Happy Friday!

The post TGIF: Elasmo-Lite-Brites first appeared on Deep Sea News.

I wasn’t quite prepared for what I heard next….

Not to get too Kanye on you, but perhaps one of the best science rhymes of all time.

Because DSN readers are my favorite, below you will see the world-premire, first look of what is promising to be the most epic merge of aquatic sciences and hip hop to date. Prepare yourselves and stay tuned.

For more epic science raps (because who doesn’t love ’em), check out the newest round of videos put out by the Bio Logik Project this past week. Bio Logik is the deeper understanding of Biology and Ecology that is achieved when science, hip hop, and videos merge. Our collaboration emphasizes the production of scientifically accurate music videos that 1) create a more personal connection between students and science and 2) make science accessible to a broader audience.

The post Epic Science Raps of History – A teaser first appeared on Deep Sea News.

“I think it’s important to establish, first of all, that Irrawaddy dolphins are jerks to study.”

Not exactly the preface I was expecting.

“One of my esteemed colleagues describes them as, ‘cute, but generally irritating.’  They tend to be boat-shy and will scatter in all directions (popping up hither and thither), they surface low to the water, have relatively tiny dorsal fins, and sometimes will surface and re-submerge without even showing them.” Tara continues sarcastically, “This makes photo-identification absolutely delightful. I have said many not-so-nice things to these adorable critters.”

Despite popular notion, studying dolphins entails it’s fair share of frustrations. No one understands this better than Scripps Institute of Oceanography scientist and premier “waddy” wrangler, Tara Whitty.

Armed with her camera and clipboard, Tara scans the waters of Malampaya Sound for signs of her rather elusive study species. Unfortunately, the Irrawaddy’s ephemeral presence is most likely attributed to their ICUN designation rather than their secret plight to evade Tara’s ever-watchful eye. Though I can’t say that for sure.

“Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris) are a relatively little-studied species of dolphin distributed patchily around Southeast Asia. They occur in riverine, estuarine, and coastal habitats, which puts them in contact with a number of human activities. Though the species as a whole is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List, several subpopulations (i.e., geographically separated groups) are listed as Critically Endangered. Major threats include accidental entanglement in fishing gear, or “bycatch”, as well as habitat degradation (particularly for the riverine subpopulations), pollution, and boat traffic,” Tara explains in her research blog Of Dolphins & Fishers.

As a conservation ecologist, Tara’s research with the Irrawaddy is critical in our greater understanding of these creatures, their role in the ecosystem, and what efforts we might take to recover their rapidly fleeting populations. Yet, the dolphins are merely players in a greater underlying narrative.

Whether by tradition or necessity, many of the coastally developing nations that encapsulate the Irrawaddy’s home range continue to depend on small-scale and artisanal fisheries. Despite the fisheries being relatively low-tech, they are vital to the livelihood and food security of millions of people. Conversely, these fisheries exhibit the greatest threat to dwindling dolphin populations through accidental capture by fishing gear. Balancing the complicated interface between human well-being and charismatic animal conservation, dolphin bycatch presents a problem not easily remedied.

Thus, Ms. Whitty has taken to the business of mapping conservation-scapes. Stepping back and looking at the whole picture, these conservation-scapes consider not only human impact on dolphins, but the social, cultural, and economic factors that drive human-dolphin interactions. Furthermore, her work examines the obstacles and opportunities that exist for fisheries management and marine conservation within these communities.

Through extensive interviews with the local populace spanning her four study sites (Thailand, Indonesia, and two in the Philippines), Tara compares conservation-scapes across locales to better understand how management might be improved in these places. These household surveys cover topics ranging from fishing practices and local dolphin knowledge to perceptions of marine resource management and governance structure. Now, it would seem that such direct interactions would not bode well for “prying scientists,” however this did not appear to be the case for Tara and her team.

She fondly recalls, “Often, we were treated with great hospitality – given the best (sometimes only) chairs in the household, treated to snacks and extremely sweet coffee or tea, and sometimes fresh coconuts. I also had several charitable local women offer to find me a local husband: ‘You are married? No? Ah. When do you come back here? OK. I will find some men for you.’”

When not being promised off to the locals, Tara and her interview crew continue to pinpoint potential pathways for improving conservation and fisheries management practices in these areas. With this goal, SAFRN, more formally know as the Small-scale and Artisanal Fisheries Research Network, was founded.

At it’s core, SAFRN is more or less a “support group” for those interested in doing interdisciplinary research within small-scale fisheries. Often times, research that is done in these areas is not cohesive, with multiple projects in progress, but little to no communication between them. Thus, with collaborators from Scripps Institute of Oceanography, San Diego State University, and the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, “SAFRN aims to serve as a hub for interdisciplinary communication and collaboration on methods for studying small-scale and artisanal fisheries, and for elucidating the commonalities and differences across fisheries in different regions where this research is conducted.”

So what does this all equate to? Does Tara’s research on the inter-tangled lives of humans and dolphins end in a happily-ever-after?

“I’ll be blunt: I have serious doubts about whether the dolphins at 3 of my sites are going to make it.  They have tiny population numbers, with bycatch beyond the sustainable “Potential Biological Removal” rate.  I believe that this represents the situation for many subpopulations of marine mammals, particularly riverine and coastal cetaceans, and thinking about it can be disheartening.  I spent a good amount of time feeling discouraged, wondering, ‘What am I doing here? What’s the point?’

