Submerged Science— May 30, 2023
Fieldwork flow state, abolishing eponyms, and tourist-aided restoration
Hi, friends!
Fresh off my vacation, I’m feeling great! I ate a lot of delicious food in Boston and enjoyed walking around the city every day. After a weekend at home playing the new Zelda game, this week I’m preparing for a bunch of fieldwork and travel to St. Croix and Panama over the next month.
It’s a little bit stressful trying to arrange the logistics and make sure no one is forgetting any gear or paperwork, but I’m excited for the trips to start. There’s a certain kind of peace that comes from ignoring all your emails and focusing on doing only the work that is right in front of you, what I am going to dub right here as the “fieldwork flow state.” Reply if you know what I’m talking about!
The most-clicked link from the last edition was about how volcanoes kill fish.
Let’s get on to the science!
Turning the Tide
Well-written popular articles in marine science
Imagine trying to draw an animal you’ve never seen before as someone describes it to you. Else Bostelmann accomplished exactly this in the 1930s. Else used her talents to bring deep-sea creatures to life for the general public. When William Beebe and Otis Barton took their deep expedition in their bathysphere and their attempt at photographs failed, Else revived their verbal observations. She also set up a painting studio underwater!
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For a long time, biological science and taxonomy consisted mainly of white men describing animals they found, and attaching their friends’ or even their own names to them. But the namesakes for these animals were not always good role models. Scott’s oriole is named for a man who carried out ethnic cleansing of Cherokee families, preceding the Trail of Tears. There is now a movement among biologists to abolish the practice of naming animals after a person entirely, as it reflects the wrong values.
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The UN likes to simplify complex issues like climate change into simple targets like 1.5 degrees C. Unfortunately, this is an opportunity for lots of misinterpretation. In the past couple weeks, several headlines proclaimed we were going to pass this climate threshold in the next 5 years, which is very misleading. We will only temporarily pass this target in that time frame, due to the effects of a developing El Niño. We will eventually pass the threshold, but we’re not there just yet.
Hannah Ritchie, Sustainability by numbers
Some Science
Fresh discoveries and peer-reviewed papers
Some of the difficulty of maintaining coral restoration programs is in the time needed by trained staff to monitor the health of the restored corals. A conservation group in the Seychelles is testing a new set of methods intended to be used by minimally-trained hotel guests and staff to help determine the success or failure of a restoration project. It seems to be working, and could make a huge difference in the manageable scale of future projects.
Dr. Sarah Frias-Torres, Nature Seychelles
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Evolution moves on timescales that are incomprehensible to us. It is rare to see evidence of animals evolving in real time, but that is exactly what scientists have found in underwater caves. In saltwater caves in the Pacific Ocean, researchers have found a new species of moray eel, some of which have two eyes and some of which have their left eye covered by skin. The species appears to be in the process of adapting to the darkness of the cave by losing the unnecessary and energetically-expensive eyes.
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Everyone has seen the underwater images of the Titanic in the movie, right? Well, no one has seen it quite like this until now. A team has thoroughly photographed the Titanic wreckage, creating a 3D model with millimeter-scale resolution. Get ready for some impressive stats: the photos and 4K videos comprise 16 terabytes of data, cover the entirety of the 3-mile wreckage site at 12,500 ft, and required more than 200 hours of diving time to document. Definitely check these out, the level of detail is truly amazing.
Fun and Fascinating
Surf’s up for this flatfish!
I know the thumbnail looks boring but I promise this video is cool.
Now that I’m not using Twitter as much, it’s harder for me to find cool ocean clips. If you see one you think I should share, please send it my way!
Thanks for reading! Remember to drink water, eat plants, and don’t be too salty.
Til next time,
Sarah
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