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Tag: Aquaman

The Science of Aquaman: The Complete Anthology

Posted on December 21, 2018December 21, 2018 By Andrew Thaler
Popular Culture

We have written a lot about Aquaman over the last 10 years. With our favorite ocean master is finally getting his big screen debut, we’ve collected everything Aquaman and Southern Fried Science in one place. Enjoy!

It’s the Aquaman Trailer!

First, the brutal takedown that started it all and its follow-ups:

  • The horrifying physiological and psychological consequences of being Aquaman
  • The importance of being Aquaman, or how to save the Atlantean from his briny fate
  • Epilogue to the Return of the Science of Aquaman: Costume Palettes at Depth

Read More “The Science of Aquaman: The Complete Anthology” »

#JacquesWeek returns! Falling glaciers, fish that don’t eat plastic, sharks and the women who study them, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: July 16, 2018

Posted on July 16, 2018July 15, 2018 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

  • Jacques Week is coming! Have no fear. Our annual answer to Shark Week’s ocean madness will be back for a forth season!

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Saving the Vaquita was always about understanding human cultures and how social structures intersect with the ecosystem. Investigation reveals illegal trade cartels decimating vaquita porpoises.

Fishermen with an illegal haul of totoaba. Image courtesy of Elephant Action League.

  • Keep beating this drum until it sinks in: Plastic Straw Bans Leave Out People With Disabilities.
  • Climate change may be a boon for archaeology: Scorching Heat Wave Reveals Signs of Ancient Civilization in the UK.

Photo: Toby Driver (RCAHMW)

Read More “#JacquesWeek returns! Falling glaciers, fish that don’t eat plastic, sharks and the women who study them, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: July 16, 2018” »

A new Gulf oil spill, opposition to deep-sea mining, DIY drop cameras, and more! Massive Monday Morning Salvage: October 30, 2017

Posted on October 30, 2017October 29, 2017 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

I’ve been away for 2 weeks, so it’s a super-massive edition of the Monday Morning Salvage!

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

  • There’s still an unimaginable amount of work to do in Dominica and across the Caribbean. Support the Rebuild Dominica Hurricane Relief fund or any of the other funds from our list: How to help our island colleagues in the wake of total devastation.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • This is such a cool story: A Trail of Rocks Traces Historical Steamship Routes. We can track old steamship routes from rocks scraped out of the furnaces and tossed overboard.
  • Former Papua New Guinea Attorney General attacks deep sea mining project. They always pick pictures for these articles that don’t show how much life is right around the vents.

Sampling SMS under the sea Photo: Nautilus Minerals

  • Whose ecological footprint is bigger: Medics, economists, or environmentalists? Spoilers: conservationists still have an impact, but they sure ain’t number 1.

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

  • There’s a fresh oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s pretty darn huge:
    • Coast Guard Responding to 300,000 Gallon Crude Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico.
    • Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill May Be Biggest Since 2010.
    • New Estimate Doubles the Size of Last Week’s Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
  • Some fun from Deep Sea News: When real-life marine biologist and mom goes to sea, she takes the octonauts with her.

  • This is fine: Report on U.S. Marine Sanctuary Oil Drilling Sent to White House, Not Released to Public. This is totally fine: Trump Administration Proposes Largest Oil and Gas Lease Sale in U.S. History.
  • Alaska’s Oyster Farmers Are Filling an Acidification-Driven Void. The state’s oyster farming industry is gaining ground as growers elsewhere struggle. From Hakai Magazine, which is great.
  • Nature is one of the most under-appreciated tools for reigning in carbon. From Anthropocene, which is fast becoming my favorite environmental print magazine. Sorry, Orion.
  • Thousands of penguin chicks starve in Antarctica.

Hey, Andrew, how about you give us at least *some* good news today? Ok, fine.

Read More “A new Gulf oil spill, opposition to deep-sea mining, DIY drop cameras, and more! Massive Monday Morning Salvage: October 30, 2017” »

The importance of being Aquaman, or how to save the Atlantean from his briny fate

Posted on October 26, 2017 By Andrew Thaler
Popular Culture

This is an update and repost of our follow-up article on the science of Aquaman, revised and expanded. 


Aquaman has an unpleasant lunch. From New 52 Aquaman #1
Aquaman has an unpleasant lunch. From New 52 Aquaman #1 DC Comics.

Yesterday, I challenged you to consider how the greatest hero in the DC Universe would fair if forced to survive in the real world. The result was a hypothermic, brain-dead lump of jerky with brittle bones, forced to suffer through constant screams of agony even as he consumes sea life at a rate that would impress Galactus. In short, the ocean is a rough place, even for Aquaman.

But this is Southern Fried Science, and we’re not here to trash the greatest comic book hero of all time without offering some solutions, too. I went back to my comic books and my textbooks to assemble an Aquaman with a suite of evolutionary adaptations that would allow a largely humanoid organism to rule the waves, trident triumphantly raised.

