Skate saunas, clone armies, deep news from deep-sea mining, an ocean of plastic, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: February 12, 2018.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

• Attack of the clones! A Pet Crayfish Can Clone Itself, and It’s Spreading Around the World!

• One of the take-home points in the talk I gave last Friday is that we barely know anything about the services hydrothermal vents provide to the rest of the ocean ecosystems. Deep-sea hydrothermal vents are nurseries for skates.

Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)

• This week in Deep-sea Mining:
  • Nautilus Granted New Exploration License; Includes New Targets
  • Minister should listen to the people on Experimental Seabed Mining
  • Seabed Mining – from Raglan To Papua New Guinea

• This week in ocean plastics:
  • Scientists Watch Ocean Plastic Hotspots Form in Real Time.
  • How Microplastics Are Contaminating Seabirds in Remote Regions of Alaska.
  • The Queen (of England) declares war on plastic after David Attenborough documentary.

• Appreciate seafood? Climate change isn’t your friend.
• Fewer Vultures Could Mean a Lot More Dead Things.
• Hacked at Sea: Concerns Grow Over Lax Cybersecurity for Ships, Ports.
• The way the world catches fish defies all economic logic.
• Folks, don’t touch the coral: Tourist’s mermaid pose incites wrath over coral damage. 

• Lobster Emoji/s make the cut! Maine senator claws his way to lobster emoji victory. Soon Puffin and Anglerfish.

Lagan (what we’re reading from the peer-reviewed literature)

• Brost and friends (2018) A model-based solution for observational errors in laboratory studies. DOI: 10.1111/1755-0998.12765.
• Boetius and Haeckel (2018) Mind the seafloor. DOI: 10.1126/science.aap7301.
• Vera-Escalona and friends (2018) Past, present, and future of a freshwater fish metapopulation in a threatened landscape. DOI: 10.1111/cobi.13093.
• Johnston and friends (2018) A simple molecular technique for distinguishing species reveals frequent misidentification of Hawaiian corals in the genus Pocillopora. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.4355.
• Salinas-de-León and friends (2018) Deep-sea hydrothermal vents as natural egg-case incubators at the Galapagos Rift. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-20046-4.
• Niner and friends (2018) Deep-sea mining with no net loss of biodiversity – an impossible aim. DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2018.00053.
• Weaver and friends (2018) Environmental Risks of Deep-sea Mining. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-60156-4_11.
• Cruz and friends (2018) Estimating common dolphin bycatch in the pole-and-line tuna fishery in the Azores. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.4285.
• Mullineaux and friends (2018) Exploring the ecology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents in a metacommunity framework. DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2018.00049.

Shipping News (academic and ocean policy wonkery)

• Mote Aquarium rebirth planned near I-75, helping City Island campus advance science & ‘blue economy’.
• National Science Foundation warns sexual harassment will jeopardize researchers’ grants.

Driftwood (what we’re reading on dead trees)

• Tales of an Ecotourist: What Travel to Wild Places Can Teach Us About Climate Change by Mike Gunter.

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