Skip to content

Southern Fried Science

Over 15 years of ocean science and conservation online

  • Home
  • About SFS
  • Authors
  • Support SFS

Tag: oysters

Dead whales, glass sponges, 3D-printing for the ocean, and more! Weekly Salvage: October 14, 2019

Posted on October 14, 2019October 13, 2019 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Transcript below.

Read More “Dead whales, glass sponges, 3D-printing for the ocean, and more! Weekly Salvage: October 14, 2019” »

Walrus Attacks, Windships, Wild Oysters, and More! Weekly Salvage: September 30, 2019

Posted on September 30, 2019October 13, 2019 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Read More “Walrus Attacks, Windships, Wild Oysters, and More! Weekly Salvage: September 30, 2019” »

Youth v Gov, thinking about oysters, how to talk climate change to radicalized conservatives, delightful dumbo octopuses, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: October 29, 2018.

Posted on October 29, 2018 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

  • The kids are alright. I’m suing the U.S. government for causing the climate change crisis #YouthVGov.
  • This fleet of underwater robots will help citizen scientists make the case for ocean conservation. Find out how you can get yours through the SEE Initiative!

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • The Deepest Volcanic Eruption Ever Documented Left a Gnarly Sight on the Ocean Floor.

A lava flow detected in the Mariana back-arc that’s evidence for the deepest historic eruption ever detected. Photo: Courtesy Bill Chadwick
A lava flow detected in the Mariana back-arc that’s evidence for the deepest historic eruption ever detected. Photo: Courtesy Bill Chadwick.

  • This comic comes at you like a kick in the teeth. Can Climate Science Be Rendered Conservative-Friendly? How to pitch environmentalism to climate change deniers.

Read More “Youth v Gov, thinking about oysters, how to talk climate change to radicalized conservatives, delightful dumbo octopuses, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: October 29, 2018.” »

Scallops, barnacles, and oysters- oh my! Thursday Afternoon Dredging, September 6th, 2018

Posted on September 6, 2018 By David Shiffman
Uncategorized

Cuttings (short and sweet): Follow COSEWIC, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, on twitter. ‘Scallop wars’: UK offers olive branch as French navy threatens to act. By Pippa Crerar, for the Guardian. Brexit is complicating some existing relationships between the UK and European nations, including some fishing rights issues. Don’t worry, … Read More “Scallops, barnacles, and oysters- oh my! Thursday Afternoon Dredging, September 6th, 2018” »

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

Posted on July 9, 2018July 9, 2018 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

  • Melissa Márquez is fundraising to participate in a women-in-science leadership retreat that culminates in a 2.5 week trip to Antarctica. Help her out! Or back her Patreon!
  • The scandal-plagued, utterly ineffective, Scott Pruitt is out, just days after an American patriot told him exactly how she felt about him in a restaurant. Good.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Investing in indigenous communities is most efficient way to protect forests, report finds. This should surprise no one but it often does.
  • Explore the deep waters around Kiribati with OpenExplorer!

The Levee (A featured project that emerged from Oceandotcomm)

  • Virtual Reality Preserves Disappearing Land: Coastal communities are capturing their cultures and landscapes in virtual reality before sea level rise steals them for good.
  • Where Did the Oil Go In the Gulf of Mexico? a storymap.

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” »

Frisky Anglerfish, Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors, Make for the Planet Borneo, Sea Cucumber Mafia, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: March 26, 2018

Posted on March 26, 2018March 25, 2018 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

  • Sign up for Make for the Planet Borneo and help push forward the next generation of conservation technology!
  • Announcing the Con X Tech Prize for Hacking Extinction! Apply for funding to create a working hardware prototype and win up to $20,000 in awards.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • This is a totally ordinary, not at all alarming, call for government bidders on a contract to build “new systems that employ natural or engineered marine organisms as sensor elements to amplify signals related to the presence, movement, and classification of manned or unmanned underwater vehicles.” They even adorably call these Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors PALS. Normal!
  • Here’s a video of anglerfish mating, because anglerfish are beauty.
  • This week in science and conservation slowly, awkwardly coming to terms with their racist history: For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It and Environmentalism’s Racist History.
  • Scientists in Survival Mode: After a disastrous hurricane season, scientists in the storms’ pathways struggle to return to work.

The Levee (A featured project that emerged from Oceandotcomm)

  • Marine lab has ‘front row seat’ to Louisiana coastal loss.

LUMCON by boat
Photo by Melissa Miller

Read More “Frisky Anglerfish, Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors, Make for the Planet Borneo, Sea Cucumber Mafia, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: March 26, 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 new Gulf oil spill, opposition to deep-sea mining, DIY drop cameras, and more! Massive Monday Morning Salvage: October 30, 2017

Posted on October 30, 2017October 29, 2017 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

I’ve been away for 2 weeks, so it’s a super-massive edition of the Monday Morning Salvage!

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

  • There’s still an unimaginable amount of work to do in Dominica and across the Caribbean. Support the Rebuild Dominica Hurricane Relief fund or any of the other funds from our list: How to help our island colleagues in the wake of total devastation.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • This is such a cool story: A Trail of Rocks Traces Historical Steamship Routes. We can track old steamship routes from rocks scraped out of the furnaces and tossed overboard.
  • Former Papua New Guinea Attorney General attacks deep sea mining project. They always pick pictures for these articles that don’t show how much life is right around the vents.