Essential assumptions

Many people commented that Aquaman is not human, he is Atlantean, and thus is not bound by human limitations. This is wrong on at least two counts. First, in most iterations, Aquaman is half-human, which means that Atlanteans must be similar enough to humans, both physiologically and evolutionarily, to produce a viable hybrid. While there may be some minor differences between us and the children of Atlantis, functionally speaking, we’re the same. Second, these are not issues that plague only humans. Whales get the bends, amphibians freeze to death, fish need to regulate their internal osmolality. These are the problems inherent in being alive in the ocean, Atlantean or otherwise.

Read More “The importance of being Aquaman, or how to save the Atlantean from his briny fate” »

The horrifying physiological and psychological consequences of being Aquaman

Posted on October 25, 2017 By Andrew Thaler
Popular Culture

This is an update and repost of our seminal article on the science of Aquaman, revised and expanded. 


Aquaman. DC Comics.
Aquaman. DC Comics. A rational response to seal poaching is to lob a polar bear at the aggressors.

Aquaman may not be everybody’s favorite superhero, but since his creation in 1941, he has been among DC’s most enduring icons. During the Golden Age of comics, he held his own against Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Silver Age Aquaman was a founding member and eventually leader of the Justice League. His powers, tied to the ocean, forced writers to create a compelling, complex hero with explicit limitations. In the early days, when Superman’s strength was practically infinite, and Batman’s brilliance was unmatched, Aquaman had to become more than just a superhero, he had to be a person.

If Superman existed to show us how high the human spirit could fly, and Batman to show us the darkness within even our most noble, Aquaman is here to show us the world that triumphs in our absence. The ocean is not ours, and no matter how great our technology, we will never master it as we have mastered land. Aquaman has. Through this lonely ocean wanderer, we can experience a world that we can never truly command. In many ways, Aquaman was stronger than the Man of Steel and darker than the Dark Knight. He knew loneliness that the orphan and the alien exile never could.

Even though Aquaman had to fight harder, endure the jokes of other, less interesting heroes, and find relevance in an ecosystem hostile to the humans that had to empathize with him, Aquaman was never forced to confront the truly horrifying consequences of life in the ocean.

The penetrating cold

Aquaman is, for all intents and purposes, a marine mammal. With the exception of a healthy mane in later incarnations, he is effectively hairless. As a human, we would expect his internal body temperature to hover around 99°F, or about 37°C. Even at its warmest points, the surface temperature of the ocean around the equator is only about 80°F/27°C. At the poles, ocean temperature can actually drop a few degrees below freezing. In the deep sea, ambient temperature levels out around 2 to 4°C. The ocean is cold, and water is a much better thermal conductor than air. Warm blooded species have evolved many different systems to manage these gradients, including countercurrent heat exchangers, insulating fur, and heavy layers of blubber. This is what a marine mammal that can handle cold waters look like:

Elephant Seal. NSF, photo by Mike Usher

Aquaman is not just a human, he is an atypically uninsulated human. If the man has more than 2% body fat, I’d be shocked. In contrast, warm-water bottlenose dolphins have at least 18 to 20% body fat. Anyone who SCUBA dives knows that, even with a 12 millimeter neoprene wet suit, after a few hours in 80°F water, you get cold. Aquaman, lacking any visible insulation, should have slipped into hypothermia sometime early in More Fun Comics #73. He is built for the beach rather than the frigid deep.

Jason Momoa is not a man blessed with an over-abundance of “bioprene”.

Read More “The horrifying physiological and psychological consequences of being Aquaman” »

#IAmSeaGrant, Octopus Beats Dolphins, Deep-sea Mining, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: May 29, 2017

Posted on May 29, 2017May 29, 2017 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

  • #IAmSeaGrant. Despite being one of the most bipartisan research programs in the United States, with a huge return on investment for coastal communities and businesses, Sea Grant is under attack from the current administration. Deep Sea News has been collecting stories from marine researchers who’ve benefited from Sea Grant programs: Ben Wetherill, Nyssa Silbiger, and Christy Bowles.
  • 27 National Monuments are under review by the Department of the Interior. Our Nation Monuments are our National Treasures. Don’t let them be sold to the highest bidder! Submit formal public comments on the DOI Monument Review and make your voice heard.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Zach Weinersmith has perfectly capture the essence of what it is to be a marine biologist in the United States right now. Pure. Abyssal. Horror.

  • The Deep Sea News crew is at sea, and Dr. Craig and his team did a hilarious, fascinating, informative Ask Me Anything over at Reddit. Worth reading the whole thread, even though it’s done for now.

