Southern Fried Science

Donald Trump secures his legacy as the worst ocean president in American history.

January 11, 2021January 12, 2021 Andrew Thaler 1 Comment

Uncategorized

Donald F. Trump hates sharks. We learned that in 2013, when, during an entirely uncontroversial discussion about shark conservation foundations on Twitter, the would-be President of the United States of America blocked a small cohort of marine scientists.

Gracing David Shiffman and myself with a timeline blissfully free of his insufferable Tweets for eight years was the only good thing he has ever done for the ocean.

Initially, it appeared as though Trump’s war on the oceans would take a backseat to his other social, judicial, and environmental atrocities. Though a troubling selection for a host of reasons, Wilbur Ross’s appointment as Secretary of Commerce was seen as a relatively non-threatening move. His letter to NOAA staff, reassuring them that his department would continue to follow best-available science, was met with praise. His initial leadership appointments received bipartisan support.

It is clear now in hindsight, that that initial optimism was intensely naïve.

3 kid-friendly STEAM electronics projects that harness NOAA’s massive public databases

January 4, 2021January 4, 2021 Andrew Thaler

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This is the winter of finding as many good, educational projects to keep our kids as occupied as possible. If you’re anything like me, you probably have a stack of assorted electronics in various stages of disrepair, which is great for your hardware hacking dads and moms, but kids need projects with a little more structure and, especially for the younger ones, a lot less soldering.

We can’t build open-source CTDs every day.

Fortunately, the awesome folks at Adafruit have built up an absolutely massive collection of electronics projects using just about every component you can imagine. I’ve culled through the archive to find three kid-friendly (projects that don’t require soldering or involve particularly risky components) ocean and weather projects that take advantage of NOAA’s publicly available databases to help students learn a little bit about electronics and the natural world.

All of these projects were built with the help of my kiddo (age four), require no soldering or electronics skills to start, involve just enough coding to stay interesting, and use Adafruit’s CircuitPython ecosystem, which is fairly easy to learn. Adafruit does a great job compiling detailed instruction for every project. These can all be completed in a lazy afternoon.

Beyond Batteries: exploring the demand for scandium and tellurium from the deep ocean

December 17, 2020December 11, 2020 Andrew Thaler

Science

This article originally appeared in the October/November 2020 issue of the Deep-sea Mining Observer. It is reprinted here with permission. For the latest news and analysis about the development of the deep-sea mining industry, subscribe to DSM Observer here: http://dsmobserver.com/subscribe/ For the last decade, next-generation batteries have been the motivating force for the deep-sea mining industry. The … Read More “Beyond Batteries: exploring the demand for scandium and tellurium from the deep ocean” »

The United States moves towards exploration and exploitation of critical mineral resources in the deep ocean.

December 14, 2020December 11, 2020 Andrew Thaler

Science

This article originally appeared in the October/November 2020 issue of the Deep-sea Mining Observer. It is reprinted here with permission. For the latest news and analysis about the development of the deep-sea mining industry, subscribe to DSM Observer here: http://dsmobserver.com/subscribe/ Since the signing of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the creation of … Read More “The United States moves towards exploration and exploitation of critical mineral resources in the deep ocean.” »

Sharks, Squalene, and a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine

October 16, 2020January 4, 2021 Catherine Macdonald

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A bluntnose sixgill shark (*Hexanchus griseus*). Photo credit: *NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer*.

Hi, friends at Southern Fried Science!

You’ve probably seen in the media lately that there’s been a lot of coverage about whether sharks are being killed for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. With an awesome undergraduate co-author, I’ve tried to gather some facts about what is happening (or might happen) and what it means. You can read a preprint of that work here, or read on for a short FAQ in plain English.