Sampling SMS under the sea Photo: Nautilus Minerals

  • Whose ecological footprint is bigger: Medics, economists, or environmentalists? Spoilers: conservationists still have an impact, but they sure ain’t number 1.

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

  • There’s a fresh oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s pretty darn huge:
    • Coast Guard Responding to 300,000 Gallon Crude Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico.
    • Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill May Be Biggest Since 2010.
    • New Estimate Doubles the Size of Last Week’s Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
  • Some fun from Deep Sea News: When real-life marine biologist and mom goes to sea, she takes the octonauts with her.

  • This is fine: Report on U.S. Marine Sanctuary Oil Drilling Sent to White House, Not Released to Public. This is totally fine: Trump Administration Proposes Largest Oil and Gas Lease Sale in U.S. History.
  • Alaska’s Oyster Farmers Are Filling an Acidification-Driven Void. The state’s oyster farming industry is gaining ground as growers elsewhere struggle. From Hakai Magazine, which is great.
  • Nature is one of the most under-appreciated tools for reigning in carbon. From Anthropocene, which is fast becoming my favorite environmental print magazine. Sorry, Orion.
  • Thousands of penguin chicks starve in Antarctica.

Hey, Andrew, how about you give us at least *some* good news today? Ok, fine.

Read More “A new Gulf oil spill, opposition to deep-sea mining, DIY drop cameras, and more! Massive Monday Morning Salvage: October 30, 2017” »

Measuring the Cultural Value of Oysters

Posted on July 14, 2017July 14, 2017 By Bluegrass Blue Crab
Open Science, Uncategorized

Most people from oyster-producing regions like the Chesapeake can attest to the fact that oysters are important the the social fabric of the community. In many towns that date back to the colonial era, oyster shells literally line Main Street and form the foundation of the town. In others, they form the basis of a modern-day bar scene boasting of “merroir” of the oysters alongside terroir of the wine. When the ecosystem around these kinds of places changes (think warming waters, acidified waters, introduced species who also love oysters), the resource underpinning this aspect of culture and heritage can be threatened. What does that mean for the humans so connected to the briny bivalve?

Historic Baltimore Shucking House. Courtesy of the NOAA Photo Library

Read More “Measuring the Cultural Value of Oysters” »

The disastrous feedback of what happens when fisheries funding dries up

Posted on March 20, 2015March 31, 2015 By Bluegrass Blue Crab
Conservation

Last week I had the good fortune of attending the NC Oyster Summit, hosted  by the NC Coastal Federation in the Museum of Natural Sciences. We talked about the wonders that oyster restoration and aquaculture development can do for water quality, economic development, and taste buds. We enjoyed the demonstration of ‘merriore’, or the taste of the sea that lends a particular flavor to each oyster that captures the ecosystem it grew in. Yet, the fact that stuck with me most is that despite all of these wonderful celebrations of the oyster for the health and well-being of NC’s coastal communities, funding cuts of around 40% to the Department of Marine Fisheries mean that a large portion of the Albemarle Sound remains closed to harvest or aquaculture because there are no staff to check those oysters for public health risks.

The “Administrative Closure” of the most northern stretches of the state’s prized Albemarle-Pamlico estuary system is a worrying precedent in many ways that highlight how leadership withdrawal of support for science can trickle down to real economic, environmental, and cultural harm.

Economic flight

Read More “The disastrous feedback of what happens when fisheries funding dries up” »

Posts pagination

1 2 Next

Recent Popular Posts

A roundup of my media outreach for Jaws' 50th anniversaryA roundup of my media outreach for Jaws' 50th anniversaryJune 20, 2025David Shiffman
David Attenborough's Ocean is on Hulu and Disney+. Let's watch together and discuss it!David Attenborough's Ocean is on Hulu and Disney+. Let's watch together and discuss it!June 16, 2025David Shiffman
Marine Biology Career AdviceMarine Biology Career AdviceMay 30, 2025David Shiffman
The story of the pride flag made from NASA imagery: Bluesky's most-liked imageThe story of the pride flag made from NASA imagery: Bluesky's most-liked imageSeptember 27, 2024David Shiffman
Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine is a fake documentaryShark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine is a fake documentaryAugust 10, 2014Michelle Jewell
How many nuclear weapons are at the bottom of the sea. An (almost certainly incomplete) census of broken arrows over water.How many nuclear weapons are at the bottom of the sea. An (almost certainly incomplete) census of broken arrows over water.July 26, 2018Andrew Thaler
Here's what I teach my students about finding jobs in marine biology and conservationHere's what I teach my students about finding jobs in marine biology and conservationApril 10, 2024David Shiffman
What is a Sand Shark?What is a Sand Shark?November 12, 2017Chuck Bangley
What can the funniest shark memes on the internetz teach us about ocean science and conservation?What can the funniest shark memes on the internetz teach us about ocean science and conservation?November 8, 2013David Shiffman
Megalodon: the New Evidence is a fake documentaryMegalodon: the New Evidence is a fake documentaryAugust 7, 2014David Shiffman
Subscribe to our RSS Feed for updates whenever new articles are published.

We recommend Feedly for RSS management. It's like Google Reader, except it still exists.

Southern Fried Science

  • Home
  • About SFS
  • Authors
  • Support SFS


If you enjoy Southern Fried Science, consider contributing to our Patreon campaign.

Copyright © 2025 Southern Fried Science.

Theme: Oceanly Premium by ScriptsTown