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Tag: hydrothermal vents

Skate saunas, clone armies, deep news from deep-sea mining, an ocean of plastic, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: February 12, 2018.

Posted on February 12, 2018February 13, 2018 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Attack of the clones! A Pet Crayfish Can Clone Itself, and It’s Spreading Around the World!
Ranja Andriantsoa/The Atlantic
  • One of the take-home points in the talk I gave last Friday is that we barely know anything about the services hydrothermal vents provide to the rest of the ocean ecosystems. Deep-sea hydrothermal vents are nurseries for skates.
ROV framegrab of Pacific white skate egg sacs near a black smoker in the Galapagos. Photo Courtesy Ocean Exploration Trust

Read More “Skate saunas, clone armies, deep news from deep-sea mining, an ocean of plastic, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: February 12, 2018.” »

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.

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

Bone-eating zombie worms, octopus overlords, old wooden ships and new woes for deep-sea mining. It’s the Monday Morning Salvage! January 1, 2018.

Posted on January 1, 2018January 6, 2018 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

  • Stop. Breathe. Take a step back. This can all be incredibly overwhelming. Pick the fight that matters most to you and take a few days deciding what success looks like, what strategies will work, and what tactics are available to you. And then hoist your flag and get to work.

  • And when you meet someone fighting a different fight, remember to support them. There are already enough fronts to advance without taking friendly fire from our flanks.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Maybe it’s time to seriously consider just giving control of the world to the cephalopods. A New Species of Giant Octopus Has Been Hiding in Plain Sight.
The frilled giant Pacific octopus. Photo Courtesy D. Scheel
  • The most depressing annual run-down on the environmental science web: The Animals That Went Extinct in 2017.

Read More “Bone-eating zombie worms, octopus overlords, old wooden ships and new woes for deep-sea mining. It’s the Monday Morning Salvage! January 1, 2018.” »

Farting oysters, bombing sea lions, and a new trash island? It must be the Monday Morning Salvage! November 20, 2017

Posted on November 20, 2017 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

  • It’s Native American History Month. Southern Fried Science recognizes that our servers are housed on the occupied land of the Timpanogos people while the majority of our writers live on unceded Powhatan territory. This November, Try Something New: Decolonize Your Mind.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Boaters stumble on massive Caribbean “gyre” of plastic garbage. “Gyre is in quotes because I’m almost certain that this is debris from the 2017 Atlantic Hurricane season, rather than an accumulation of decades of plastic is a circulating ocean current. It’s still shocking to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSMGKwZBaWM

  • The ARA San Juan, one or Argentina’s two diesel-electric submarines, is missing. Search and rescue is mobilizing and there’s hints that the sailors tried to send out a signal Saturday.
  • Without a Treaty to Share the Arctic, Greedy Countries Will Destroy It. Cosign.

Read More “Farting oysters, bombing sea lions, and a new trash island? It must be the Monday Morning Salvage! November 20, 2017” »

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

Posted on September 18, 2017September 18, 2017 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

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.

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

Deep-sea Disco, Giant Icebergs, Pokémon Go, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: April 24, 2017

Posted on April 24, 2017 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

  • Still time! 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.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • This deep-sea mining Disco video is something.

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

Read More “Deep-sea Disco, Giant Icebergs, Pokémon Go, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: April 24, 2017” »

Monday Morning Salvage: February 20, 2017

Posted on February 20, 2017 By Andrew Thaler 1 Comment on Monday Morning Salvage: February 20, 2017
Weekly Salvage

For all our US-based Readers: Happy President’s Day! For everyone else, this is the reason none of you USian colleagues are answering e-mails. Unless they are, in which case, *grumble grumble grumble* *something about work-life balance*

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • The ocean is full of garbage and even the deepest trenches aren’t safe. Here’s an interview I did with KSPN Saipan where I talked about the garbage the precedes us everywhere we go.
  • Also: Banned chemicals persist in deep ocean. This seems important.

Read More “Monday Morning Salvage: February 20, 2017” »

Monday Morning Salvage: December 5, 2016

Posted on December 5, 2016December 4, 2016 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Bobbit Worms (terrible name, amazing polychaete). This video of a fisherman catching bobbit worms for bait is just a little bit unnerving.bobbit
  • Chris Mah did some deep digging to determine how the Bobbit Worm got its name (spoilers: It’s exactly what you expect).

Read More “Monday Morning Salvage: December 5, 2016” »

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?” »

Return from the Cayman Abyss: cruise post-mortem and some thoughts on media coverage

Posted on March 1, 2013 By Andrew Thaler 3 Comments on Return from the Cayman Abyss: cruise post-mortem and some thoughts on media coverage
Science

AndrewThumbAt 7 AM EST on Monday, February 25, the ROV Isis rose from the depths of the Cayman Abyss, bringing to a close the 82nd cruise of the RRS James Cook. During JC82, we explored two recently discovered hydrothermal vents fields in the Cayman Trough: Von Damm, named for the late marine geochemist Karen Von Damm, and Beebe, named for the 20th century explorer William Beebe. By any measure, JC82 was a massive success. The samples and videos we’ll bring back will provide ecologists, geologists, and chemists with new insights into fundamental ocean systems for years. The images alone, some beautiful, some heart-breaking, have already inspired.

bacteriamatssmall
Eyeless shrimp, dancing anemones, and a garden of filamentous bacteria. I’m a pretty good writer, and I can’t even begin to describe how beautiful this is. Photo Credit: NERC

Since I last updated the blog on our adventures exploring the Cayman Trough, we’ve had a steady stream media coverage, most of which has been excellent, some of which has been… strange. It’s been fascinating watching the articles come out, seeing what different media outlets consider the story, and, most important to me, getting a chance to share our adventure with a wide audience. Now that the #DeepestVents cruise is officially over (and we’re in transit to yet another, equally exciting bolt on cruise to investigate submerged lava flows off the island of Montserrat), I thought it would be a good opportunity to reflect on the cruise, the story, and how the media shaped it.

Read More “Return from the Cayman Abyss: cruise post-mortem and some thoughts on media coverage” »

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