Hot air for windmills, oceans get layered, and North Korean ghost ships – What’s up with the Oceans this Week

September 30, 2020September 30, 2020 Andrew Thaler

News

Nothing but hot air. Trump bans windmills. The President made bemused news last week during his oddly partisan attempt to ban offshore oil in several key states (though for some reason, seismic testing in those states continue, making it seem less like a ban and more like a request to “stand by”). Unsurprisingly, the offshore … Read More “Hot air for windmills, oceans get layered, and North Korean ghost ships – What’s up with the Oceans this Week” »

Tear gassing fish, new NOAA chief, and Facebook’s flop – What’s Up With the Oceans this Week?

September 23, 2020September 23, 2020 Andrew Thaler

News

Tear gas is bad for fish. Surprising no one, if you unlawfully unload tons of tear gas into a peaceful crowd of protestors in order to create chaos as a precedent for state violence, that tear gas will eventually find its way into drains and all drains lead to the ocean. And that is bad … Read More “Tear gassing fish, new NOAA chief, and Facebook’s flop – What’s Up With the Oceans this Week?” »

How anglerfish hack their immune system to hang on to a mate

September 18, 2020September 17, 2020 Andrew Thaler

Science

This article originally appeared in the August/September 2020 issue of the Deep-sea Mining Observer. It is reprinted here with permission. For the latest news and analysis about the development of the deep-sea mining industry, subscribe to DSM Observer here: http://dsmobserver.com/subscribe/

When you live in the darkness of the abyss, finding a partner is hard and keeping a partner is even harder. Deep-sea anglerfish, one of the iconic ambassador species of the deep ocean, have found a novel solution to this problem–dwarf males are sexual parasites that latch onto the body of the much larger female anglerfish and then physically fuse to their partner, becoming permanently attached to the point where they share a circulatory and digestive system.

Parasitic dwarf males are uncommon, but not unheard of, throughout the animal kingdom. Osedax, the deep sea bone eating worm, also maintains a harem of dwarf males in a specialized chamber in their trunk. But few species, and no other vertebrates, go to quite the extremes of the anglerfish. And with good reason.

Vertebrate immune systems have a long shared history. The Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) is a suite of genes shared among all gnathostomes–the taxonomic group that contains all jawed vertebrates, from fish to fishermen. It creates the proteins which provide the foundation for the adaptive immune system, the core complex which allows bodies to tell self from no-self, detect pathogens, and reject non-self invaders. Suppressing the MHC seriously inhibits a vertebrate’s ability to fight off infection.

Incidentally, not all deep-sea anglerfish have parasitic dwarf males, and the species most often presented as a type specimen in the popular press, the humpback anglerfish Melanocetus johnsonii, is one of several that do not have permanently attached parasitic dwarf males. M. johnsonii males are free-swimming throughout their life, they’re just small and clingy.

The climate denial industry in full swing, 5 storms rage across the Atlantic, and Orcas seek vengeance – What’s up with the Oceans this week?

September 16, 2020September 16, 2020 Andrew Thaler 1 Comment

News

Denial Incorporated. Over the weekend, the Administration announced the appointment of David Legates, an anti-science activist embedded in the climate denial industry. Legates will answer directly to acting NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs. Expect to see Legates making the media rounds downplaying the impact of climate change on the occurrence of more frequent and powerful tropical … Read More “The climate denial industry in full swing, 5 storms rage across the Atlantic, and Orcas seek vengeance – What’s up with the Oceans this week?” »

Great Whites get down to business, the Ocean Cleanup flounders, and a livestock carrier goes down – What’s up with the Ocean this week?

September 9, 2020September 8, 2020 Andrew Thaler

News

Frisky business for Great White Sharks. For only the second time since western scientists began studying the ocean, Great White Shark mating has been documented in the wild. Shark sex is infrequently observed in the wild, and this fisherman’s observations can provide invaluable insight in the lives and loves of this iconic species. The Ocean … Read More “Great Whites get down to business, the Ocean Cleanup flounders, and a livestock carrier goes down – What’s up with the Ocean this week?” »