hurricanes | Southern Fried Science

An extremely active hurricane season, collapsing ice sheets, massive oil spills, and sexual harassment in shark science – What’s up with the Ocean this week?

Posted on August 12, 2020 by Andrew Thaler

August 12, 2020

Buckle up and bunker down. NOAA has upgraded its predictions for the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane season to Extremely Active. We enter peak hurricane months without the buffer of a protection dust cloud swirling out of the Sahara, a reminder that climate systems on this planet are profoundly interconnected. We may see up to 25 named storms, eleven hurricanes, and six major hurricanes.

Disaster in Mauritius. Mauritius, a small island nation off the coast of Madagascar, has declared a state of emergency following a massive oil spill. The MV Wakashio bulk carrier ran aground on the island’s fringing reef, spilling thousands of tons of fuel oil into the fragile ecosystem. Strapped for equipment, Mauritius is now soliciting hair donations (human hair will absorb oil, but not water) from its residents in a last ditch effort to get as much oil out of the wreck as possible before it breaks apart.

*The bulk carrier aground. Photo unattributed but distributed by the Prime Minister of Mauritius.*

Collapsing Milne. Canada’s Milne Ice Shelf has collapsed. The last intact ice shelf in Canada split apart in the days leading up to August 2. The satellite images released by Planet Labs are truly astounding.

The only thing you should care about this Shark Week. Dr. Catherine Macdonald writes for Scientific American on the dark side of being a woman in shark science. Critical reading for anyone working or thinking about a career in marine science.

Upwelling (the part where Andrew gets on his soapbox)

Earlier this week, we got news of a Evangelical missionary flying into the highlands of Papua New Guinea to preach to an “uncontacted” tribe. Now, I’m just a humble country deep-sea ecologist, but I did teach a robotics class through the University of Papua New Guinea and I have more than a few contacts out there who were happy to point out that the uncontacted tribe was making fun of this dude on Facebook, but it makes me furious that during a pandemic, ostensibly religious folks would put their own personal need for pride and attention ahead of the health and safety of a relatively secluded group of people. We have the potential to be better than the worst of us.

Amazing fish eyes, the real cost of halibut, and protecting local species: Thursday Afternoon Dredging, December 13, 2018

Posted on December 13, 2018 by David Shiffman

Cuttings (short and sweet):

Follow UBC’s wildlife conservation economics lab on twitter!
The Deep-Sea Fish with the Telescopic Tubular Eyes. By Craig McClain, for Deep Sea News.
How to take action to help endangered species near you. A Revelator News Podcast by John Platt.

Spoils (long reads and deep dives):

Why does halibut cost so much? By Larry Pynn, for Hakai.
Feed a fishery, starve a seabird. By John Cannon, for Mongabay
What I learned from an ocean radioactivity testing project. By Ken Buesseler, for Scientific American
Unexpected consequences of hurricanes. By Dana Sackett, for the Fisheries Blog
The effects of anti-depressants span generations in fish. By Diana Kwon, for the Scientist.
Surviving Great Barrier Reef corals have greater heatwave resistance. By Ben Smee, for the Guardian
What does climate change mean for our oceans? By Sarah Cooley, for the Ocean Conservancy blog

Please add your own cuttings and spoils in the comments!

If you appreciate my shark research and conservation outreach, please consider supporting me on Patreon! Any amount is appreciated, and supporters get exclusive rewards!

Eat hagfish, work at LUMCON, clone Vaquita, question floating trash collectors, and more! Monday Morning Mega-Salvage: August 13, 2018

Posted on August 13, 2018 by Andrew Thaler

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

It’s time for Africosh! The annual Africa Open Science and Hardware Summit Heads is in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania this year!
LUMCON is hiring! They’re looking for two exceptional coastal and marine science faculty hires in any discipline. And they have the best “come work for us” video!

