Over 15 years of ocean science and conservation online
In this week’s edition of Shark Science Monday, Grant Galland from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography discusses marine protected areas and sharks. If you have a question for Grant, please leave it as a comment below and I’ll make sure he sees it.
As our ancestors transitioned from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society, they had to domesticate the plants and animals we know today as farm life. Corn kernels became larger and more full of starch, cows became more docile, and all farm organisms became accustomed to life in rows or pastures tended by humans. But some of what we eat depends on more than just these plants and animals – example, take beer. A new study in PNAS by Diego Libkind et al. describes the domestication of the microbes and yeast needed to make lagers of old and describes an unwitting process paralleling agricultural domestication.
Read More “Happy Hour Science – Domesticating Microbes for Beer” »
ScienceLIVE will be featured noted marine biologists Dr. John Bruno and Dr. Mark Eakin who will be discussing the state and future of coral reefs. From the website: Coral reefs from Australia to the Gulf of Mexico are some of the planet’s most vibrant ecosystems. They’re also among the most threatened habitats in oceans today. … Read More “Saving Coral Reefs, today at 3 EDT” »
In the last century, humans have made dramatic changes to both local and global ecosystems. Some of these changes have been subtle and remained unnoticed until very recently, while others were so visible and so destructive that their names are indelibly etched into our collective consciousness. Despite a legacy of desolation, many of these places, unsafe and long-abandoned, have made dramatic recoveries. Standing tall, but not alone, among these environmental catastrophes is the melt-down of reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
In this week’s edition of Shark Science Monday, Austin Gallagher of the University of Miami discusses the stress physiology of sharks. If you have a question for Austin, please leave it as a comment below.
After the recent American Elasmobranch Society conference in Minneapolis, Chuck and I hit the Mall of America and the Minnesota Sea Life Aquarium. I was impressed with the quality of the exhibits, their focus on education and conservation, and with the creative use of space (the aquarium is essentially underneath the Mall).
The Minnesota Sea Life Aquarium is a great example of how zoos and aquarium can help promote conservation- Minneapolis is pretty darn far from an ocean, and this facility gives the public a chance to see and learn about some amazing sea creatures. On our behind the scenes tour, the guide showed some shark fins and sea turtle shells that had been confiscated by customs officers and donated for educational purposes. She explained a variety of threats facing our oceans, and how people could help even from somewhere as far from the sea as Minnesota. Additionally, most exhibit signage included the IUCN Red List status of their animals and brief descriptions of what the main threats facing the animals were. I’ve rarely seen a zoo or aquarium have more conservation information on their signs.
Read More “WhySharksMatter and SpinyDag visit the Minnesota Sea Life Aquarium” »
We’ve got Hurricane Irene bearing down on us from the south. It looks like it’s going to make landfall somewhere in the Carolina’s, possibly as a category 4. Thankfully, we’re no strangers to hurricanes down here, so we’re already prepped with an evacuation plan and a very gracious inland host willing to take in us … Read More “So apparently it’s natural disaster week at Southern Fried Science” »
Last week, volunteers monitoring a sea turtle nesting beach on Virginia Key came across a beached lemon shark. They called in scientists from the University of Miami’s RJ Dunlap Marine Conservation program, including myself . Dunlap program director Dr. Neil Hammerschlag decided to film the necropsy to use as an online teaching tool. The end … Read More “What killed this lemon shark? University of Miami scientists perform necropsy to solve this mystery” »
The Okeanos Explorer is diving on the Cayman Rise – the location of the deepest known hydrothermal vent field, and they are broadcasting the ROV feed live, right now. You can be experiencing this: …right now. Go here: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/media/exstream/exstream.html
Meagan Dunphy-Daly is a graduate student at the Duke University Marine Lab studying the effectiveness of marine reserves in protecting apex predators. She also has ongoing research examining bullshark/dolphin interactions in the Neuse River, NC, where she recently caught an 8 foot bullshark.
Well, it’s Shark Week and instead of heading up to the Neuse River to try to track bull sharks, I’m sitting in front of my computer staring at the marine forecast. Right now, we’re under a small craft advisory until tomorrow night and we’re all keeping our eyes on what Tropical Storm Emily is going to do over the weekend. Such is the ever-exciting life of a field biologist. Although there are a fair number of days spent in an office in front of a computer (be it checking the weather, entering data, or hoping that a manuscript will write itself), the days in the field are what make this job so sweet. I’m a graduate student in Dr. Andy Read’s Lab at Duke University and, in addition to my dissertation interest in the effectiveness of marine reserves for apex predators (think sharks, tuna, and billfish), I have the chance to carry out and participate in many other research projects in North Carolina and elsewhere (check out Reny Tyson’s previous posts on our trip to Antarctica). This summer, I’m studying bull shark habitat use in the Neuse River. Andrew joined us for a day of fieldwork last week and, although we didn’t catch a shark on this trip, we caught a big bull shark on the first day of our season the week before.
