Fog Horn (A Call to Action)
- Gratuitous self-plug alert! There’s still a few chance left to get your own Unflappable Mola Mola sticker, but they’re going fast. For this and the rest of the Jaunty Ocean Critter series, subscribe to my Patreon campaign and help keep Southern Fried Science and Oceanography for Everyone running!
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
- Happy Eclipse Day! If you’ve ever wondered what happens in the sea during an eclipse, Rebecca Helm at Deep Sea News has you covered!
- This is an utterly amazing video of Blue Whale feeding behavior. Kudos to Slate, who went with the headline “Krill Joy“.
- “Thirty years ago, I discovered a new world. I wanted to conquer it when I should have protected it. It’s not too late.” An uncompromising Jacques Cousteau biopic starring Lambert Wilson? Yes, please!
Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)
- Paul Allen and his team have located the wreck of the USS Indianapolis, which sank 72 years ago. Between Allen, Bezos, Cameron, and Branson, the Age of Billionaire Ocean Explorers is shaping up to produce some fascinating discoveries. Quint’s monologue in Jaws about the sinking of the Indianapolis is among the greatest scenes in film.
- In other shipwreck news, divers in Lake Michigan found the wreck of The Senator, lost since 1929 in 430 feet of water.
- The conch is mostly gone from Florida. Can the Bahamas save the queen?
- Braving an Antarctic winter to catch Chilean sea bass in the act: Peeping in on the Mile Deep Club.
- C’mon people, you can support marine conservation action and not be dicks to kids. Alaskan teen traumatised after getting death threats for killing a huge whale.
- oceanbites roars into the dog days of summer: Deep Secrets of the Scalloped Hammerhead Shark and Can you hear me now? Investigating sound across the Atlantic Ocean.
- You know deep-sea mining might not be the best thing ever when even the Pope comes out against it: Pope Francis wades in on sea bed mining decision and Catholic Bishops Urge Care for Sea & People of West Papua.
- I love a good fatberg story: Huge Blobs of Fat and Trash Are Filling the World’s Sewers.
- Ship full of hammerhead sharks and endangered fish seized in the Galapagos.
- Facing identity crisis and slumping profits, can SeaWorld rebuild?
- What Happened in the Seconds, Hours, Weeks After the Dino-Killing Asteroid Hit Earth?
- In the Gulf of Mexico, dolphins have learned a deadly new trick: Dolphins Master Decapitation.
- Construction of World’s Largest Cargo Sailing Ship Moves Step Closer to Reality.
- A reminder: as much as we like to think we can save stranded marine mammals, the vast majority of the time they’re already too far gone. Couple who found beached whale on Daufuskie: ‘We thought we saved its life’.
- Hakai Magazine continues to have the best headline and kicker game in the business. Breaking. Bad? New research shows there’s life in the wake of Antarctica’s crack epidemic.
- This July was the hottest month in recorded history. I’m sure that’s fine.
- Portraits of cats who are also sharks. Enjoy.
Lagan (what we’re reading from the peer-reviewed literature)
I have a new paper out today, Co-authored with fellow SFS writer William Saleu! Happy Eclipse Day!
- Thaler and Friends (2017) Population structure of Bathymodiolus manusensis, a deep-sea hydrothermal vent-dependent mussel from Manus Basin, Papua New Guinea. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.3655.
Our own David Shiffman has a new paper out, and it’s causing a bit of a stir in the recreational land-based shark Florida shark fishery.
- Shiffman and friends (2017) Fishing practices and representations of shark conservation issues among users of a land-based shark angling online forum. DOI: 10.1016/j.fishres.2017.07.031.
- With lots of great coverage, including this detailed exploration in Nature: Anglers’ online boasts reveal illegal shark hunting.
- Harris and friends (2017) Arctic marine conservation is not prepared for the coming melt. DOI: 10.1093/icesjms/fsx153.
- McKinney and friends (2017) Long-term assessment of whale shark population demography and connectivity using photo-identification in the Western Atlantic Ocean. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0180495.
- Courtene-Jones and friends (2017) Microplastic pollution identified in deep-sea water and ingested by benthic invertebrates in the Rockall Trough, North Atlantic Ocean. DOI: 10.1016/j.envpol.2017.08.026.
- Ney and friends (2017) Computer Security, Privacy, and DNA Sequencing: Compromising Computers with Synthesized DNA, Privacy Leaks, and More. DOI: N/A
- Byrnes and friends (2014) To Crowdfund Research, Scientists Must Build an Audience for Their Work. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0110329.
- Gress and friends (2017) Lionfish (Pterois spp.) invade the upper-bathyal zone in the western Atlantic. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.3683.
- McVeigh and friends (2017) The influence of larval migration and dispersal depth on potential larval trajectories of a deep-sea bivalve. DOI: 10.1016/j.dsr.2017.08.002.
- Rindorf and friends (2017) Moving beyond the MSY concept to reflect multidimensional fisheries management objectives. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2017.08.012.
- O’Dea and friends (2017) Look to the past for an optimistic future. DOI: 10.1111/cobi.12997.
Shipping News (academic and ocean policy wonkery)
- A Day in the Life of a Shark Intern.
- This seems like something we should probably be a bit concerned about: Biohackers encoded malware in a strand of DNA, hijacked a sequencer. See the paper in Lagan, above.
- A rich person’s profession? Young conservationists struggle to make it.
Driftwood (what we’re reading on dead trees)
- Discovering the Mammoth: A Tale of Giants, Unicorns, Ivory, and the Birth of a New Science by longtime friend and former writer for The Gam, John McKay. Read this great review from Christian Science Monitor.
- Hook Jaw Volume 1 by Si Spurrier and Connor Boyle. This brutal, beautifully illustrated graphic novel flips the classic rogue shark story on its head, as pirates, scientists, eco-activists, the CIA, and Navy Seals descend on the legendary Hook Jaw and its shiver of social sharks. How could you argue with a comic that described sharks as “boneless tubes with teeth”. Nobody’s safe, everybody’s chum.
Feel free to share your own Foghorns, Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Driftwood, and Derelicts in the comments below. And, of as always, if you enjoy Southern Fried Science, consider contributing to my Patreon campaign to help us keep the servers humming.