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

Hakai Magazine is my jam this month.
- How an Epidemic Exposed the Ecological Importance of Sea Stars: The near eradication of British Columbia’s sea stars demonstrated the dynamic role they play in regulating kelp forests.
- How to Dismantle a Blue Whale: In Chile, a team of volunteers confronts stench and gore to ensure a new life for a dead whale. [Warning: Link contains graphic pictures of whale evisceration]
I’ve been following this project for almost 2 years. Awesome to see how far they’ve come. NinjaPCR is a WiFi enabled, Opensource DNA Amplifier and Thermocycler for Polymerase Chain Reaction developed by 2 hackers in Tokyo.
Plastic wrap made from shellfish and plants is completely compostable.

Hagfish (just Hagfish)

Yes, people do eat hagfish. Yum! Snake-like creature writhes, squirms on grill.

Hagfish are the emissaries of love, not war. Stop it. Synthetic ‘Slime’ To Help US Navy Trap Enemy Ships.

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, 2018 by Andrew Thaler

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.

Lessons from Puerto Rico, mutant starfish, pictures of ships, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: October 9, 2017.

Posted on October 9, 2017 by Andrew Thaler

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

A fish scientist’s 10 tips for surviving a hurricane: Lessons learned from Puerto Rico from our friends at the Fisheries Blog.
Commentary: For Hurricane-Hit Puerto Rico, an Insider’s Guide to Disaster Management by gCaptain.

The Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) arrives in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Oct. 3, 2017. U.S. Navy Photo

A shark for all floods, Crowdfunding scams, old fish, bold fish, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: September 18, 2017

Posted on September 18, 2017 by Andrew Thaler

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

The fight for our Marine National Monuments isn’t over. We finally know *some* of the contents of Zincke’s monument review memo, and it’s not great. The DOI wants to see commercial fishing return to the Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll Marine National Monuments. Longline fishing in these regions has historically been conducted by foreign fishing fleets which have been documented using slave labor. Many ecologists believe that maintaining these protected zones serve as a refuge that boost populations of many important commercial fish and improve the overall health of the fishery.
Here’s the good news: Any change to monuments created under the Antiquities Act must be approved by congress. You’ve got a lot of reason to call you representatives this week, so why not add “I opposed the reintroduction of ecologically and economically destructive commercial fishing to the Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll Marine National Monument.” to your script?

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

Hero Shark, the shark who shows up to every flood, ostensibly to save us all from our own hubris, has a long a fascinating history. “Shark in flooded street” wasn’t even the first time that photo was used for fake news.

Photo by Thomas P. Peschak.

NOAA’s New Weather Satellite Captured Stunning Images of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. These are amazing and terrifying.

GOES-16.

Rick MacPherson and I made a bot that generates random ocean conservation solutions from a massive archive of policy jargon. Follow @OceanCon_Bot. It is good.

This Week in the Deep

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Andrew Thaler

New and noteworthy publications in deep-sea science for the week of January 21, 2013.

Geobiology: Did life originate from a global chemical reactor?

Many decades of experimental and theoretical research on the origin of life have yielded important discoveries regarding the chemical and physical conditions under which organic compounds can be synthesized and polymerized. However, such conditions often seem mutually exclusive, because they are rarely encountered in a single environmental setting. As such, no convincing models explain how living cells formed from abiotic constituents. Here, we propose a new approach that considers the origin of life within the global context of the Hadean Earth. We review previous ideas and synthesize them in four central hypotheses: (i) Multiple microenvironments contributed to the building blocks of life, and these niches were not necessarily inhabitable by the first organisms; (ii) Mineral catalysts were the backbone of prebiotic reaction networks that led to modern metabolism; (iii) Multiple local and global transport processes were essential for linking reactions occurring in separate locations; (iv) Global diversity and local selection of reactants and products provided mechanisms for the generation of most of the diverse building blocks necessary for life. We conclude that no single environmental setting can offer enough chemical and physical diversity for life to originate. Instead, any plausible model for the origin of life must acknowledge the geological complexity and diversity of the Hadean Earth. Future research may therefore benefit from identifying further linkages between organic precursors, minerals, and fluids in various environmental contexts.