Over 15 years of ocean science and conservation online
After 7 hours of driving (North Carolina is a long state), we have crossed the Virginia border. Our departure from coastal NC was marked, inexplicably, by a flock of wild turkeys on the side of 70. Inconveniently, it also happens to be move in week for several Carolina universities; it was slow going through the Triangle.
The goats are calm, but confused.
The time has finally come. After 11 years in North Carolina, I have finally succumbed to the insatiable human desire to venture beyond the horizon. Tomorrow morning, Amy and I will hitch our worldly possessions to my tough old truck and drive west until we reach the Pacific Ocean. And, because we’re 1/4 of Southern Fried Science, we’ll live blog the entire journey. A few FAQ’s before we go: What are you doing in California? Amy has a post-doctoral fellowship at the California Ocean Science Trust, where she’ll be developing a new citizen science initiative. I will be searching for work once I get there. So, if you’re an employer Oakland or the San Francisco Bay area, and need a crack deep sea ecologist, conservation geneticist, or science communicator, please take a look at my Curriculum Vitae. What will happen to your chickens? The chickens have been adopted by a family who will love them and their eggs for years to come. I’ve said my goodbyes to Poly, Tikka, Olga, and Masala. What will happen to your goats? Luna and Hermione are coming with us. What?
Read More “From Ocean to Ocean: The Great Southern Fried Migration” »
HAPPY FUN SCIENCE FRIDAY.
Let me begin by imploring any readers who are interested in a more ‘Open Ocean,’ to help support our crowd funding initiative – #OpenCTD.
http://www.rockethub.com/projects/26388-oceanography-for-everyone-the-openctd#description-tab
So for a number of years I have been celebrating Fun Science Friday; a mini-holiday that originated years ago when I was in graduate school. Our professor would bring Smarties to class each Friday, and we students would have some fun science exercise before diving into the more intricate nuances of the course. I was thoroughly enamored with FSF, and not just because of those delicious Smarties, and endeavored to spread FSF wherever I went (some places were more receptive than others). I have finally been convinced by the Southern Fried crew to move my rather informal celebration of FSF, where I normally post a fun science fact each Friday, to generating a short blog about what I would normally post. So to all the Southern Fried readers, welcome to Fun Science Friday!!
While Shark Week was raging along, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) approved a new round of shark fishery regulations for public comment. Quite a bit has happened since the last time we covered U.S. shark fisheries here, so it’s time for a bit of a recap before discussing how the latest developments affect sharks and the people who fish for them.
Oceanography for Everyone – The OpenCTD I believe that scientific research should have as few barriers to participation as possible. I believe that not only should the results of scientific research be freely available to the public, but that the tools–software, hardware, and expertise–of science should be made as accessible as possible. In many cases, … Read More “The Ocean belongs to everyone. Shouldn’t we all have access to the tools needed to study it?” »
As Shark Week 2013 comes to a close, I wanted to take a look back at which part of my outreach strategy worked (and didn’t work), as well as what I liked and disliked about Shark Week as a whole. Ever since my “15 important shark conservation and management terms explained with memes” post, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to incorporate more internet humor into a blog post, so here goes…
We’re happy to announce a new experiment in our ongoing effort with casual video adventures. We take short videos from one of our SCUBA diving adventures, watch them together, and do a running commentary about whatever issues, topics, and stories emerge during the video. There’s just two rules – neither of us can have watched … Read More “DiveTracks: because we can’t talk underwater” »
The American Elasmobranch Society, the world’s largest professional organization of shark and ray scientists, has issued a resolution calling on the Associated Press Stylebook and the Reuters Style Guide to retire the phrase “shark attack” in favor of a more accurate (and less inflammatory) wording that is scaled to represent real risk and outcomes. The AP Stylebook and Reuters Style Guides are reference guides for journalists and editors which focus on, among other things, reducing the usage of inaccurate and outdated terminology. The latest AP Stylebook, for example, had more than 90 new or updated entries which include encouraging journalists and editors to a stop using terms like “illegal immigrant“, “ethnic cleansing” and “homophobia”.
“Shark scientists in the United States and around the world have great respect for the integrity and reporting of the Associated Press and Reuters. We hope they will act on this recommendation and update their style guides to ensure that the public gets the most accurate information in the reporting of these incidents,” said Lara Ferry, President of the American Elasmobranch Society, who sent a formal letter to the AP Stylebook and Reuters Style Guide.
Currently, although “shark attack” is associated with an image of a large shark and a human fatality, the phrase is used by the media as a catch-all to describe any encounter between a human and a shark, even those that don’t result in any physical contact whatsoever. Fully 38% of reported “shark attacks” in New South Wales, Australia from 1970-2009 resulted in no injury whatsoever. This is misleading and facilitates a perception among the public that sharks are more dangerous than they really are, a perception which has negatively impacted shark conservation and management policy.
“The accuracy in media reporting of shark bites and different human-shark interactions is especially important during the kinds of tragic periods we have seen this summer. The public deserves the best information to make sure there is no confusion between very serious and fatal shark bites and minor incidents,” said Christopher Neff, a Ph.D. student at Sydney University.
In a recent paper, Neff and Bob Hueter of Mote Marine Lab proposed a scaled labeling typology to describe human-shark interactions. This typology covers the full range of these interactions, including:
Wow! Since we launched the OpenCTD we’ve raised nearly $4,000 to help develop an oceanographic tool the anyone can build. But $4,000 is only 40% of our funding goal, and we’ve got 12 days left to fund the rest of the project. If you believe in open source oceanography, think to tools of scientific research … Read More “Two weeks left to Support the OpenCTD and help us build an oceanographic tool for everyone!” »
Neil Aschliman is an Assistant Professor of Biology at St. Ambrose University by day, a freelance artist by night. He earned his PhD in Biology from FSU by recovering the “Tree of Life” for rays, skates and their relatives, and is broadly trained in vertebrate biology and evolution. His personal website can be found at www.iceandshadows.com.
So mantas aren’t a thing anymore… – paraphrase, David Shiffman’s liveblog of my talk at the recent meeting of the American Elasmobranch Society.
Wow, is that going to require some explanation! Did I steal these guys away under cover of night? Did they pull a “so long, and thanks for all the fish” on us? No, this is a story about the power of naming, and one that may have serious implications for the conservation of these amazing animals and their close relatives.
Human beings love to name things. We do it vigorously and redundantly: a single fish species may be christened with a dozen or more common names by people in different geographic areas, times, or even marketing departments! It helps to have an international-standard system of naming animals to give this enterprise some consistency. It doesn’t matter if you know it as Chilean Sea Bass or the Patagonian Toothfish, people worldwide will be happy to confirm for you that Dissostichus eleginoides is indeed one ugly customer.
This system of precise identification in which scientists apply a formal code to name organisms is called binominal nomenclature (“two-part name”). This is often incorrectly called “binomial” nomenclature (“two number,” a mathematical expression), even by professionals! The first part of the name is the genus, which can apply to between one and many species that are closely related and resemble each other. The second part of the name is the specific epithet, which applies to one and only one species. These names are usually derived from Greek and Latin. For example, Batrachognathus volans translates as “flying frog-jawed” one, an apt appellation for an odd pterosaur from the Late Jurassic.
