Skip to content

Southern Fried Science

Over 15 years of ocean science and conservation online

  • Home
  • About SFS
  • Authors
  • Support SFS

Snot Bots for whale health, critical dolphins, lobster considerations, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: January 15, 2018.

Posted on January 15, 2018January 19, 2018 By Andrew Thaler
Uncategorized, Weekly Salvage

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

  • 2018 is almost certainly going to be a record year for FOIA requests. Learn how to do them right and get results thanks to Pro Publica: I’ve Sent Out 1,018 Open Records Requests, and This Is What I’ve Learned.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Dr. Michelle LaRue is off to Antarctica and you can follow along through the magic of Twitter. #AccioAntarctica!

Screen cap of linked tweet.

  • The Cinematic Legacy of Jacques Cousteau: The man, the myth, the legend, and his persistent influence on screen.
  • Lake Michigan’s Latest Ice Ball Outbreak Was Incredible. Earther has the best GIF game in town.
Ice balls and slush waves.
Paul May via Storyful.

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

  • Underwater robots had a a pretty good week: The Scientists, Robots Cracking the Mysteries of the Southern Ocean and Robot subs are uncovering what makes underwater volcanoes blow.
    • Shameless plus for my Instagram account, where you can see lots of fresh adventures with OpenROV Trident.
  • ‘Eco-colonialism’: Rift grows between Indigenous leaders and green activists. Conservation has a colonialism problem, and it needs to get it’s shit together.
  • Connecting Conservation and Culture in Oceania: The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument promotes biological and cultural connectivity between Micronesia and Polynesia.
  • It Snowed in the Sahara and the Photos Are Breathtaking.
snow in the sahara
Just taking a stroll in the snow in the Sahara Desert nbd. Photo: Zinnedine Hashas.
  • More deep-sea mining news: Nautilus Minerals arranged a bridge loan to keep it solvent for a few more months. The protest blogs have a slightly different take: Failing seabed miner Nautilus Minerals continues on life support. EMTV, Papua New Guineas major news station, covered the developments around the future mine site: Solwara 1 Hydrothermal Vents: Sources of Riches from the Deep Blue Sea.
  • Space Kelp! Or Kelp from Space! Something Kelpy, something spacey. Deep Sea News.
  • Dolphins are, unsurprisingly, deep thinkers. And they’re plotting against us, every single day.
  • Climate Change Turns One of Largest Sea Turtle Populations Female. Turtles and reptiles have temperature based sex determination. That’s bad news in a warming world.
  • Sea Level Rise Is Unlocking Decades-Old Pollution: Salt water creeping upland could release legacy fertilizer into the Chesapeake Bay. Related, obviously: Toxic Thaw Syndrome,
    melting permafrost carries unknown dangers for Arctic marine life.
  • I’ve been trying to come up with a better dad joke than Ocean’s Oil-leven, but I just can’t. Singapore Uncovers Large Oil Heist at Shell’s Biggest Refinery.
  • Meanwhile: Environmental Disaster Looms as Oil Tanker Burns Off China’s Coast.
  • Switzerland Outlaws Boiling Lobsters Alive. Consider the Lobster.
Lobster, not boiling.
Billy Hathorn/Wikimedia Commons
  • Feathers on birds of paradise contain light-trapping nanotechnology that makes some of the deepest blacks in the world.
  • Save the galaxy, eat a porg. The Last Jedi’s porgs may be a serious threat to the galaxy’s ecosystems.

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

  • Pirotta and friends (2017) An Economical Custom-Built Drone for Assessing Whale Health. DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2017.00425.
  • Bergshoeff and friends (2017) Using underwater video to evaluate the performance of the Fukui trap as a mitigation tool for the invasive European green crab (Carcinus maenas) in Newfoundland, Canada. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.4223.
  • Miller and friends (2017) An Overview of Seabed Mining Including the Current State of Development, Environmental Impacts, and Knowledge Gaps. DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2017.00418.
  • Vic and friends (2017) Dispersion of deep-sea hydrothermal vent effluents and larvae by submesoscale and tidal currents. DOI: 10.1016/j.dsr.2018.01.001.
  • Esposito and friends (2017) Exceptional discovery of a shallow-water hydrothermal site in the SW area of Basiluzzo islet (Aeolian archipelago, South Tyrrhenian Sea): An environment to preserve. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0190710.
  • Kamat (2017) Dispossession and disenchantment: The micropolitics of marine conservation in southeastern Tanzania. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2017.12.002.

