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Tag: trash

A literal foghorn foghorn, Apple’s recycling farce, art from the deep sea, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: March 11, 2019.

Posted on March 11, 2019March 11, 2019 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

  • A literal foghorn. Trump official who said air gun tests don’t hurt whales blasted with air horn.A

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • This reports on the activities of the WWF is shocking and damning. WWF Funds Guards Who Have Tortured And Killed People.
  • I am always here for deep-sea art.

Read More “A literal foghorn foghorn, Apple’s recycling farce, art from the deep sea, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: March 11, 2019.” »

Crab industry in crisis, world’s largest deep-sea mining vessel takes to sea, Bayou Women, ocean trash, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: May 7, 2018

Posted on May 7, 2018May 7, 2018 By Andrew Thaler 1 Comment on Crab industry in crisis, world’s largest deep-sea mining vessel takes to sea, Bayou Women, ocean trash, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: May 7, 2018
Weekly Salvage

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

  • The Eruption at Kilauea on Hawai’i’s Big Island is truly spectacular, however hundreds of people are displaced from their homes. The mayor has directed those interested in giving donations to contact the Salvation Army at +1 (808) 756-0306.
  • Yale study: Newspaper op-eds change minds and The Long-lasting Effects of Newspaper Op-Eds on Public Opinion. Scientists and conservationists, this May, make an effort to publish a Letter to the Editor or OpEd in your local paper. If you’ve done so, please leave a link to it in the comments.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Without seasonal workers, the Maryland crab industry is barreling towards a crisis. “Nearly half of the Eastern Shore’s crab houses have no workers to pick the meat sold in restaurants and supermarkets.” Crab crisis: Maryland seafood industry loses 40 percent of work force in visa lottery.
  • Trash on the seafloor. Megan McCuller has an eye-opening thread on all the trash they’re finding on the deep seafloor.

  • Lionfish Traps! Jake Levenson has been trying something similar in Dominica. New Weapons in the War on Lionfish, a Beautiful but Deadly Invader.

A second trap design from Gittings. Lionfish are attracted to the structures inside. (Steve Gittings/NOAA)

The Levee (A featured project that emerged from Oceandotcomm)

  • Women of the Bayou: Stories of resilience and ingenuity in south Louisiana’s changing landscape.
  • Listen to the Bayou Women radio production, too!

Read More “Crab industry in crisis, world’s largest deep-sea mining vessel takes to sea, Bayou Women, ocean trash, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: May 7, 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” »

Twitter Ocean Chess, lessons from the Vaquita, awe of the deep, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: November 13, 2017

Posted on November 13, 2017November 13, 2017 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

  • Ocean policy news breaking this week. We’ll have a comment template ready to go when it does. Please check back. We can’t announce until we know exactly what we’re dealing with.
  • Still time to register for OceanDotComm! Science Communication folks! Are you ready for OceanDotComm? Register now!

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • This is an amazing piece about the importance of awe in deep-sea conservation. Unless we regain our historic awe of the deep ocean, it will be plundered.

Wine bottle found in the deep North Atlantic. Laura Robinson, University of Bristol, and the Natural Environment Research Council. Expedition JC094 was funded by the European Research Council.

  • The Vaquita are going extinct and with them comes an importance lesson on the value of social science to conservation research:

My wife, on the other hand, is a social scientist who works on development here in Mexico. When we first started dating, I used to tease her for being a soft little scientist in her soft little science. I now understand that helping a community pull itself out of poverty is more complex than brain surgery or quantum physics.

There is no magic equation for community organizing but she begins by understanding that “the community” isn’t some monolithic creature that thinks as a unit. There are complex politics and power dynamics at work that can either aid or destroy all her efforts.

I now understand why the vaquita is going extinct. They sent too many people like me into the region and not enough like her.

source.

