2013October 28, 2013 Andrew Thaler 2 Comments

Blogging

It was an early winter’s morning in 2009. The participants of Science Online 2009 were slowly, wearily emerging from the haze of the night before — the reputation that marine science bloggers had livers of steel was not yet a stone-carved edict. We sat down for a session, I don’t remember which, that was ostensibly about managing commenters. This was they heyday of Web 2.0, the nascent social media ecosystem was in its early successional stages — no longer larval, but still bursting with untapped potential. Blogs were still king. There were earnest debates about whether Twitter or FriendFeed was a better platform.

Someone stood up, I don’t remember who, but they were certainly qualified, and made the startling (thought paraphrased) statement: “If you moderate comments, your legally liable for anything said in those comments. You’re only protected if you let all comments through.” This is not true, but it was certainly the mentality of the 2000’s, where comment threads were fast and loose. Newspapers took this advice to heart to such a degree that even the spam was left exposed to the world. Even today, articles on your local news site may boast more comments about how much money Freddy Fakename makes working from home than actual responses to the article.