Here are some thoughts that emerged from that process:  This particular conservation issue (marine mammal bycatch in small-scale fisheries in developing countries) generally coexists with a suite of other issues that need to be addressed regardless of the charismatic animals, for environmental and social sustainability.  Maybe we can’t save these dolphins, but “mapping conservations-capes” at these sites might be able to help improve future management of other issues related to ecosystem health and human well-being.

We need to be candid about conservation outlooks.  Not alarmist, not carelessly optimistic, but candid and pragmatic.  We will almost certainly lose subpopulations, perhaps subspecies or species, of marine mammals due to bycatch in the coming decades.  That is the reality of the situation. Effectively dealing with that reality will require growth in how we approach conservation research. ”

For the dolphins and many cetaceans that roam this area, the future looks grim. However, Tara does not believe all is for naught. Many of these coastal communities are in desperate need of interdisciplinary data sets that take into consideration the ecosystem as a whole, humans included. Organizations such as SAFRN are needed to streamline this information, make it accessible, and ultimately, utilize this data in a way that implements sustainable solutions.

The Irrawaddy are merely the sentinel species, forewarning us of impending danger, not only in Southeast Asia, but globally. Are we listening?

For more about Tara Whitty’s research and the Small-Scale Artisanal Fisheries Network, visit:

http://artisanalfisheries.ucsd.edu

http://tswhitty.com

Special thanks to Tara Whitty, for letting me tell this story for all of you here at Deep Sea News and for dealing with my many, many e-mails. Salamat. 

Related articles

• Saving dolphins & Managing small-scale fisheries
• Introducing SAFRN’s Blog!

The post The Plight of the Irrawaddy first appeared on Deep Sea News.

I’m disappointed to report that the Scripps Institution of Oceanography library will shut down this summer. After I reported the library’s potential closure last year, many of you express shock and dismay at losing this amazing resource – but unfortunately California’s budget woes have triumphed. From Mike Lee’s article in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

In early 2011, UC San Diego leaders announced the closure of the Scripps Library and three others as part of a much larger initiative to save money. The announcement sparked protests, including a plea by the eminent Scripps scientist Walter Munk, but budget demands eventually prevailed.

Library officials said they expect to save about $500,000 annually by consolidating the Scripps collections into those at the Geisel Library [on the main UCSD campus] through lowered expenses for computer support, building maintenance and other items.

By fall, books are expected to be entirely removed from the first two floors of the Scripps Library.

I’m quite sad – I just finished a substantial amount of research in the library’s non-digitized collections – and hope that this reorganization won’t significantly impact scholarly activities.

Previous coverage on Deep Sea News [1] [2]

The post Scripps oceanographic library will shut down first appeared on Deep Sea News.

• Scripps library director Peter Bruggeman commented on my previous post to clarify that very few books are actually available on Google, despite being indexed. He writes:

The 100k books Google digitized from Scripps Library are almost entirely not available fulltext cover-to-cover due to copyright. Only the public domain books published before 1923 are available fulltext, and they number a thousand if I recall correctly. Google Books is an excellent tool for searching text within books, but it is not replacing books on shelf due to copyright. You can’t read those digitized books within Google Books. If you’re lucky you will see a ‘snippet’ of text and from what I’ve seen mostly not.

• The library closing received media coverage in Nature and in Library Journal.
• The students on the Save the SIO Library committee have put together a survey on SIO library use. If you have ever used the library, please take a few minutes to share your experience!
• It’s not too late to sign the petition to keep the library open! Just email your name and affiliation to SaveSIOLibrary at gmail dot com.

The post Scripps library update first appeared on Deep Sea News.

California is broke, largely thanks to incompetent stewardship and Proposition 13, which limits the amount of income the state can bring in from property taxes. Education in particular is being heavily cut – and this is hitting close to home for me personally as well as the oceanography community as a whole. My home institution, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego, may be forced to close its world-famous library.

The Scripps library is the largest oceanography library in the world, and has many collections found nowhere else. While about 100,000 volumes of the over 227,000 volumes have been digitally archived by Google, many scientists need resources that aren’t online – and you know that the Deep Sea News crew is generally in favor of Things Online.

Just in my time at graduate school, I’ve used the library extensively for taxonomy resources (not online) and data from cruises from the early 1970s (not online). Other resources that are at the Scripps library but not online are historic charts and maps, monographs from early oceanographic expeditions, archival material from Scripps’ history, and countless other material.

It’s very sad that we’ve come to this. I certainly understand the need for hard choices –  for another example close to home,  UCSD undergraduates’ tuition is going up by 8% after their fees went up 30% last year, and many of them can’t even graduate in four years because it’s so hard to get into required classes.  But the potential closing of the Scripps library breaks my heart. So much work, time, and resources have been put into building this priceless collection over the past 100 years, and we’re going to lose it just as we need ocean science the most.

If you’d like to speak out regarding the closure of the Scripps library, check out the Save SIO Library Facebook page. You can also sign a petition to keep the library open by emailing your name and affiliation to SaveSIOLibrary at gmail dot com.

The post Budget problems may force Scripps oceanography library to close first appeared on Deep Sea News.