Read More “#IAmSeaGrant, Octopus Beats Dolphins, Deep-sea Mining, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: May 29, 2017” »

Terraforming Mars on Earth, giant larvaceans, conservation jobs, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: May 8, 2017

Posted on May 8, 2017May 8, 2017 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

  • The time to save the EPA is now! The EPA is seeking public input on the new administrations approach to environmental regulations. They are required to seek public input. They are required to respond to public input. Go tell them how you feel. Public comments close May 15. Here’s the docket with instructions on how to comment: Evaluation of Existing Regulations. We’ve even prepared a script for you.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  •  On a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic, a terraforming project a century-and-a-half in the making is underway. A 150-year-old experiment on the remote Ascension Island may help us green Mars. Can it also help us save Earth?

Seabirds on Ascension Island. Photo by Clare Fieseler.

  • It also happens to be longtime friend of Southern Fried Science Clare Fieseler’s first major story for National Geographic, so go follow her on twitter.

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

  • Women have a crucial—yet often overlooked—role in fisheries. The Invisible Fishing Fleet by Ilima Loomis at Hakai Magazine.
  • “What do you do when you’re a graduate student and you’ve been sexually assaulted by the PI of a very exciting paleoanthropological site?” An incredibly powerful piece by Holly Dunsworth: In case this helps you: This happened to me while I was trying to become a paleoanthropologist.
  • The general theme of this site appears to be ‘humans are terrible, robots are awesome’. Staying on brand: In a first, deep sea robots get a close look at giant larvaceans, a key player in the biological carbon pump.
  • Deep-sea mining is really heating up. Locals threaten armed campaign against PNG seabed mine.
  • In the Pacific Northwest, the diligence of citizen scientists is shedding light on the lives, and deaths, of seabirds. Drawing Meaning from Death, One Seabird at a Time by Larry Pynn at Hakai.
  • This is a pretty great demonstration of how statistics can be used to mislead: Generating Datasets with Varied Appearance and Identical Statistics through Simulated Annealing.

Read More “Terraforming Mars on Earth, giant larvaceans, conservation jobs, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: May 8, 2017” »

Release the Karaqan! How does Aquaman’s latest foe stack up against real ocean giants?

Posted on January 31, 2014January 31, 2014 By Andrew Thaler 1 Comment on Release the Karaqan! How does Aquaman’s latest foe stack up against real ocean giants?
Popular Culture

Aquaman #27. DC Comics.
Aquaman #27. DC Comics.

It’s been more than 2 months since we last discussed the patron saint of Southern Fried Science, the one and only Aquaman. The Atlantean übermensch has a new lead writer, Jeff Parker, who’s teamed up with Aquaman veteran Paul Pelletier to produce an engaging and visually stunning story. After the epic conclusion to Throne of Atlantis, Aquaman is off on an entirely new adventure. Unfortunately, this new quest puts our hero in the path of a gargantuan guardian of ancient Atlantis, the Karaqan!

The Karaqan is big, but just how big is it? How does the Karaqan stack up against living sea creatures? Could an arthropod ever get as big as the Karaqan? Most important, if Aquaman does successfully slay the Karaqan, just how much Old Bay would we need to steam it?

Read More “Release the Karaqan! How does Aquaman’s latest foe stack up against real ocean giants?” »

Everything is better with Aquaman

Posted on October 8, 2013October 27, 2013 By Andrew Thaler
Popular Culture

And that includes teen drama parody series. Especially when it promises some nerdy marine science in-jokes. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3kpKNXLdCQ “You know what I love about members of the Chordata phylum? Nothing!” You and me both, Aquaman, you and me both.

Was Aquaman quietly saving the world during Man of Steel?

Posted on June 17, 2013October 27, 2013 By Andrew Thaler 2 Comments on Was Aquaman quietly saving the world during Man of Steel?
Popular Culture

Man of Steel was a thoroughly entertaining superhero movie and a serviceable Superman movie. Fortunately, the last son of Krypton was not the only super-powered being saving the world, as the king of Atlantis was hanging out, cleaning up ol’ Kal-El’s mess.

It has been 98 days since our last Aquaman is Awesome post. We’re due.

Arthur Curry’s presence is first felt near the beginning, while a scruffy Clark is trying his best impression of Jack Kerouac auditioning for Deadliest Catch. Pre-Supes can’t help but hurl himself at a burning oil rig, rescue the roughnecks, and then keep derrick from collapsing on a hapless helicopter. Explosion. We cut to some Kansas flashbacks. Mr. Soupy floats in the water. Pan up and, inexplicably, there’s a couple of humpback whales just chilling, amidst the carnage of a collapsing oil rig,  having a casual sing-in. No doubt those whales are having a chat with a rogue Atlantean, swimming somewhere off screen. He’s probably making sure that the Caped Clam Chowder doesn’t ruin his handy work.

Because, obviously, Aquaman was the one who knocked out that oil rig. I said he was saving the world, not saving humanity. That’s Crab Bisque’s gig.

Read More “Was Aquaman quietly saving the world during Man of Steel?” »

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