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Charlie astride the bat sculpture at the North Carolina Arboretum.
Conservation, Popular Culture, Science
“How do you study one of the world’s fiercest predators in the wild?” the cover of the “Expedition Great White” DVD screener that National Geographic sent me asked. I was delighted to discover that my sarcastic answer of “very carefully” is exactly what the back cover of the DVD case read! I knew I was going to like this show from that point on, and I was right.
Read More “Check out “Expedition Great White” on the National Geographic Channel!” »
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Charlie, Bluegrass, and that Fried Guy out for a stroll.
Conservation, Popular Culture
We have been and continue to be critical of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Although their goals are admirable their methods are not only ineffective, but in some cases impair the achievement of those goals. With the premier of Whale Wars season 3 tomorrow evening, we’d like to take a moment to highlight the issues we’ve raised concerning the SSCS. Over the last two years we’ve written a number of post summarizing our problems with Sea Shepherd:
- Sea Shepherd – Friend or foe of shark conservation
- Guestpost: In defense of Sea Shepherd by Craig Nazor
- Sea Shepherd FAIL
- What a good conservation organization looks like
Our friends at Deep Sea News and Underwater Thrills have been critical of SSCS, too:
The above links cover many of the issues we have with this organization. The New York Times recently published an excellent breakdown of the Japanese Whaling Industry. Below are our main criticisms of SSCS:
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Two weeks at sea is all some oceanographers get to do all of their fieldwork for the year. Two weeks, give or take a grace day, including whatever Mother Nature has to throw at the ship. Granted, it’s work 24 hours a day, likely running several experiments at a time. But compared to some brands of science, two weeks is barely enough to say you know what system you’re working in, let alone describe ecological processes at work. To me, someone who employs anthropological methods just as often as ecological ones, anything less than a year doesn’t count as fieldwork. I’m not judging; it’s just a difference in philosophy and feasibility. After participating in one of these two week cruises, I am no less in awe that our understanding of the ocean comes from such a philosophy. Achieving solid results requires such a carefully orchestrated dance in order to work, I’m shocked that we got as much out of the cruise as we did.
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Naturally.
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I began my maritime adventure with the statement “I have absolutely no reason to be at sea”. That isn’t entirely true. I decided to join the cruise as a helping hand mostly in order to be able to say that I had been out on the high seas. During the first day or two on board, when people were still learning each other’s names and expertise, I received the initial raised eyebrow as to why a grad student in environmental policy was on the ship. The almost unanimous next response was ‘it’s so good to see a future policymaker understanding what it’s like out here’.
Even though I’m not sure that I will ever be in the position of writing legislation (as opposed to analyzing policies and broader governance structures), it’s nice to know that my two weeks on the Atlantic gained me some professional legitimacy. And since I’m in the business of studying how the creation of scientific knowledge turns into conservation policy, I think it was an important experience to have. One of the biggest issues in environmental policy is how to deal with uncertainty. And a trip at sea certainly yields enough uncertainty to stymie and army of policymakers for decades.
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Charlie checks out a fiddle-head.