Blogs / The Intersection

Miriam Goldstein–chief scientist of SEAPLEX–is leading the voyage to understand the the island of garbage in the North Pacific Gyre to attempt to understand the effects it may have on marine life. She has a new blog post up entitled ‘“Millions, billions, trillions”…of scientific errors in the NYT‘. Yikes! Here’s how it begins:

On Tuesday, the New York Times published an article on the North Pacific Gyre called “Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash.” Written by Lindsay Hoshaw, it was the culmination of a $10,000 freelance journalism project* in which she visited the gyre with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. Unfortunately, this NYT article was far below their usual standards. Not only did it not add anything new to the discussion, but it significantly misrepresented the state of the science, presenting broad estimates & conjecture as facts.

I sent a list of corrections to the New York Times, and I am republishing them here as well. They are in the order they appear in the article. Because there are so many, I have kept each explanation brief, but please ask in the comments if you would like elaboration. Thanks to my SIO colleagues Kristen Marhaver and Mike Navarro for their suggestions!

In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement.

The gyre is not a current, but a lack of currents. Please see Pete’s explanation of convergence zones for more detail.

And that’s only the beginning… Go take a look.

The SEAPLEX (Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition) voyage to the island of garbage in the North Pacific Gyre continues… Watch marine mammal specialist Josh Jones deploy his acoustic array to study dolphins and whales:

More videos from the expedition are available at Dive Into Your Imagination.

More on the spectacular leafy sea dragon and other unusual critters at HuffPo…

There has been no comprehensive statement from our government on oceans. Now for the first time, we have a common vision to govern the 4.4 million square miles of America’s marine waters: President Obama’s Ocean Policy Task Force has issued science-based recommendations for a national policy to govern, protect, maintain and restore ocean habitat.

Why should you care? Oceans are important to all of us–not just fishermen and boaters, but snorkelers, sunbathers, divers… even those who may not see the coast on a regular basis. They drive life on our planet. Unless we take responsibility for keeping oceans sound, we’re all in trouble. As the Marine Conservation Biology Institute explains:

If adopted, implemented and funded, the recommendations would usher in a new era of ocean management — one based on environmental stewardship. Just imagine the impact we could have if, rather than the hodgepodge of agencies and laws that currently govern oceans, coasts and the Great Lakes, we work together to restore the health of these critical ecosystems!

Go visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/initiatives/oceans/ and tell the White House Council on Environmental Quality that you support a comprehensive national policy to protect, maintain and restore our oceans and coasts. The 30 day comment period ends on the 17^th.

For inspiration, once again, here’s My Top Ten List of reasons why oceans are vital:

1. Ocean critters generate a good deal of the oxygen we breathe.
2. We’re talking 99% of the habitat, 97% of the water, and 71% of surface on the planet!
3. Oceans drive climate and weather through transfer of water and heat.
4. Most U.S. commerce travels through the nation’s ports.
5. Oceans account for a $20 billion recreational fishing industry… not to mention, a $60 billion annual seafood industry.
6. And we’re talking $8 trillion estimated in oil and gas reserves.
7. They support nearly 50 percent of all species on Earth.
8. Over 50% of our nation’s population lives in coastal counties.
9. Oceans mitigate the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere at their own expense… (okay, and ultimately ours).
10. Marine animals and plants produce a ton of compounds that prevent and treat human disease.  Like sea cucumbers…

From yesterday’s NYTimes:

The answer to the eternal mystery of what makes up a Filet-O-Fish sandwich turns out to involve an ugly creature from the sunless depths of the Pacific, whose bounty, it seems, is not limitless.

The world’s insatiable appetite for fish, with its disastrous effects on populations of favorites like red snapper, monkfish and tuna, has driven commercial fleets to deeper waters in search of creatures unlikely to star on the Food Network.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, our oceans are going to hell in a handbasket. Sad, but not news to anyone paying attention. The signs of dramatic ocean decline are crystal clear.

When there’s nothing but jellyfish and algae left, our children may wonder why we knew, yet did nothing. So it goes.

This morning the ocean provided a little reminder of why I love marine science.

Thank you.

Remember the voyage to the island of garbage in the North Pacific Gyre? It’s a unqiue collaboration between Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) and the nonprofit Project Kaisei. Known as SEAPLEX (Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition), the marine scientists on board are attempting to quantify hundreds of miles of floating plastic debris and determine the effects it may have on marine life.

I’ve just heard from Miriam Goldstein–intrepid chief scientist of SEAPLEX–about the huge SIO grad student-driven communication effort surrounding this cruise. They are working to involve the public in cutting-edge research through a website, mission blog, live Tweets from the ship, and the very cool set of Flickr project photos!

The SEAPLEX team has been featured on Science Friday, CNN, Reuters, Yahoo News, NBC San Diego, the Irish Times, and ScienceBlogs! It’s a wonderful initiative–not only because it’s intended to protect the environment and increase public understanding of oceans issues, but also in that it serves to highlight the kind of ‘New Scientists‘ we celebrate!

