Category: Science

One way an oil rig’s blowout preventer can fail

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 5 Comments on One way an oil rig’s blowout preventer can fail
Science

There’s not much more to say other than blue marlin bill fish caught in oil rig blowout preventer. Several people have asked why we aren’t blogging about the oil spill. The simple answer is that the Deep Sea News crew has done such an awesome job there’s not much more for us to add. H/T … Read More “One way an oil rig’s blowout preventer can fail” »

Douglas Adams on Evolution, Endangered Species, Conservation, and writing Last Chance to See

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 2 Comments on Douglas Adams on Evolution, Endangered Species, Conservation, and writing Last Chance to See
Conservation, Popular Culture, Science

The brilliantly funny Douglas Adams shares the adventures he had while writing Last Chance to See. Since he gave this talk, the Yangtze River Dolphin has been declared extinct and only 123 Kakapo remain.  Komodo dragons are now listed as vulnerable, and although their population appears quite large, it was recently discovered that Komodo dragons … Read More “Douglas Adams on Evolution, Endangered Species, Conservation, and writing Last Chance to See” »

Ethical Debate: Should we have freed Willy?

Posted on By David Shiffman 65 Comments on Ethical Debate: Should we have freed Willy?
Conservation, Science

Jean-Michel Cousteau with an orca. Photo credit: Carrie Vonderhaar, Ocean Futures Society

The  death of Sea World trainer Dawn Branchaeu revived an old debate over whether it is appropriate to keep orca whales in captivity. Many people are calling for all captive orcas to be set free, but I continue to support aquariums because of the roles they serve as educators and conservationists. Although several readers have pointed out that the sea world incident itself would make for a solid ethical debate, I am instead going to take you back more than 15 years to a movie that started this whole movement: Free Willy.

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Tournament marlins get bigger?

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 7 Comments on Tournament marlins get bigger?
Science

ResearchBlogging.orgThis week’s ResearchBlogCast featured the paper “Decline in top predator body size and changing climate alter trophic structure in an oceanic ecosystem”, originally discussed at Fish Schooled (Prey populations explode as predators get smaller). In both the podcast and the blogpost, the authors argue that prey abundance booms despite predator biomass remaining constant because the average size of predatory fish is decreasing, a trend that has been describe as fisheries induced selection.

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Geography of Fishes

Posted on By Bluegrass Blue Crab
Science

The discipline of geography is one that most people likely dismiss as mapmaking.  Gone is the stodgy cartographer and here is the GIS tech wizard. But outside of very particular applications, do most people really give geography a second thought?  I hope to show through a famous fishery example that the world should give geography more attention – the Peruvian anchovy fishery.

First a bit of context.  Geography is a diverse discipline, spanning applications from environment to physics to cultural anthropology.  At the core of the discipline is the importance of place – something very simple yet very often forgotten.

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Epistemological Idioms

Posted on By Bluegrass Blue Crab
Science

My research is embedded in political ecology. Though no one can agree on an exact definition, suffice it to say that it’s an outgrowth of geography that focuses on human-environment interactions with specific emphasis on the role of power. It’s a field that is deeply academic and there’s nothing like a week of political ecology discussions to send your head spinning. Also, as the field is new, we like to create terms to help define a disciplinary jargon. In addition, the field’s methodology relies on discourse analysis and units of analysis defined by epistemic communities. Therefore at the recent annual meeting of the Annual Association of Geographers, I spent more time than I was willing thinking about word usage and incorporating some new ones into my syntax.

My favorite quote:

“given it’s mainly men climbing, I’d be interested in starting a rumor that it decreases virility but I thought it would be unethical to start a rumor” on feeling the need to help the Australian aboriginal group, the Anangu people, in keeping climbers off their sacred rock formation (Uluru/Ayer’s Rock)

But read on for my collection of a few gems from my colleagues…

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What the hell happened to the environmental movement?

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Conservation, Popular Culture, Science

This post was originally published on Earth Day, 2009. The responses I received from it were tremendous, both positive and negative. Were I to write it again today, I would include a discussion of Carbon Offsets and Eco-Guilt.

There is a real challenge in the environmental movement. On one hand, the science is on our side, but on the other hand, there is a growing group within the movement committed to dogma and willing to sacrifice facts for pseudoscience. So, this Earth day, we once again bring you “What the hell happened to the environmental movement?”

473px-rachel-carsonForty-seven years ago, a brilliant, passionate scientist who understood the power of public outreach, noticed a decline in songbird populations, discovered a trend of decreasing egg shell thickness, and correlated this effect with the increase in the use of DDT as a pesticide. After thoroughly and rigorously verifying her results and conclusions, she did something revolutionary; she wrote a book. The publication of Silent Spring in 1962 marks the beginning of the modern environmental movement in America. Its simple, elegant prose made the complex interaction between humankind and the environment accessible to a public that had limited exposure to scientific writing. Like other works of literary science, Silent Spring, wove the scientific method into a narrative; observations, questions, conflicts, discoveries, joy and sorrow. To struggle and to understand, never the last without the first. The beauty of her words still echo with that same power today.

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