Southern Fried Science

How to pitch an Ocean Kickstarter for us to review

October 12, 2015October 12, 2015 Andrew Thaler

Blogging

I put this up as a closer on our last Ocean Kickstarter selection, and am posting here as a standalone for anyone who may have missed it.

Email me at southernfriedscientist@gmail.com with the subject heading: Ocean Kickstarter: Your Project. This isn’t limited to Kickstarter, projects on IndieGoGo, RocketHub, GoFundMe, or any other site are eligible for an Ocean Kickstarter of the month. We will review based on three criteria:

1. Is it sound, reasonable, and informed by science?

2. Is there a clear goal, timeline, and budget; and are they partnering with the people who have experience hitting those marks?

3. Do some of the parties involved have a successful record with other crowdfunding projects and experience delivering on rewards.

Watch my Nerd Nite talk, “everything I needed to know in life I learned from a shark”

October 12, 2015October 12, 2015 David Shiffman

Science

On Thursday, October 8th, I presented at Nerd Nite Miami. A YouTube link to view my talk, “everything I needed to know in life I learned from a shark,” can be found below. CAUTION: the talk contains some NSFW language. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D7XJreU-Ao&feature=youtu.be Thanks to Ta-Shana Taylor for filming my talk!

Ocean Kickstarter of the Month: Meet Norman the Nurse Shark

October 6, 2015October 6, 2015 Andrew Thaler

Education, Science

In this book kids learn about sharks and the oceans as they travel with Norman on his adventure through the Bahamas.

Sharks4Kids First Book: Meet Norman the Nurse Shark

Sharks4Kids is an educational non-profit based in Florida that produces curricula and media designed to teach primary-school age kids about sharks and shark conservation. They also conduct Skype-in-lessons, classroom visits, field trips, and shark tagging camps. For their first Kickstarter campaign, they’re producing a book, targeted at elementary-school students.

Sharks matter, according to my co-author who uses the handle WhySharksMatter, and ocean outreach literature targeting younger students is often light on solid educational content. Online media is great, when available, but not everyone has reliable access to the internet. One of the campaign goals is to distribute this book to schools in the Bahamas, which is a major benefit to a region where persistent, high-bandwidth internet is not always a given.

Onward to the Ocean Kickstarter criteria!

1. Is it sound, reasonable, and informed by science? Sharks4Kids has a solid tract record producing entertaining and scientifically literate content that appeals to a younger audience. I have no doubt that Norman the Nurse Shark, though necessarily anthropomorphized, will provide fact-based, pseudoscience-free information about nurse sharks.

Fun Science FRIEDay – Dude, I’m Glowing!

October 2, 2015 Kersey Sturdivant

Uncategorized

Happy Fun Science FRIEDay! After a brief hiatus, due to life, hoping this installment represents the regular…err, semi-regular, occurrence of FSF. So this hit the interwebs pretty big earlier this week, the first documented reptile to glow. That honor belongs to the Hawksbill a sea turtle, observed first by David Gruber, of City University of … Read More “Fun Science FRIEDay – Dude, I’m Glowing!” »

Robots Versus Aliens – Anticipatory conservation in technology-drive initiatives

September 30, 2015September 29, 2015 Andrew Thaler

Conservation, Science

This week, I and a team of marine ecologist, explorers, and ocean technologists published Robots as vectors for marine invasions: best practices for minimizing transmission of invasive species via observation-class ROVs. This paper, conceived and largely produced during the ROV2PNG Marine Science Short Course in Papua New Guinea, represent the current best practices for minimizing or eliminating the spread of invasive species via portable, low-cost underwater robots.

Zebra mussels observed via OpenROV. Photo by author.

Species invasion, particularly in the ocean, is a huge problem. Invasive species are ruthlessly good at out-competing native fauna. Without any natural predators, they can flourish, causing massive, irreparable damage to marine ecosystems. As scientists, explorers, and conservationist, we have to be proactive in ensuring that our actions don’t negatively impact the ecosystems we’re trying to save. Our guidelines are simple, but effective, and, most importantly, easy to follow.

Educate yourself about species invasions generally and specifically about current issues in the area you’re working.
Inspect your gear.
Soak your gear in freshwater between dives.
Soak your gear in weak bleach between expeditions.
Avoid moving your equipment between geographic regions, when possible.

Technology can be a powerful tool in the aid of conservation. Around the world, people are using low-cost robotics to count elephants, detect poachers, protect tortoises, even seek-and-destroy invasive sea stars. As I discuss over at Motherboard, these robots are a transformative component of 21st century marine science and conservation, they fundamentally reshape the way we interact with the ocean. And with the explosive success of the latest OpenROV launch, there are about to be a lot more robots in the water. This is a good thing. The more eyes we have in the sea, the more people that actively contribute to ocean exploration, the more people with access to the tools necessary to explore, study, and understand our oceans and how they are changing, the better off we will all be.

Polar bear feast on seabird eggs is reason we can’t have nice things

September 29, 2015 Michelle Jewell

Conservation

Several images circulate on the internet that capture the plight of rapid Arctic climate change, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. This image, for me, is the most alarming:

Keeping your robot invasions under control.

September 28, 2015 Andrew Thaler

Conservation, Education, Science

It’s been a big week for papers here at Southern Fried Science. This morning, Amy, myself, William (of Bomai Cruz fame), and Dominik and Erika of OpenROV published our guidelines on minimizing the potential for microROVs to act as invasive species vectors in Tropical Conservation Science. The abstract: Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) present a potential risk … Read More “Keeping your robot invasions under control.” »

Congressional Republicans hold Ocean Science Hostage Over Failed Anti-health Care Bill

September 25, 2015September 25, 2015 Andrew Thaler 1 Comment

Conservation

All summer and into the fall, Congressional Republicans have been attempting to pass a bill to defund Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides critical health care needs to women across the country. After the latest bill failed, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised to put forth a “clean bill” that would avoid an October government shutdown. With news breaking today that Speaker John Boehner will quit his post at the end of October and fresh predictions the the shutdown is now unlikely, you might think that this recent quixotic quest has foundered, at least for the moment.

You would be wrong.

S.764 is originally An Act to reauthorize and amend the National Sea Grant College Program Act, and for other purposes. This was the bill that authorized funding for the National SeaGrant program, one of the flagship marine science, conservation, and fisheries agencies in the United States. Funding for Sea Grant is a truly bipartisan issue. Both sides see the value in continuing this support for ocean issues. How bipartisan? In an era of increasingly schismatic politics, the SeaGrant reauthorization bill passed the senate with unanimous support.

If you wanted to read S.764 today, however, you would be met with this:

Resolved, That the bill from the Senate (S. 764) entitled “An Act to reauthorize and amend the National Sea Grant College Program Act, and for other purposes.”, do pass with the following Amendment: This Act may be cited as the “Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015”

source

Fish tales: Combating fake science in popular media

September 23, 2015September 22, 2015 Andrew Thaler

Uncategorized

Yesterday, after months of waiting, David and my magnum opus on our efforts to stem the tide of fake documentaries was, at last, made available online: Fish tales: Combating fake science in popular media. What role should scientist play in correcting bad science, fake science, and pseudoscience presented in popular media? Here, we present a case … Read More “Fish tales: Combating fake science in popular media” »