A Blog Around The Bay

I had the pleasure of sharing a ferry ride and a beer with Bora Zivkovic tonight. In case you live under a rock, Bora (AKA Coturnix) pens A Blog Around The Clock over on ScienceBlogs and, at three years and running, has the distinction of authoring one of the best and most consistent science blogs out there. A Blog Around The Clock is a self-described amalgam of science, politics, personal ruminations, blogging-about-blogging, chronobiology, academia and science education, and miscellaneous stuff.

Meeting up with me, I suppose, gets filed under miscellaneous stuff.

Bora is spending a month in San Francisco getting quickly up-to-speed on his new job at the Public Library of Science (PLoS). PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. It's all about open access, baby. With a proven knack for building and nurturing online communities, Bora recently was hired by PLoS to help drive users to log into PLoS to review scientific papers. A very cool job, made even cooler considering he applied for it through a post on his blog. I wanna be Bora! If his persuasive explanation of PLoS' potential is as effective online as it was in person, he should have no problem populating the site with reviews. Ten minutes with Bora and you too will feel like you drank the PLoS Kool Aid.

Bora met me at my office, then we headed for the Alameda-Oakland Ferry down at Embarcadero. I had plans to bring Bora over to Jack London Square in Oaktown. Turns out Bora is a big Jack London fan and I think he and Prof. Steve Steve were delighted to get the chance to pose with Jack on arrival.


Before you start to cast aspersions on Prof. Steve Steve, allow me to introduce you to my own international travel partner, Mr. Buns:

Here's Mr. Buns in Belize
Mr. Buns in Fiji
And Mr. Buns in Bali
But I digress. A tiny hole-in-the-wall of a bar on the waterfront, Heinhold's First and Last Chance, was our destination. Armed with a Guiness and a Hefeweizen, we parked ourselves outside on a warm evening and chatted all over the map. There are so many who are quick to write-off bloggers and the blogging community as insular and fragmented or a cohort of oddballs. Okay, the oddball category has some truth. But my short history with blogging has most certainly uncovered a collection of people more interested in connections than isolation. Maybe I've just been lucky in the other bloggers I've reached out to (and who have reached out to me). But it's very cool that blogs can create physical as well as intellectual connections. Thanks for spending some time, Bora!

Bora and Prof. Steve Steve share a beer

Hawaii Reef Etiquette Made Easy

This is quite possibly one of the best PSAs for coral reef conservation outreach and awareness I've ever seen. It was produced a few years ago by Ziggy Livnat at For The Sea Productions and involved the support and participation of dozens of Hawaiian businesses, agencies, conservation groups, and local community supporters.

The PSA is distributed with the aid of all the partners to hotels, airlines, cruise ships, dive centers, local television stations and public libraries and targets the 7 million tourists visiting the Hawaiian Islands each year. If you've spent any time flipping through the TV while at your hotel, chances are you've seen this PSA on one of the island hospitality and information channels. For the most part, tourists to Hawaii aren't maliciously trying to damage coral or interfere in natural reef processes. They just don't know any better. This video fills an important gap. I particularly like how it doesn't beat people up while on vacation, but invites them to learn and protect.

Confidence, Certainty, Error Bars, and Modeling: My New Blog?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is under attack again, however this time it's not from special interest groups or partisan spin doctors but from a group of mainstream climate scientists. This new challenge, however, is not questioning the fact that the Earth is warming. That part is clear.

What these scientists are claiming in a newly published article in Science is that the IPCC may have invested undue confidence in their climate model. The authors suggest that future warming events could be more disastrous than the IPCC modeling suggests. Or it may be more moderate. That is the nature of uncertainty when creating models.

For its part, the IPCC modelers say they never meant to suggest they have a better handle on uncertainty than their critics do. Yet while all this represents how the scientific enterprise should work--that is, claims are tested and corroborated through peer review--I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that this will only fuel more climate change denial. Fingers will be pointed, assertions will be made that the scientific community remains divided as to the reality of global warming, and the pesky detail that no one is denying that the Earth is warming will be conveniently buried.

Which also speaks to the greater scientific illiteracy among the American public on the use and limitations of models in science. Models only approximate natural phenomenon. And because they are approximations, most models are inherently inexact because the mathematical description is imperfect and/or our understanding of a phenomenon is incomplete. The mathematical parameters used in models to represent real processes are often uncertain because these parameters are empirically determined or represent multiple processes. Additionally, the initial or starting conditions and/or the boundary conditions in a model may not be well known.

All of this is true in climate modeling, which makes the modeling process so tricky. But we all agree the house is on fire, right? So while I think it's an interesting academic exercise to calculate how fast or how hot the house will burn, shouldn't we also be focused on alerting the neighbors that there's a fire? And searching for a bucket of water or a hose might be a good idea too.

Sundried Tides: Timing Is Everything

While predictable, extreme high and low tide events are a naturally occurring disturbance in coastal marine ecosystems. In fact, tidal variation is the driving force behind most marine coastal zonation. Extreme high and low tides, or spring tides, on coral reefs have rarely been recorded as the cause of mass mortality. However, in years when extremely low tides coincide with high mid-day sun exposure--an event referred to as sundried tides--they have the potential to cause widespread damage.

A group of Australian researchers working on the Great Barrier Reef have studied and documented this effect that can silently wipe out coral reefs. Their analyses, published in the journal Marine Biology, have revealed for the first time that these highly predictable events can seriously impact the state of coral reefs at a time when they are preparing for the thermal stresses of summer as well as storing precious energy needed for spawning. During a sun-dried tide, 40-75% of the major coral taxa were either bleached or partially destroyed.

