Triton | Southern Fried Science

How goats got the bends, a new ship for VIMS, a new deep-sea submersible for all of us, our looming destruction, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: October 15, 2018.

Posted on October 15, 2018 by Andrew Thaler

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

It ain’t going to be easy, but it isn’t over yet and none of us have earned the right to quit. What genuine, no-bullshit ambition on climate change would look like.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

Goats are magnificent. We don’t deserve goats. The Dark Story of How Scientists Used Goats to Solve the Bends.

Bends in the foreleg of a goat after experiments performed by physiologist John S. Haldane, published in the Journal of Hygiene Vol. 8, 1908.

There’s a new full-ocean capable submarine in town, and for $50 million, you could buy it! Discovery and Science Channel to Document the Five Deeps Expedition in Limited Series.

Photo courtesy Discovery.

Robots! Artificial Gills! Goats! Craig! A series of unrelated ocean updates

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Andrew Thaler

There’s been some amazing things happening around the oceanosphere, none of which are particularly related. All of which are pretty awesome (or super bogus). Here we go!

1. Robots to save the ocean. Last weekend I was in Miami at We Robot 2016, a meeting about the future of robotics and the law, repping for OpenROV and talking about the wide, wild world of underwater robotics. Joining me was Polk State College’s Joey Maier, presenting his awesome and innovative STEAM outreach program with OpenROV. You can watch the whole talk here (talk begins at about 10:25):

2. Celebrating Craig McClain. Dr. M has been overlord of the venerable Deep Sea News for over a decade. His loyal school of cuttlefish have secretly declared this to be Dr. Craig McClain Week, a tribute to the man and the living legend. Craig spawned Kevin Zelnio, who ultimately inspired the creation of Southern Fried Science, which makes Craig McClain the Grand Nagus of the ocean blogosphere.

3. Triton gills, definitely a scam. The sketchy Triton gills project refunded all of its donor last week, then promptly relaunched with a new, equally tenuous bit of psuedo-technology. At this point, the internet is lousy with due diligence, so really, it’s on you whether or not to back this obviously non-functional product.

4. The worst/best Tinder date in the history of What the Farm?! My *other* project, a podcast about farming just published its 14th episode. The entire last 7 months have been leading up to this incredible, ridiculous, episode, in which my co-host goes on a tinder date and ends up processing his surprise rooster. It’s the best/worst Tinder date ever!

5. Revisiting seaQuest DSV. Remember seaQuest? That amazing, Star Trekkie ocean show from the 90’s? I do. I’m over on the Mary Sue rewatching old episodes of seaQuest DSV and analyzing their science. Enjoy!

A funny thing happens when you point out ocean scams.

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Andrew Thaler

Last Friday I pointed out that, based on the science presented and the behavior of the team involved, Triton Gills is almost certainly a scam. You can read that post and the linked articles for more details.

We do a bit of ocean debunking here at Southern Fried Science, though less and less every year, in part for the reasons listed below. While I find it vital for the ocean community that we push back, especially, about outright fraud, there are a few things that happen which make the entire process enormously frustrating. So much so that you come away disinclined to bother doing anything the next time a fraudulent project comes around.

1. Everyone expects you to be as outraged as they are. I get it, people don’t like being defrauded, people don’t like seeing others defrauded, and everyone feels a sense of self-righteous justice when they find something to rail against in real time. But I’m not the ShittyCrowdfunding Avenger. I saw a bad project, I wrote about the bad project, I gave some interviews to journalists about the bad project. I’m not in the business of doggedly pursuing one crowfunding campaign to extinction. I also don’t assume people are idiots. Whenever you back any crowdfunding campaign, you have to do your due diligence. We make an effort here to make our due diligence public and easy to find so that other can benefit from it. Read More