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Smart phones are worse than you think, SeaWorld takes a dive, this week in deep-sea mining, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: April 9, 2018

Posted on April 9, 2018April 8, 2018 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

  • Stop raising awareness already (and start translating information into action).
  • Scott Pruitt still has a job [As of 16:59 on 4/8/2018 ~Ed.]. A Running List of Wild Shit Scott Pruitt Hasn’t Been Fired For (Yet).
  • What to up you outreach skills? Sign up for Andrew Lewin’s Podcasting for Environmental Communications course.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Smart phones. As you know I have a love/hate relationship with tech and the resources needed to fuel our increasingly demanding hardware. Now, we’ve got the most clear picture yet of the impact of smartphones on the environment and it’s not pretty.
    • Smartphones Are Killing The Planet Faster Than Anyone Expected.
    • Smartphones are warming the planet far more than you think.
GIF by Anthony Antonellis

The Levee (A featured project that emerged from Oceandotcomm)

  • Knitting *and* environmental justice? Sign me up! Stitching Hope for the Coast: Creative pieces that celebrate coastal optimism for Louisiana.

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

  • This is a stunning rundown of one of the world’s worst maritime disasters: “The Clock Is Ticking”: Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades.
The search lasted for seven days and covered more than 180,000 square miles of ocean.
Illustration by Yuko Shimizu.
  • These Water Protectors Won’t Let Arrests Stop Them From Fighting the Bayou Bridge Pipeline.
  • I’m heading back to Saipan this week to teach students and teachers about underwater robotics! Local students to learn about ocean exploration using robots.
  • This week in robots to save the ocean:
    • More gear, underwater gliders to be used in ongoing effort to save right whales.
    • Northern California divers battle to save abalone — with a giant sea-urchin vacuum.
    • World’s First Autonomous Shipping Company Established in Norway.
  • No surprise here: SeaWorld San Diego attendance takes steep dive in 2017.
  • Speaking of reducing waste, finding new uses for old equipment is a great way to approach the problem on a personal level. This video of all the things you can make with an old treadmill is fantastic.
  • No thanks. After Worst Hurricane Season Ever, 2018 Will Be Above Average.
  • This week in deep-sea mining:
    • Nautilus Seafloor Production Vehicle launched.
    • Solwara development funds trickle in.
    • Groups prepare for seabed mining hearing in Wellington.
  • China Is Definitely Winning the World’s Clean Energy Race.
  • Why Whales Got So Big. It’s often said that the ocean releases them from the constraints of life on land. It’s actually the opposite.
  • SPAAAAACE. Tracking Ocean Plastic Pollution From Space.
  • From oceanbites: Why is Antarctic Sea Ice Growing?
March (end of summer in the southern hemisphere) Antarctic sea ice extent anomalies from 1979-2012 showing an overall increase (NSIDC via Wikimedia Commons)
  • It always weirds me out that we talk about geoengineering as if it weren’t something we’re already engaged in at a massive scale without any real control. But also: Any Plan to Geoengineer the Planet Must Include the Global South.
  • Carbon emissions of lobster and shrimp outstrip chicken and pork—and sometimes even beef.
  • Oh Florida! New Florida law lets beachfront property owners kick people off of public coasts.

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

  • de Vos and friends (2018) New Determination of Prey and Parasite Species for Northern Indian Ocean Blue Whales. DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2018.00104.
  • Belkhir and Elmeligi (2018) Assessing ICT global emissions footprint: Trends to 2040 & recommendations. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.12.239.
  • Jenkins and friends (2018) A New Miocene Whale-Fall Community Dominated by the Bathymodiolin Mussel Adipicola from the Hobetsu Area, Hokkaido, Japan. DOI: 10.2517/2017PR0006.
  • Dixson and Jones (2018) Influence of prior residents on settlement preferences in the anemonefish, Premnas biaculeatus. DOI: 10.1007/s00338-018-1676-z.
  • Kelly (2018) ‘I Need the Sea and the Sea Needs Me’: Symbiotic coastal policy narratives for human wellbeing and sustainability in the UK. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2018.03.023.

Shipping News (academic and ocean policy wonkery)

  • The NSF GRFP problem continues.
  • This is fire: The Scientific Paper Is Obsolete.

Driftwood (what we’re reading on dead trees)

  • Finally, There’s a Book About Which Animals Fart and it’s Does It Fart by blog friends Dani Rabaiotti, Nick Caruso, and Ethan Kocak.

Feel free to share your own Foghorns, Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Shipping News, Driftwood, and Derelicts in the comments below. If you enjoy Southern Fried Science, consider contributing to our Patreon campaign. For just $5 per month, you can support the SFS Writers Fund, which helps compensate your favorite ocean science and conservation bloggers for their efforts.

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Related

Tags: action anemone Antarctica awareness blue whales carbon china deep-sea mining El Faro fart Florida geoengineering hurricanes knitting lobster maritime miocene NSF GRFP OpenROV plastic podcasting poop robots Scott Pruitt seaworld shrimp smartphones south space treadmills water protectors whalefall whales

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