Ken Anthony and Ailsa Kerswell, of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies have revealed that extreme low tides on clear sunny days can lead to widespread damage of coastal coral colonies. Dr. Anthony explains,

Really low tides, where the local sea level gets to its extreme low for the year, can occur at different times of the day. In years where this occurs during the middle of the day when the sunlight is at its most intense and the reefs are almost fully exposed, there is a real risk of severe coral stress and death in the shallow reef zone. Just like cyclones and other natural disasters, these severe ‘sun-dry tides' rarely occurred since they relied on the alignment of numerous natural extremes. However, when these factors all aligned, by a combination of sun, moon and chance weather, an extreme event occurred which could leave coral colonies bleached and devastated.

So what can be done to protect already threatened reef areas that are vulnerable to inevitable sundried tides? Not a lot. Tour operators on Australia's Great Barrier Reef may be encouraged to help shade coral from the sun when the reef is exposed at extremely low tides, Dr. Anthony says. Temporary sunshades for small parts of the reef could help coral fight the effects of a sun-dried tide. It's not such a silly idea, Anthony says. There is no real way you can prevent corals coming out of the water and the Sun shining. But tour operators could provide shade; if you can shade out light you can save the coral.

Dr Anthony hopes that their predictable nature will also lead to improved warning systems and better models for predicting stress and mortality in corals. Dr Anthony elaborated, If we better understand the timing and severity of natural stressors on reefs, we will be able to better predict the risks of human-induced stressors, and hopefully better manage for healthy reefs.

Source: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

World's Largest Cold Water Reef Explored

I was absolutely in awe watching this amazing video of the most extensive deep water reef system yet discovered. A team of UK scientists made history on the first ever submersible exploration of this spectacular ecosystem located in approximately 350 meters of water off the coast of Norway.

Bottom-water sea temperatures were recorded at minus two degrees Celsius, yet the reef lives in a plankton-rich zone that is home to an abundance of corals and other marine life that have flourished since bottom-trawl fishing was banned in the area by the Norwegian government in 2002. This footage gives a clear indication of what healthy deep water reef systems can look like. I was also impressed with how similar this extensive cold water reef system is to it's tropical, shallow-water analogues.

07.07.07

On my last day in the Capital, I had a fun surprise to find that Washington DC was added as a last minute, free Live Earth concert venue. A stage and tents were set up on the The Mall in front of the National Museum of the American Indian.

It was already almost 90 degrees by 10:30 AM when festivities were scheduled to begin. Although I needed to be at the airport in a few hours, I did the long, hot walk from Dupont Circle down Connecticut Avenue to 17th Street to the Mall. The place was already packed and DC police were scrambling with National Park officers to handle crowd control and traffic flow (apparently they found out about this concert last minute as well). Water vendors were probably the most popular attraction. The poignancy of a global concert to raise awareness of climate change in the middle of a sweltering coast-to-coast heat wave was not lost on me.

A welcoming ceremony and opening remarks were made by Tim Johnson, acting director of the museum and a member of the Mohawk nation. A big jumbo-tron type screen was set up for live links to the other Live Earth venues around the globe. After the opening, Al Gore (surprisingly un-sweaty for a big, overdressed man) took the stage to describe what he hoped to accomplish. His idea was a day to grab the attention of the planet's population for a wake-up to the reality of climate change. There was An Inconvenient Truthiness to his opening remarks as a high tech slide show was being projected behind him. Gore then charged the crowd not to wait for governments to lead, but threw down the challenge to make changes in our everyday lives to help avert the climate crisis.

Then Garth Brooks took the stage and I high-tailed it outta there!

The brainchild of Al Gore, Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent, 11 city concert series taking place on July 7, 2007, bringing together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis. The concert was certainly not without its controversy. First, concert bigwig Sir Bob Geldof (of Band Aid fame) criticized Gore's early Live earth PR calling it a wasteful effort with vague goals.

More recently, US Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) vowed to stall Gore’s plans to stage the main US concert in the Capitol. Despite all the posturing and claims of a "partisan protest disguised as a concert," it was the American Indians who rode in to save the day and welcomed Gore's concert under their already planned "Mother Earth" celebration.

Quintessential Beltway Outsider

I'm in DC this week for a meeting with other coral reef conservation and outreach/awareness folks to assist in formulating a unified domestic theme and message for the 2008 International Year of the Reef. The meeting is being hosted by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF). And since this is a federally funded gathering, I'm wondering if we'll be allowed to mention any of The Three C's: climate, carbon, or caps.

Now, now... mustn't bite the hand that feeds me. But I'm hoping we can actually get to a unified agreement on messaging for the US states and territories. Getting the coral conservation community to move in the same direction can be like herding cats, which is nuts given our limited collective resources and urgency of assorted coral threats. You'd think that avoiding duplication of effort and maximizing collaboration would be the SOP. You'd think, huh?

Founding Fish

Happy Fourth of July! I'm off to eat hot dogs and not think about our scoundrel of a president. Though I'll leave you with some timely reading,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Bigger, Better, Bluer!

Head on over to blogfish for Carnival of the Blue II. A collection of some of the best ocean writing on the blogosphere. Mark's done another amazing job of collecting great ocean posts from all over our blue planet. And stay tuned for Carnival of the Blue III on August 6, right here on Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets.

We Know Who You Are And We Know What You're Doing

Fascinating chart I discovered on Sea Change Strategies blog that highlights what people are doing online across demographic groups. Very interesting (though not surprising) correlations of activity by age.

Source: Business Week, June 11, 2007