“I was extremely skeptical of the whole idea, in part because the original TED talk was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Pacific Garbage Patch and gyres,” says Dr. Clark Richards

I got caught up in the hype around ocean cleanup and used to tell people about it. It took looking at footage of what the great pacific trash gyre was for me to realize this wasn't nearly as simple and easy. I'm sad that the Ocean Cleanup continues to ignore what marine scientists have been saying

Frontiers | Indices of reduced fish biomass, changes in fish biodiversity and seafloor macrolitter – implications for fisheries management in Sri Lanka www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.... 🧪🦑🌎🐟

It took social media by storm, but it didn’t work for all the reasons that ocean plastic pollution experts said it wouldn’t work all along. My latest for The Revelator tells this important story and asks what we can learn from it. Please enjoy. therevelator.org/why-ocean-cl...

I talk a lot about the complexity of ocean conservation, and how real solutions can’t fit on a bumper sticker. Enter the Ocean Cleanup. Launched by a teenager giving a TED Talk, they claimed they were going to scoop all the plastic out of the ocean. 🧪🦑🌎

The unsung biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea needs urgent protection news.mongabay.com/podcast/2026... 🧪🐟🌎🦑

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken

"In any situation, if you don’t understand the problem, you’re unlikely to come up with a workable solution."

This is a great read about why the "Ocean Cleanup" project didn't work as well as hoped. There are so many parallels with other well-intentioned efforts -- including in the climate space -- that don't pan out because folks ignored the science.... therevelator.org/why-ocean-cl...

This plastic toy building brick was found in the stomach of a Sable Shearwater chick on Lord Howe, a remote island located off the east coast of Australia. It was discovered by scientists at @adriftlab.bsky.social, a research group focused on seabirds and marine plastics.

Frontiers | Reducing marine emissions through ship−shore environmental leadership: a multilevel model for policy and management in shipping www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.... 🧪🌎🦑

More than 50 years of sustainable fisheries management under the Magnuson-Stevens Act have helped keep U.S. shrimp stocks healthy! fisheries.noaa.gov/insight/shri...

There was an era when this would have been one of the biggest scandals in modern political history. That era was five years ago

Deep sea mining identified as biggest threat to known and unknown deep-sea creatures

the "who won the 2020 election" question is the world's easiest litmus test to determine if a Trump appointee is going to be a hack, because every single one of them can't answer the question and every single one of them is, inevitably, a hack every Dem should vote no on all of them

Scientist colleagues, I could use your help! Are you a member of a professional society? If so, do they have a written code of professional ethics? I am collecting as many of these codes as I can find to help revise our own. Thanks!

Great article on how viral ‘boy genius’ types actually detract from real conservation work

A few years back, we were occasionally asking "what are your thoughts on evolution?" as a test of whether political figures had a basic grip on reality and were willing to acknowledge it. Lots of people failed that test, too.

This is a terrific illustration -- for elected officials but also for media figures -- of the incredible power of simply refusing to take a bullshit dodge for an answer. Keep asking the question, over and over again, and make the weasels squirm.

This is an ongoing pattern, where people seeking extraordinarily important jobs that require judgement and independence can't pass the most basic litmus test for supporting American democracy donmoynihan.substack.com/p/scenes-fro...?

Just bc Galileo was right when all the experts said he was wrong, does not mean everybody with a bad idea is Galileo

All hail the Queen 🫡👑🐠 #queenangel #angelfish #holocanthusciliaris #allhailthequeen #coralcitycamera

Another "unprecedented" moment in the Trump 2.0 era A US Attorney General nominee has taken the oath for confirmation hearings at the Senate, 36 hours after a judge referred that nominee to the New York bar for disciplinary review

Scientist colleagues, I could use your help! Are you a member of a professional society? If so, do they have a written code of professional ethics? I am collecting as many of these codes as I can find to help revise our own. Thanks!

