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In this week’s edition of Shark Science Monday, Claudia Li of Shark Truth discusses the Happy Hearts Love Sharks wedding contest, which aims to reduce the consumption of shark fin soup at wedding banquets. If you have a question for Claudia, leave it as a comment below and I’ll make sure she gets it.
After our sustainability month, it becomes easy to ask for a plan to become more sustainable. On a national scale, this becomes demand for a blueprint or recipe for how to organize society successfully in the future along sustainability principles. The idea of a given trajectory of development goes back to Walt Rostow, who described development around the world up to 1960, ending with the emergence of a first, second, and third world. More modern theorists realize that the world is not linear, however.
The SeaMonster has posted a lengthy e-mail discussion among several key players in fisheries science regarding Ray Hilborn’s recent “Let us eat fish” Op-Ed in the New York Times. The discussion is, quite frankly, epic, and I encourage anyone interested in fish, ecology, fisheries, or seafood to give it a read. Forum on fish, food, … Read More “Forum on fish, food, and people at the SeaMonster” »
This week at the International Marine Conservation Congress, a great resource was introduced. Science to Action, an affiliate of Conservation International, released a dual volume called “A scientist’s guide to influencing decision making /a decision maker’s guide to using science”.
Read More “Science to action: A scientist’s guide to influencing decision making” »
This morning, Plymouth Marine Laboratory launched a new public service announcement about ocean acidification entitled “Connecting science, industry, policy and public”. According to the Official MPA Blog:
Depending on your view of phylogenetics, a recent publication in Nature reporting the discovery of a new kingdom-level branch on the tree of life, basal to Kingdom Fungi, is either a major revision of our current view of taxonomy or completely unsurprising and expected. While we mostly refer to the four kingdoms within Domain Eukarya as Protista, Plantae, Fungi, and Animalia, it’s understood by the scientific community that Protista is essentially a catch-all category, not a true clade, for eukaryotes that don’t quite fit into the other three groups. While this is convenient for organization, it fails to adequately express the diversity of protists. Four kingdoms is a useful system, but there’s no reason why diversity at the kingdom level couldn’t be much higher. A strict cladist could create hundreds, if not thousands of kingdoms from Protista alone.
I’m on my way to the 2nd International Marine Conservation Congress in Victoria, British Columbia. This gathering, organized by the Society for Conservation Biology, brings together leading scientists and conservationists from around the world.
Read More “Off to the International Marine Conservation Congress!” »
The wildfire that ignited in Dare County last week is still burning, as many coastal residents were reminded last night when the wind changed and brought smoke inland. Fortunately, the incident command is reporting that the fire is more than 50% contained, has not reached the town of Stumpy Point, and did not penetrate to … Read More “Short update on the North Carolina Wildfire and Red Wolves” »
Question: If your elected officials fail basic taxonomy, promote anti-science curriculum, and consistently attempt to undermine the fundamental underpinning of all biology, what happens when they start trying to legislate from this flawed view of reality?
Read More “Florida Senate fails basic biology, accidentally outlaws sex.” »
