SeaMonster blog
-
Fiji’s blue ocean – just to make you jealous
Today was our first day of field work here in Fiji. We’re all exhausted from diving, interviewing, and processing fish samples. So I’m afraid all I have for you is some envy-inducing photos. (I promise to post more about the science soon!).
-
Debunking National Review’s lies about climate change
In response to Obama’s historic speech and new policy on climate change, the American conservative media has gone, well, predictably bonkers. Check out this editorial from National Review, which starts off with a lie: It is remarkable that when the scientific consensus on global warming is at its weakest state in years, President Barack Obama…
-
Obama’s climate action plan
This has been a massive news week. We started off with unrest in Brazil, more unrest in Turkey, more bloodshed and chaos in Syria, Snowden fleeing Hong Kong, the bombshell that the “IRS war on conservatives” was another GOP fantasy, and the SCOTUS overturning portions of the Voting Rights Act. Then yesterday afternoon came Obama’s…
-
Marine park connectivity with Josh Drew
-
Climate Change and Marine Communities 7: Blue Carbon
This is the 7th installment of my serialization of a new book chapter on “Climate Change and Marine Communities” written with Chris Harley and Mike Burrows. It is for a new book “Marine Community Ecology and Conservation” that I’m co-editing with Mark Bertness, Brian Silliman, and Jay Stachowicz. Blue Carbon To avoid long-term ecological degradation, it is becoming…
-
Getting ready for science
It’s been a while since I’ve been part of a research team or travelled with more than one other person (often I’m by myself or with my husband). And so far, on this trip to Fiji it’s been a delight to spend time with five other people who share many of my views on the…
-
Seamonster in Fiji – it doesn’t all go to plan
Today we were supposed to catch a ferry out to our field site. But the ferry is delayed so instead we’re catching a bus-boat combo and arriving a day late (and we only have a week set aside for science). That’s tropical fieldwork for you. And just to show you that things don’t always go…
-
Introducing the Drew Crew
Bula. I’m in Fiji with Joshua Drew and his team from the Columbia University. We’ve been in Fiji’s capital, Suva, for a few days getting prepped for the field – sorting permits, meeting people, setting up equipment, all the things that need to happen before we head off to the study site. When Josh very…
-
Meeting marine predators (aka diving with sharks) – Part 2
I’m in Fiji on a research expedition with Joshua Drew from Columbia University. Before the hard research work started I took off a day and went diving with bull sharks. Read part 1 of my encounter with some of the oceans biggest predators here. Within a minute or two of being surrounded by forty bull…
-
Meeting marine predators – Part 1
In the lead up to my first dive in Fiji a lot of people asked me if I was scared. Was I nervous? It was going to be my three hundred and somethingth dive, so by now I’m used to being beneath the waves. But the conversation that I had a few times ran like…
Got any book recommendations?