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

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

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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

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

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)

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

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)

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

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)

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.

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.

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

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
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Monday Morning Salvage: January 2, 2017

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 WheelRead More