Cuttings (short and sweet): 

• Follow underwater engineer Amy Kukulya, as seen on Shark Week, on twitter! (And have you seen my review of Shark Week 2018?)
• Marine worms are eating plastic now. By Michael Allen, for Hakai Magazine.
• Predatory coral bring down jellyfish by working together. From MongaBay news updates.

Spoils (long reads and deep dives):

• Canada is flying blind into Arctic Conservation. By Cody Dey, for the Narwhal, about research I’m a coauthor on (Cody is lead author). We’re excited about this paper, which, among other things, shows major gaps in the research and understanding of many Arctic fishes. This is a big problem as Arctic fishing is only going to increase in frequency.
• Are narwhals starting to go extinct? By Matt K. Smith, for the Daily Beast
• Tax havens shield companies responsible for deforestation and overfishing. By Fiona Harvey, for the Guardian.
• Shifting baselines: another threat to coral reefs. By Todd Woody, for OceansDeeply.
• Florida’s gulf coast battles smelly, deadly red tide. By Greg Allen, for NPR.

Plumbing the depths (discussion):

• An unprecedented number of scientists are running for elected office in the United States this year… but is that a good thing? I do not see how an elected official who is a trained scientist will be a stronger advocate for science than an elected official who has a good scientific advisor that they listen to, and the latter has many advantages over a scientist. (Obviously a scientist in office is better for science than an anti-science idealogue). What do you think? Let us know in the comments!  And check out Maggie Koerth-Baker‘s excellent in-depth article about this for 538.

Please add your own cuttings and spoils in the comments!

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