Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

• The poetry of Derek Walcott.

• Nobel laureate, poet, and perhaps the finest English-language writer of any generation, died this weekend. His poetry, particularly the epic poem Omeros, which draws upon the themes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey to tell the story of colonization, imperialism, slavery, and humanity’;s relationship to the sea over more than 8000 lines.
• If you’re new to the poetry of Derek Walcott, The Sea is History is a great place to start and the New York Times published a short selection of his poetry: The Pages of the Sea.

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

• Science is political. Own it or we’ll be destroyed by politics.

• We are still struggling to implement recommendations for fisheries management made nearly 150 years ago. The Fisheries Scientist Who Saw the Future.
• I’m still ruminating on the piece by Angelo Villagomez. It’s so good: Moana: We Are Explorers Reading Every Sign.
• Minimizing the Spread of Invasive Species via easily transportable underwater robots. By Me. It’s great.
• Fish stocks and high emotion at seabed mining hearing.
• Spawning in strange waters how hybridization affects native fishes, by our friends over at the fisheries blog.
• Hunter-Chiller: Multiple feeding strategies for some of the world’s smallest organisms.
• Humpback whales are organizing in huge numbers, and no one knows why, hilarity ensues.
• I am shocked, shocked, to discover shellfish shenanigans in here. Scientists Made the Perfect Underwater Glue By Stealing an Idea From Shellfish.
• We haven’t been doing a lot of Kickstarter reviews recently, but this one looks pretty epic: Pleistocene Park: An Ice Age Ecosystem To Save The World.

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

• Mourier and friends (2017) Learning and robustness to catch-and-release fishing in a shark social network. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2016.0824.
• Tigreros and friends (2017) Maternally induced intraclutch cannibalism: an adaptive response to predation risk? DOI:10.1111/ele.12752.
• Gonzalez-Bernat and friends (2017) “Living with our backs to the sea”: A critical analysis of marine and coastal governance in Guatemala. DOI:10.1016/j.marpol.2017.03.003.

Driftwood (what we’re reading on dead trees)

Walcott, obviously. Lots of Walcott.

• Omeros isn’t a book you finish. Omeros is a book that you never stop reading. Read it. Never stop.
• Tiepolo’s Hound is also powerful and belongs on your bookshelf. It is noticably shorter than Omeros, if that sort of thing matters to you.

 

Feel free to share your own 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.