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Tag: sea otters

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” »

What’s Killing California’s Sea Otters?

Posted on September 17, 2010September 20, 2010 By Andrew Thaler 8 Comments on What’s Killing California’s Sea Otters?
Conservation, Science

ResearchBlogging.org

Sea Otters are turning up dead in central California. In 2007, 11 sea otters were recovered from Monterrey Bay. Over the last three years, dead otters washing up on beaches has reached a record high?

What could be causing all these otter deaths? Are there new predators in the area? Is there some kind of disease? Could increased otter deaths reflect an increase in otter populations, indicating not otter population decline, but otter population growth? The answer turns out to be even more surprising – freshwater algae.

Here no Otter, Sea no Otter, Speak no Otter

Read More “What’s Killing California’s Sea Otters?” »

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