I talk a lot about the complexity of ocean conservation, and how real solutions can’t fit on a bumper sticker. Enter the Ocean Cleanup. Launched by a teenager giving a TED Talk, they claimed they were going to scoop all the plastic out of the ocean. 🧪🦑🌎

How the descendants of the destroyers became the restorers: Psyched to have an excerpt from The Earth Said Remember Me published by the good folks @therevelator.org therevelator.org/for-bald-eag...

Predicting Coral Offspring Survival From Reef Thermal Histories in Ningaloo World Heritage Reef onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🧪🌎🦑

Is your Shark Awareness Day resolution to spend 3 days on a shark research vessel with a marine biologist? I have great news for you! We’re running my open-enrollment course again this fall. You can take it for university transfer credit, or just for fun! Tag a friend who might be interested!

Hey everybody! I’m giving a free public talk about sharks and shark conservation at the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium! www.pittsburghzoo.org/event/why-sh...

The U.S. government says habitat destruction no longer counts as ‘harm’ to endangered species

🦈 Basking sharks are known for grazing on small fish & zooplankton at the surface, but a recent WHOI study shows that they may be 1,000+ meters to find prey in the mid-ocean twilight zone! 📲Dive deeper with @wcai-npr.bsky.social: go.whoi.edu/cai-sharks

www.latimes.com/environment/... Thousands of small, silver fish will wash up on California beaches to perform a strange and wondrous mating ritual. 🧪🦑🌎🐟

In March 2025, Trump met in the Oval Office with oil & gas executives. They listen their grievances and, on the spot, Trump leapt to address them. The executives were, in their own words, "stunned." Read these extraordinary excerpts. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/14/c...

Happy Shark Awareness Day! If I had to distill my outreach goals into one post, it’d be for you to learn that: Sharks are awesome! Sharks aren’t a threat to you. Sharks are ecologically important! Sharks are threatened and need your help! We know how to help sharks! Follow for more.

i love when a press release headline sounds like it was written by an aggrieved fish

🦈 When most people picture a shark, they might imagine something large, sleek, and unmistakably “sharky.” But the truth is, sharks are wildly diverse, and many species have adaptations so unusual that they can seem almost unreal. go.nhm.org/strange-sharks

Potential factors contributing to extreme longevity in the Greenland shark. Journal of Fish Biology, 1–15. doi.org/10.1111/jfb....

Automated whale shark recognition and tracking using drones and deep learning. Journal of Fish Biology, 1–20. doi.org/10.1111/jfb....

#SharkAwarenessDay Nearly 1/2 of numbfish species are threatened, yet most have <1% of their range in no-take MPAs. Explore species-level MPA coverage in our new paper: tinyurl.com/SharkRayMPA and app: tinyurl.com/sharkRayMpaExplorer @iucnshark.bsky.social #numbfishes #sharks #rays #conservation

Scientists--if your funding was cut over the last year (for research on climate, global health, DEI, LGBTQ or womens health, etc) but you managed to keep the research going, I want to talk to you for an upcoming article! Plz contact me: gewin at me dot com. Re-posts appreciated!

Demographic analysis of the impacts of fishing pressure on the Naru eagle ray Aetobatus narutobiei in Ariake Bay, Japan link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Unveiling the whale shark diet: Insights from stomach content DNA metabarcoding doi.org/10.1111/jfb....

Still my favourite teaching eval comment.

If you're a Bluesky friend in Da Burgh, let me know if you'd like to join our group dinner the day before this talk!

more like shark weak amirite

I would encourage you to google my name + Shark Week. We are not besties and I've written about it a lot.

Sandbar shark is #BestShark

The shark doctor is in, and hosting a special Shark Awareness Day edition of “ask me anything!” For the next two hours, if you have questions about sharks, shark science, or shark conservation, ask away! (If you ask later I’ll try to get to it later)

Scientists overwhelmingly against rule change that would give political appointees say over science grants

If this is true, the lesson should be not be to declare victory (ok, take one minute to enjoy the victory), but to redouble pressure on the whole indecent mass deportation regime