  • Would you like to play a game? Last week David and I unleashed Twitter Ocean Chess upon the internet and the results are in: it’s the only valid use of 280 characters.
    • Marine biology nerd chess is the only decent justification for 280-character tweets
    • Here’s what happened when two marine scientists played emoji chess on Twitter
    • Emojis + Marine biology triva = OCEAN CHESS 🐬🦀♞

Read More “Twitter Ocean Chess, lessons from the Vaquita, awe of the deep, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: November 13, 2017” »

Climate change denial, open-science hardware, some missing pink dolphins, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: May 1, 2017

Posted on May 1, 2017April 30, 2017 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

  • Are you represented by a climate change denier? Motherboard has put together this amazing guide to every climate change denier in congress. Check your state and give your congressperson a piece of your mind. Congressman Andy Harris may be sick of hearing from me, but I guarantee he’ll be gone from my district long before I am.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

Read More “Climate change denial, open-science hardware, some missing pink dolphins, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: May 1, 2017” »

Monday Morning Salvage: January 2, 2017

Posted on January 2, 2017January 1, 2017 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Welcome to 2017 and the ninth year of marine science and conservation at Southern Fried Science!

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Alex Warneke knows exactly how to push all of my ocean outreach buttons: Low-cost teaching tools? Check! Hands on student engagement? Check! Open-source materials and datasets? Check! 3D Printing? Check! Meet 3D Cabrillo:

Courtesy A. Warneke, DSN.

  • Learn more about this awesome project from the National Park Service: How to Build a Better Biomodel.

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

Read More “Monday Morning Salvage: January 2, 2017” »

Ocean Kickstarter of the Month: Let’s build another trash eating water wheel in Canton!

Posted on December 8, 2015December 8, 2015 By Andrew Thaler
Uncategorized

Help the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore Build a new Water Wheel powered trash interceptor in Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood.

Help Fund the Canton Water Wheel.

I love the Baltimore Trashwheel. Let’s build another one.

healthyharbor_waterwheelsign1

In all seriousness, if you haven’t heard about the Baltimore Water Wheel, see my first article, or my 1-year recap at Hakai, or my most recent SFS post, or visit Mr. TrashWheel on Twitter. Of all the tech in all the world proposed to clean trash out of our oceans, these water wheels are the only large scale projects that have best tested and vetted against some serious garbage.

Read More “Ocean Kickstarter of the Month: Let’s build another trash eating water wheel in Canton!” »

Charm City’s Water Wheel: The first truly feasible ocean cleaning array is already afloat

Posted on July 14, 2014July 14, 2014 By Andrew Thaler 3 Comments on Charm City’s Water Wheel: The first truly feasible ocean cleaning array is already afloat
Conservation

The Future is Here. Photo by Andrew Thaler.
The Future is here. Photo by Andrew Thaler.

Ocean plastic is bad news. Last week we were learned that not only did every ocean have its own, personal garbage gyre, but that a huge amount of plastic is “missing” from the ocean–that is, it has been incorporated into the ecosystem in ways we don’t yet understand. While there is plenty of misinformation floating around out there about what exactly these garbage patches are (hint: they aren’t solid islands of trash), there is no doubt that they are effecting the global ocean ecosystem in both profound and subtle ways.

Friend of Southern Fried Science and Deep Sea News writer Miriam Goldstein spent her PhD working on the North Pacific Gyre. Her research has revealed invasive pathogenic ciliates living on plastic trash and plastic-eating barnacles floating in the gyre. She also points out one of the biggest problems with trying to clean up these massive, dispersed “garbage patches”:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFSv2eW7g6E

You would almost have to clear-cut the top of the ocean in order to clean up all those little bits of plastic.

source

There is a sea of theoretical solutions, from dragging nets across the ocean to mooring massive floating arrays, in various states of completeness. Some have been no more than public relation stunts, while others push on despite extensive criticism from oceanographers and other marine experts. Some have promise, other appear to be no more than press releases.

Amid the TED talks, press-pushes, empty promises, and gratuitous publicity stunts, the City of Baltimore quietly built, tested, re-designed, re-built, and deployed a solar-powered, trash-eating, waterwheel-driven garbage scow that’s plying the urban waters of the Chesapeake Bay, pulling tons of trash out of the Inner Harbor every day. Say hello to the Inner Harbor Water Wheel. 

Read More “Charm City’s Water Wheel: The first truly feasible ocean cleaning array is already afloat” »

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