Getting your kids started in conservation technology: a quick guide for parents who have no idea where to begin.

Southern Fried Science has been a bit dormant for the last year, so first, a re-introduction:

I’m Andrew Thaler, I’m an ocean scientist, and I make weird tech things.

Ten years ago I inherited an old mechanical tide gauge from a lab cleanout. For some bizarre reason, I thought: what if, instead of tracking the rising and falling tides in the Beaufort Inlet, it tracked the waxing and waning of conversations about sea level rise on Twitter. And thus, the Sea Leveler was born. 

In a lot of ways, the Sea Leveler was the precursor of things to come. It was exhaustively documented and released as an open-source project on GitHub. It merged the digital with the physical, creating an object that allowed you to connect an online conversation to the real-world environment through repurposed technology. It was weird. And it was fun. 

The Sea Leveler itself was passed on to a good friend and champion of ocean outreach, but its legacy lives on in the plethora of projects to follow: Drown Your Town, Dolphin Vision, the reStepper, Turtle Borg, and, of course, the OpenCTD

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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.

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

LarvalBot gently squirts the coral larvae onto damaged reef areas. Credit: QUT Media

LarvalBot gently squirts the coral larvae onto damaged reef areas. Credit: QUT Media

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We Robot, a horrible hagfish massacre, deep, delicious sandwiches, fish slime harvests, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: September 10, 2018.

Foghorn (a call to action)

The U.S. is turning a significant portion of Micronesia into live fire and bombing ranges to train Marines. It has plans to completely take over one island for this purpose and has control of two-thirds of another island.

If people in the U.S. mainland understood the military’s plan for Micronesia they might be alarmed. But this is really happening to U.S. citizens living in America’s territories.

(source)

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

The Levee (news from LUMCON)

LUMCON’s DeFelice Marine Center, flooded, as seen from a dormitory balcony. (Photo: Courtesy of LUMCON)

LUMCON’s DeFelice Marine Center, flooded, as seen from a dormitory balcony. (Photo: Courtesy of LUMCON)

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Gregarious gars, surprising crocs, mustachioed monkeys, ocean wilderness, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: July 30, 2018

Logo for Monday Morning Salvage.

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

A gar wearing a red cap.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

 marine biologist Melissa Cristina Márquez

Marine biologist Melissa Cristina Márquez

The Gam (conversations from the ocean-podcasting world)

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I built a head-mounted LiDAR array that lets you see the world like a dolphin via vibrations sent through your jaw.

I’m Andrew Thaler and I build weird things.

Last month, while traveling to Kuching for Make for the Planet Borneo, I had an idea for the next strange ocean education project: what if we could use bone-conducting headphones to “see” the world like a dolphin might through echolocation?

The author wearing a head mounted LiDAR array, looking very pensive.

Spoilers: You can. Photo by A. Freitag.

Bone-conducting headphones use speakers or tiny motors to send vibrations directly into the bone of you skull. This works surprisingly well for listening to music or amplifying voices without obstructing the ear. The first time you try it, it’s an odd experience. Though you hear the sound just fine, it doesn’t feel like it’s coming through your ears. Bone conduction has been used for a while now in hearing aids as well as military- and industrial-grade communications systems, but the tech has recently cropped up in sports headphones for people who want to listen to music and podcasts on a run without tuning out the rest of the world. Rather than anchoring to the skull, the sports headphones sit just in front of the ear, where your lower jaw meets your skull.

This is not entirely unlike how dolphins (and at least 65 species of toothed whales) detect sound.  Read More

Valuing the deep sea, send @mcmsharksxx to Antarctica, deep-sea mining takes a dive, explore Kiribati, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: July 9, 2018

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

The Levee (A featured project that emerged from Oceandotcomm)

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Shrinking Islands, shrieking dolphins, little hobbit shrimp, boat knives, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: June 18, 2018

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

A combination of storm-driven erosion and sea-level rise, which are both increasing as climate change advances, may soon swallow the island entirely.Photograph by Gordon Campbell / At Altitude Gallery

A normal call. 

The call of a dolphin that would rather not get eaten. 

The Levee (A featured project that emerged from Oceandotcomm)

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Two new writers, the net that never stops killing, how not to launch a boat, the Blackfish Effect, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: May 28, 2018

Muster (updates from the blog)

Photo by author

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

“One old gill net found wedged between rocks off the coast of the San Juan Islands reportedly sat atop a pile of marine bird and mammal bones that was three feet deep.”

source.

WHOI

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Bone-eating Jabba worms, the world’s deepest plastic bag, new shipwrecks, climate change art, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: May 14, 2018.

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

Osedax worms growing on the vertebrae of a dead whale.
Photo: 2006 MBARI

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