And one final one, just for fun:

  • Bartneck and Moltchanova (2017) LEGO products have become more complex. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0190651.

Driftwood (what we’re reading on dead trees)

  • Are you considering the lobster? Have you considered considering the lobster? Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace.
  • Take an extended trip to the South Pole. South Pole Station: A Novel by Ashley Shelby.

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.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon

Related

Tags: Antarctica china colonialism cousteau deep-sea mining dolphins fish traps FOIA hydrothermal vents kelp Lake Michigan LaRue LEGO lobsters Nautilus Minerals Oceania pollution porgs robots Sahara sea level rise sea turtles sex change Singapore snot-bot snow South Pole southern ocean space Switzerland Tanzania Trident

Post navigation

❮ Previous Post: Fat fish, snapping shrimp, and the best books about the ocean: Thursday Afternoon Dredging, January 11, 2018
Next Post: Dear Shark Man, can rubbing a shark’s snout cause blindness? ❯

You may also like

Science
A selection of primary literature on the ecology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents in Manus Basin
August 7, 2012
Weekly Salvage
LarvaBots, turning the tide on captive dolphins, horror fish from the deep sea, ARA San Juan found, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: November 19, 2018.
November 19, 2018
#DrownYourTown
Science in the Fleet: What would your hometown look like with 80 meters Sea Level Rise
October 16, 2013
Open Science
I made a ridiculous Glowing Wall Mount for my OpenROV Trident!
October 26, 2018

Recent Popular Posts

Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine is a fake documentaryShark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine is a fake documentaryAugust 10, 2014Michelle Jewell
Deep-sea Mining: It’s science fiction, until it isn’t.Deep-sea Mining: It’s science fiction, until it isn’t.May 14, 2025Andrew Thaler
My "Follow ocean science and conservation experts on Bluesky and Instagram" assignmentMy "Follow ocean science and conservation experts on Bluesky and Instagram" assignmentNovember 19, 2024David Shiffman
Our favorite sea monsters – Ningen (#4)Our favorite sea monsters – Ningen (#4)September 7, 2010Andrew Thaler
Here's what I teach my students about finding jobs in marine biology and conservationHere's what I teach my students about finding jobs in marine biology and conservationApril 10, 2024David Shiffman
Alberta, Canada is the proud owner of the largest man-made pyramid on the planetAlberta, Canada is the proud owner of the largest man-made pyramid on the planetOctober 16, 2012Andrew Thaler
What can the funniest shark memes on the internetz teach us about ocean science and conservation?What can the funniest shark memes on the internetz teach us about ocean science and conservation?November 8, 2013David Shiffman
I turned my woodshop into a personal solar farm.I turned my woodshop into a personal solar farm.June 21, 2021Andrew Thaler
What is a Sand Shark?What is a Sand Shark?November 12, 2017Chuck Bangley
We Were Wrong About Megalodon: lessons learned from 10 years combating fake science in popular mediaWe Were Wrong About Megalodon: lessons learned from 10 years combating fake science in popular mediaMarch 4, 2024Andrew Thaler
Subscribe to our RSS Feed for updates whenever new articles are published.

We recommend Feedly for RSS management. It's like Google Reader, except it still exists.

Southern Fried Science

  • Home
  • About SFS
  • Authors
  • Support SFS


If you enjoy Southern Fried Science, consider contributing to our Patreon campaign.

Copyright © 2025 Southern Fried Science.

Theme: Oceanly Premium by ScriptsTown