Wading Through a Sea of Eco-Certification

Posted on By Amy Freitag
Science

With seafood season in full swing, I thought I’d repost this review of certification programs.  I’ve learned lots since writing this article, most notably that the compiled data from the EDF study comes from a huge database of government sources. This gives me more confidence in their truth, but the areas tested are still light on estuaries.  Everything else still stands.  Please check back at the old site for comments.

Another thought process to add to the many considerations of food ethics: if you choose to eat seafood, which fisheries are sustainable and eco-friendly?  For those of us who live on the coast, seafood confused fishrepresents local food that supports local businesses and helps make the connection between producer and consumer.  So step one, deciding to eat seafood, has been taken.  But then what?  A number of nonprofits have taken on that burden and created seafood guides and certification to help you as an informed consumer.  Only problem is, they sometimes differ in their listings based on what criteria they use and how they weight those criteria.

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Blogging with integrity

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 4 Comments on Blogging with integrity
Uncategorized

I’m coming out of my self-imposed July Blog-cation to comment of the events that have transpired over the last two days. If you haven’t been keeping up, Orac at Respectful Insolence has the full story. Long story short – Science Blogs released a new blog, Frontiers in Food, sponsored by PepsiCo and written by PepsiCo employees. They did so without consulting with, or even informing their bloggers ahead of time. The Science Blogger community is largely outraged, and several notable bloggers have quit the network, citing their credibility being compromised.

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Bonehenge – Community action in science outreach

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Science

The following is a repost from the old Southern Fried Science WordPress blog. The original can be found here.

spermwhalelyd501-135

If a 33.5 foot Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus) stranded on your beach, what would you do with it? Leave it to rot? Drag it out to sea? Blow it up? Keith Rittmaster of the North Carolina Maritime Museum decided to do one better.

This blog has never been known for heaping praise on marine mammals, but these creatures are the exception. Sperm whales are extremely strange animals. There are some fantastic online resources available that do a great job covering basic sperm whale biology, so I’d like to skip the intro and talk about some sperm whale features I find fascinating.

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Louis Agassiz and a brief history of early United States marine biology

Posted on By David Shiffman 6 Comments on Louis Agassiz and a brief history of early United States marine biology
Science

ResearchBlogging.org

Happy birthday, America, and happy Fourth of July to all of our readers! Today marks the 234th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and many in the media are spending the day talking about life in the early United States. I’d like to take this opportunity to discuss an aspect of early American life that’s near and dear to my heart-  marine biology.

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