CM and I are following along with great interest…

Courtesy of NOAA’s Ocean Explorer:

This deep sea shrimp, Acanthephyra purpurea, spews bioluminescence to blind or distract a predator.

by Joel Barkan

Over the past three days, our class has shifted gears to a discussion on the role of ethics in science.  Dr. Craig Callender of UCSD’s philosophy department and Dr. Jay Odenbaugh, a professor of philosophy visiting from Lewis and Clark College, have joined us to offer a philosophical perspective to the topic of marine biodiversity and conservation.  

The discussions have been both meditative and downright wacky:  today, the subject of distributing “reproduction permits” to capable couples for the right to have children—a sort of cap-and-trade system of controlling the world’s population problem—was brought up (as a purely hypothetical, of course).  You can imagine what the rest of our philosophical discussions were like.

One topic that provoked a lively debate was that of scientists using their professional achievements and status to advocate personal values.  For instance:  is it ethical for an accomplished fisheries biologist to advocate for widespread marine protected areas, which may have significant economic effects, but would protect the fisheries valued by the biologist? 

Scientists are responsible for producing results that shape public policy, but should scientists also take on the role of advocating for that policy?  Where do scientists draw the line between their role as researchers and as a citizens?

During this discussion, our course coordinator, Dr. Jeremy Jackson, brought up Dr. James Hansen of NASA as an example of a scientist who has dared to test the imaginary boundary between scientist and public advocate.  Dr. Hansen, who was profiled extensively in Chris Mooney’s Storm World, has famously campaigned for action to limit human-induced climate change.  Dodging a barrage of resistance from global warming skeptics and censorship by his own government, Dr. Hansen remained unwavering in his beliefs.  Dr. Jackson—never one to be muzzled himself—referred to Dr. Hansen as a personal hero in this respect.

When science and politics intersect, roles and boundaries are often muddied.  As Scripps graduate students, our own roles as both scientists and advocates will undoubtedly come into focus as we address issues in marine conservation.

The second class session at Scripps contained two lectures, one by Sheril and one by Tom Bowman of Bowman Global Change–both focused on communicating about science.

Sheril told the inspiring (and funny) story of how she went from being an expert on the sea cucumber, to a pop radio DJ, to a Capitol Hill staffer and Knauss Fellow, to a blogger and author on science with a specialty in the subject of kissing. Inevitably, Sheril related, her trajectory away from academia and towards the worlds of media and policy forced her to communicate with people–fisherman, congressional aides, her senator–who tended to treat scientists as though they were “from another planet.” Traditional scientific language wasn’t the way to reach these folks; a new way had to be found. In particular, Sheril learned that talking about the economic aspects of marine science and fisheries issues helped spark much more interest from the senator she was working for–Bill Nelson of Florida–than a presentation full of p values and statistics.

Throughout her talk, the point Sheril wanted to drive home to the class–comprised of science grad students at Scripps–was to dare to take a nontraditional career path. The solution to the problems we face are necessarily going to come from many different kinds of people–and scientist-policy wonk-communicator hybrid personalities have a unique leg up not only when it comes to succeeding in communication, but also in the job market at a time when not all young scientists can count on landing academic careers.

Next we heard from Tom Bowman, a professional communicator and designer whose background originally was in informal science learning (creating content for museums, aquariums) but has increasingly shifted to communicating about issues at the intersection of science and policy, like climate change. In his talk, Bowman started out by asking a critical question: Sure, we all say science communication is important, but “Why are we communicating?”

Scientific organizations often act as though they don’t have a clear answer to this question. Take the subject of ocean health, for instance; or climate change and the reports of the IPCC; or any scientific topic where many, many blue ribbon committees have sounded off. It turns out, Bowman said, that big science assessment reports are never written “with the objective of helping you figure out what the most important issues are”–what to care about as a citizen. What really matters. Rather, they are data dumps, attempts to assess the state of knowledge, but hardly made usable or accessible to nonscientists.

We certainly need to make these products more accessible, but as Bowman asked, what are our goals in doing so? Are they: Changing civic behavior? Changing consumer behavior? Improving scientific literacy? Fulfilling some institutional mission?

If we’re not clear about this, scientific communication won’t “succeed.”

Bowman also addressed another issue–how to convey a complex body of data. “People simplify,” he observed. “It is an inherent aspect of human cognition.” The problem is, scientists often want to tell you everything they know. And indeed, scientific communication in journals actually requires being comprehensive. But this makes such science content almost entirely incommunicable to anyone other than scientists. The trick is that we have to speak to people in the language they understand, not in the language we do.

There was a lot more other valuable stuff from Bowman’s talk (it was very popular), but I’ll just put up this post–it is more than enough food for thought, and for reactions.