Southern Fried Science

A slimehead by any other name should never be on your plate

October 26, 2011 Andrew Thaler 6 Comments

Science

Orange Roughy - image by FishBase artist Robbie Cada

Slimehead is not a word you would expect to find on the menu of a fancy restaurant. Like dolphin*, toothfish*, goosefish*, mudbug*, hog*, and gizzard fish*, slimeheads have undergone a bit re-branding over the last few decades to make their name as palatable as their fillets. Enter the Orange Roughy, a dull, uninspired name that captures nothing of the grandeur of Hoplostethus atlanticus and ignores the defining characteristic of these deep-sea fishes.

What does Orange Roughy mean to you? Well, it’s probably orange, and I guess roughy means it might be rough, or something. The name is pretty uninformative. But slimehead! Slimehead tells you quite a bit about this creature, and leads to some interesting ecological questions. Why is it’s head covered in slime? What does the slime do? How is the slime contained in its head?

Western Australia’s sharks need your help!

October 23, 2011 David Shiffman 14 Comments

Conservation, Science

great-white-shark_559_600x450 — Great White Shark. Image courtesy animals.NationalGeographic.com

Last week, I wrote about three current shark conservation issues, including a proposed shark cull in Western Australia. Barbara Wueringer was able to deliver her letter to Western Australian government officials on Friday, and thanks to your help, it was signed by more than 100 scientists and conservationists from all over the world.

Yesterday, however, another swimmer was killed by a shark in Western Australian waters. George Thomas Wainwright, 32, was a native of Texas who had been working on a boat in Australia. This attack, which is the third in the last two months, has resulted in renewed calls for a “shark cull”. The proposed plan would involve both an attempt to kill the specific shark responsible for killing Mr. Wainwright and a more general killing of all the sharks in the area. It is believed that the shark that killed Mr. Wainwright was a great white shark, also known as a “white pointer” in Australia.

RJD Twitter teach-ins start Monday at 1 with overfishing

October 21, 2011 David Shiffman 3 Comments

Science

My lab, the RJ Dunlap Marine Conservation Program at the University of Miami, will be hosting a series of Twitter teach-ins on marine biology and conservation topics. Each teach-in will cover a topic in a series of Tweets, including links to photos and videos, as well as NGO reports, blog posts, and scientific papers which people … Read More “RJD Twitter teach-ins start Monday at 1 with overfishing” »

Climate change deniers continue to be wrong, science words with friends, and support science in the classroom

October 21, 2011October 21, 2011 Andrew Thaler 4 Comments

Science

The bliggityblogsphere has been abuzz with recent finding by the Berkeley Earth Project that independently confirm that global climate change is real. From the BBC:

The Earth’s surface really is getting warmer, a new analysis by a US scientific group set up in the wake of the “Climategate” affair has concluded.

The Berkeley Earth Project has used new methods and some new data, but finds the same warming trend seen by groups such as the UK Met Office and Nasa.

source

Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has a nice, in depth write-up, that provides some caveats missing from most of the press releases: New independent climate study confirms global warming is real.

Culling, bycatch, and loopholes: three shark conservation petitions need your signatures!

October 19, 2011October 27, 2011 David Shiffman 9 Comments

Conservation

While we can all celebrate the recent passage of California’s shark fin ban, sharks still need your help! The government of Western Australia is planning a “shark cull”, intentionally killing large numbers of threatened species to reduce the probability of shark attacks. The Marine Stewardship Council is considering granting “sustainable” status to a fishery with huge shark bycatch issues (an issue we originally covered last year). The European Union, one of the largest shark fishing entities in the world, still has large loopholes in their shark fishing policy. In the past few weeks, I’ve been contacted by conservation organizations working on these issues, and they need our help! Please consider signing the petitions listed below, and please consider telling interested friends and colleagues. As I’ve written many times before here on Southern Fried Science, I don’t support just any petition, but these are all from legitimate people and organizations and I have chosen to sign all three.

Happy Hagfish Day!

October 19, 2011 Andrew Thaler

Uncategorized

It’s finally here, that momentous day where, once a year, we come together to celebrate the strange, weird, gross, and outright ugly in the animal kingdom. It’s Hagfish Day! Check out WhaleTimes for some outstanding educational material on the beauty of the ugly, including an interview with yours truly on a pair of exceptionally cool … Read More “Happy Hagfish Day!” »

The Importance of Word Choice: Terms with multiple meanings for scientists and the public

October 18, 2011January 10, 2024 Andrew Thaler 18 Comments

Uncategorized

If you haven’t seen the excellent post on Mountain Beltway – Words matter – you should head over there and take a look. The post brought up some interesting ideas about word choice, and how the common definition of a word may convey a different meaning than the scientific definition. For science communicators, this may lead to confusion … Read More “The Importance of Word Choice: Terms with multiple meanings for scientists and the public” »

Are you ready for Hagfish Day?

October 17, 2011October 17, 2011 Andrew Thaler 1 Comment

Popular Culture

Ratty would be proud.

Just enough about “Certainly More Than You Want to Know About The Fishes of The Pacific Coast” to pique your curiosity

October 14, 2011October 17, 2011 Andrew Thaler 2 Comments

Science

There is a website floating around the interwebs entitled “So you want to be a marine biologist?” that most future marine biologists who came of age in the early 21st century have encountered. The sage page of advice is followed up with “So you want to be a marine biologist, the revenge“. Reading through these two essays, one might come to the conclusion that their author, Dr. Milton Love of the University of California, Santa Barbara, should compose a voluminous tome to the fishes of the Pacific coast. Which is exactly what he’s done. Welcome to Certainly More Than You Want to Know About The Fishes of The Pacific Coast: a postmodern experience.

Despite it’s self-aware title, this book is far more than just an exhaustive guide to the fishes of the Pacific, though it certainly is that. The highly detailed taxonomic descriptions are rich with humor and insight into the ecology, behavior, and physiology of, if not each species, than each genus or species complex. Interspersed among the taxa are descriptions of prominent Pacific researchers, anecdotes from a lifetime of work on the water, stories by people who lived, worked, and fished these species, and the occasional poem, song, or limerick. Somehow, these disparate units manage to complement each other in a way that makes you want to read what is essential a taxonomy textbook cover-to-cover.

The Curse of Gold: Dimensions of Injustice in Gold-Mining Communities

October 11, 2011October 5, 2011 Bluegrass Blue Crab

Uncategorized

esquel mine — Protests at Esquel, one of the communities examined in the article. Thanks articles.riderdownload.com

Buried within the depths of Andean geology lie small seams of gold tempting worldwide investors. These money-lined pockets aid the development of new extraction methods that dissolve gold from the mountains using cyanide. Cyanide is a metabolic poison, shutting down cellular respiration. In the wake of cyanide leaching stand piles of rubble and contaminated rivers where forested mountains and their people once stood. Surprisingly, Andean residents are willing to entertain the possibility of gold mining by this poisonous method, but oppose current mine development on environmental justice measures. A recent study by Urkidi and Walter in the journal Geoforum documents the emergence of justice narratives from mining conflicts in the Andes and predicts impacts on future development planning.