The following is a repost from the old Southern Fried Science WordPress blog. The original can be found here.
I finally had the chance to visit the the legendary Bonehenge. For those of you who aren’t longtime followers of this blog, Bonehenge is Keith Rittmaster’s vision to rearticulate a Sperm Whale skeleton and put it on display at the North Carolina Maritime Museum. We blogged about Bonehenge last year, and raised $200 for the project this summer.
With seafood season in full swing, I thought I’d repost this review of certification programs. I’ve learned lots since writing this article, most notably that the compiled data from the EDF study comes from a huge database of government sources. This gives me more confidence in their truth, but the areas tested are still light on estuaries. Everything else still stands. Please check back at the old site for comments.
Another thought process to add to the many considerations of food ethics: if you choose to eat seafood, which fisheries are sustainable and eco-friendly? For those of us who live on the coast, seafood 
represents local food that supports local businesses and helps make the connection between producer and consumer. So step one, deciding to eat seafood, has been taken. But then what? A number of nonprofits have taken on that burden and created seafood guides and certification to help you as an informed consumer. Only problem is, they sometimes differ in their listings based on what criteria they use and how they weight those criteria.
I’m coming out of my self-imposed July Blog-cation to comment of the events that have transpired over the last two days. If you haven’t been keeping up, Orac at Respectful Insolence has the full story. Long story short – Science Blogs released a new blog, Frontiers in Food, sponsored by PepsiCo and written by PepsiCo employees. They did so without consulting with, or even informing their bloggers ahead of time. The Science Blogger community is largely outraged, and several notable bloggers have quit the network, citing their credibility being compromised.
Just some food for thought – a picture really says 1000 words here. What you may not be able to see is the conservation areas completely covered up by the dots representing hog lagoons.
The following is a repost from the old Southern Fried Science WordPress blog. The original can be found here.
If a 33.5 foot Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus) stranded on your beach, what would you do with it? Leave it to rot? Drag it out to sea? Blow it up? Keith Rittmaster of the North Carolina Maritime Museum decided to do one better.
This blog has never been known for heaping praise on marine mammals, but these creatures are the exception. Sperm whales are extremely strange animals. There are some fantastic online resources available that do a great job covering basic sperm whale biology, so I’d like to skip the intro and talk about some sperm whale features I find fascinating.
Read More “Bonehenge – Community action in science outreach” »