nature

Chesapeake Requiem, the Black Friday for Climate Change, whale earwax, killing the GRE, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: November 26, 2018

Posted on by Andrew Thaler

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

  • Friend of the blog and submarine legend Erika Bergman is leading an expedition to Belize’s Blue Hole! Follow along as she maps this unique ocean feature: Belize Blue Hole 2018. Some dudes are tagging along, too.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

Climate change affects the natural, built, and social systems we rely on individually and through their connections to one another. These interconnected systems are increasingly vulnerable to cascading impacts that are often difficult to predict, threatening essential services within and beyond the Nation’s borders.

The Gam (conversations from the ocean-podcasting world)

  • Speak Up for the Blue on art and the ocean.

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High octopuses don’t love you back, sextants in space, protect our ocean monuments, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: September 24, 2018

Posted on by Andrew Thaler

Logo for Monday Morning Salvage.

Foghorn (a call to action)

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Gulper Eels are amazing. Amazing.
There are approximately 30 vaquitas left in the world Illustration: Mona Chalabi

There are approximately 30 vaquitas left in the world
Illustration: Mona Chalabi

  • There are sextants on the International Space Station and I can’t stop thinking about it.

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

Posted on 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.

GOES-16.

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Hurricane Irma, the Manatee Sheriff, climate change, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: September 11, 2017

Posted on by Andrew Thaler

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

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Who are “The Lucky Ones”?

Posted on by Andrew Thaler

We interrupt our regularly scheduled marine science and conservation discussions and frequent Aquaman adulation to bring you this important announcement:

“My legs creak as I climb the stairs to our meeting room. I lean against the wall to steady myself. I could have taken the elevator, saved myself the pain, but I need to heal. I am lucky. I can still walk after the disease ravaged my body, but my legs are weak, my arms emaciated, my face scarred and hollow. I keep my body moving, to help it heal. That’s why we are all here: to heal.

I don’t know why I still come, though. I don’t get much from these meetings. They used to be comforting, but now they’re just tedious. The survivors, overcome with grief or anger or disgust, are more likely to descend into fits of rage than to open up to any of us about their experiences. They are fighters, they had to be. You didn’t survive, uninfected, by being soft. They internalized everything. Many were so consumed with guilt that they couldn’t continue. Survivor suicides are an almost daily occurrence now.”

Head over to Nature (yes, that Nature) to continue reading my freshly minted short story “The Lucky Ones” in their Futures section.

The Global Extinction Crisis – species area relationships, habitat loss, and population dynamics

Posted on by Andrew Thaler

We are in the midst of a global extinction crisis. Biodiversity is in decline as species after species disappear. Some estimates predict that up to 50% of species will be committed to extinction by 2050. Other estimates claim the current rate of extinction may be 10,000 times the background rate. Many ecologists and conservationists have declared the current species decline the sixth great mass extinction.

A recent paper published in the journal Nature argues that our current estimates of species loss are based on a flawed model and tend to overestimate the magnitude of species decline. The paper has received plenty of attention, and has been heavily criticized by ecologists and conservation biologists. The paper is wrong, but it is wrong for the right reasons, and the criticisms it has garnered point to a gaping hole in our  understanding of population dynamics.

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Science and the Arab Awakening

Posted on by David Shiffman

In the last few months, the Middle East and North Africa have seen some of the most dramatic political changes since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled with an iron fist for more than 20 years, was overthrown. Shortly after, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had also been a brutal dictator for decades, stepped down in the wake of massive public protests. As of this writing, similar protests are taking place in Yemen, Oman, Morocco, Iran, Djibouti, Jordan and Libya (where government retaliation to the protests has been particularly brutal).  If you’re a CNN junkie like I am, you’ve read all about how these revolutions will affect human rights, international relations, oil prices, and the influence of terrorism in the region. There has been relatively little mainstream media focus on how science will be affected, however.

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