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.

• 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 🐬🦀♞

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

• Ocean Legend Asha De Vos Calls for an End to ‘Parachute Science’. Most of the planet’s coastlines are in the developing world. Western marine scientists and institutions could do better work by developing the scientific talents of the people who live there.
• Ecolabels may not be a as useful as you think they are: The Ecolabel Fable.
• The Accidental Shark Researcher, from oceanbites.

• I had a little twitter rant about the role oil prospecting and national sovereignty plays in informing much of the current political motivations of Russia and the US. This adds yet another layer to it: Trump Offers to Play South China Sea Peacemaker.
• How Journalists in the Virgin Islands Covered the Disaster Happening to Them.

Lagan (what we’re reading from the peer-reviewed literature)

• Jaramillo-Legorreta and friends (2007) Saving the Vaquita: Immediate Action, Not More Data. DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2007.00825.x.
• Yoon and friends (2017) Metabarcoding analysis of the stomach contents of the Antarctic Toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni) collected in the Antarctic Ocean. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.3977.
• Horner and friends (2017) Pelagic barite precipitation at micromolar ambient sulfate. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01229-5.
  • With a special appearance by Oceanography for Everyone!
• Bennett and friends (2017) Coastal and Indigenous community access to marine resources and the ocean: A policy imperative for Canada. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2017.10.023.
• Fraser and friends (2017) How disturbance and dispersal influence intraspecific structure. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.12900.
• Durden and friends (2017) Environmental Impact Assessment process for deep-sea mining in ‘the Area’. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2017.10.013.

Shipping News (academic and ocean policy wonkery)

• Academia has a Weinstein problem (and it’s been ignored for decades): Abusers and Enablers in Faculty Culture.
• Five Myths that Perpetuate Burnout Across Nonprofits. H/T Dr. Katie Matthews.
• This is an incredible and all too predictable story about what happens when institutions take up the mantle of “decolonizing science” while excluding actual indigenous researchers. Hint: it’s still colonialism.

Driftwood (what we’re reading on dead trees)

• Sex in the Sea: Our Intimate Connection with Sex-Changing Fish, Romantic Lobsters, Kinky Squid, and Other Salty Erotica of the Deep by Marah J. Hardt.
• If you missed the chance to get Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls Volume 2 on Kickstarter last month, have no fear! Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 tales of extraordinary women Volume 1 is now available on Amazon and Volume 2 should be soon.

Feel free to share your own Foghorns, Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Shipping News, Driftwood, and Derelicts in the comments below. If you enjoy Southern Fried Science, consider contributing to my Patreon campaign to help us keep the servers humming and support other innovative ocean science and conservation initiatives.