If I were a deep-sea mining company, I would be extremely nervous about the precedents this administration is setting for offshore leases.

It's important to note for the consultant people: Kat is tied for first place, she's raised more money in this race than anyone else, and she hasn't used Twitter in months. It's a website filled with racist AI snuff films and it's rigged against you specifically. There's no good reason to use it.

Luis found new species near Guam -- not far from where Trump wants to allow deep sea mining www.npr.org/2025/12/21/n...

“I can think of no worse place to begin than in the area surrounding the Mariana Trench.” — Dr. Andrew D. Thaler Deep-sea mining isn’t theoretical; it’s being proposed now. Read, learn, and submit a public comment. The deep ocean can’t speak for itself. 🌊✍️

This was exactly my initial reaction to thinking about doing this in the Mariana area. Like, this isn't a great spot to mine, EVEN IF it were actually something that we could and should do. He definitely thinks "all seabed same, so mine is possible and good" 💀 JFC I hate this fuckin timeline.

Here's a gift link for the article. www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open...

I've had a couple of conversations this week about good/appropriate movies for older kids that made me realize how my school might have been a little weird. We had a famous director alumni, and so it was just accepted that he got a de facto pass. He was our guy so his films were fine.

I'm in the San Francisco Chronicle talking about why, even if you're in favor of deep-sea mining, starting in the area around the Mariana Trench is a terrible idea. www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open...

Our first direct hit. Oddly our oyster work is the most popular thing we do. Great return on investment for taxpayers funding bay restoration. cambridgespy.substack.com/p/horn-point...

Super jazzed about this over-40 phenomenon of walking down the stairs slightly wrong and ruining your whole weekend.

I got heat when I published an oped about how bad RFK would be because I pointed out that the last time he advised on vaccine policy, American Samoa ran out of child-sized coffins. www.stardem.com/opinion/edit...

People are so weird. I funded my Patreon for years using bad art until it grew big enough that I could start commissioning better artists. It's fine. People are mostly nice and want to see Mola molas in little hats.

This has made working on expansions for Finspan so difficult. #finspan

The floppy crab huffing hydrothermal vent fluid emerging from what looks like a brain coral is my favorite.

AI slop has made it to the deep sea. That’s not a blobfish: Deep Sea Social Media is Flooded by AI Slop www.southernfriedscience.com/thats-not-a-...

Here's a clip of my interview on the Guam Guy show yesterday youtu.be/0W_wq4BZCoA?...

Ugh. The plague of AI generated deep-sea videos has finally hit. Really looking forward to constantly answering every "what is this creature?" post with "It's Fake is what it is."

I had someone on a hiring committee tell me the only reason I didn't get a job was because they went with the "diverse" candidate. Here's the thing. I know who got the job. They're a rockstar. It was an ego boost just to be in the final round with them. That hiring committee person was an idiot.

“The Mariana Trench isn’t just a resource. It’s a relative.” This Hallmark-style parable cuts through extraction dressed up as progress, showing why deep-sea mining isn’t a technical debate but a moral one—about respect, consent, and who gets to decide the ocean’s future. #OceanHoptimism

This was a color beyond language. The purest blue she had ever seen. Saipan blue, she thought. A blue that belonged to no map, no empire. A blue that belonged only to the sea. And then the sharks appeared. www.angelovillagomez.com/2025/12/saip...

Almost a predation event! Muusoctopus. @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 881 #argentiniandeepseeps #MarineLife #CONICET

Imposter Syndrome, but it's the lack of confidence in your ability to lie shamelessly and constantly.

FYSA, this is in the print edition today. Anyone in south Florida want to grab me a hardcopy?

My first opinion piece for my Public Voices on Technology in the Public Interest fellowship was just published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel: Deep-sea mining cannot ignore environmental concerns www.sun-sentinel.com/2025/12/17/d...

I don't think Vibe Governing is working very well.

I'm in the South Florida Sun Sentinel talking about deep-sea mining! Deep-sea mining cannot ignore environmental concerns - www.sun-sentinel.com/2025/12/17/d...

I know many of you who follow me don't work in climate science, but this is the biggest story in climate right now. Breaking up NCAR makes us all less safe and is another act of self-harm that will take decades to recover from.

A moment of zen from my walk this morning during what is a hectic time for a lot of people.

Bullfrog of the day! Wednesday, 17 Dec 2025

Would you like some little capybaras this morning?

That's a hell of a spread.

He hasn't posted anything, but @realmickfoley.bsky.social appears to be his Bluesky account and I feel like we should let Mick Foley know that Mankind has some fans over here.

This is also a great argument for not going back to Twitter. Let them soften their skin in Elon's playground only to get whacked with reality whenever they venture out of the protective cocoon of alt-right affirmation bots.

My dream ocean documentary is taking Mick Foley on a journey through the history of the Law of the Sea, from Guano Islands to Herring Wars to UNCLOS and deep sea mining. Called "The Common Heritage of Mankind".

This is why I always have hope for Mankind.

My short summary of Ford's big news: "We put a LOT of geninue effort into the EV transition. But then a certain someone pulled the rug out from under us. So we're taking a $19.5B charge to reposition everything in a way that quietly leaves our options open in case the pendulum swings back."

So what, are we going to have to close the fentanyl gap, now? Recruit brilliant fentanyl scientists from our fentanyl adversaries? Who will join our coalition of the willing?

Investigating faunal diversity and abundance in the Marianas midwater www.frontiersin.org/journals/mar...

Why do we see so few squid in the abyss? Because they hide from us, pretending to be sponges!🦑 New paper by @alemejiasaenz.bsky.social captures a potential new whiplash-squid species that burrows between nodules at the #CCZ, world's largest region targeted for #deepseamining doi.org/10.1002/ecy....

Thrilled to announce my first book deal! Limitless Abyss: The Use and Misuse of the Deep Sea will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press! Expect it sometime in 2027.

I was a slackybara over the weekend, but I think we could all use some baby capybara's this Monday morning.

In 2025, Twitter drove almost no traffic to my website or Patreon. Bluesky, even with an order of magnitude fewer active accounts, drove almost as much traffic as pre-2019 Twitter. Even ignoring everything else, the engagement here is just quantitatively better. And y'all are cool.

I don’t use social media to argue about politics with strangers. I use social media to talk to people about fish. When I talk about fish on Bluesky, people ask me questions about fish. When I talk about fish on Twitter, people threaten to murder my family because we’re Jewish.

I'm concerned the folks don't seem to know that there is a whole ass album of Hanukkah folk songs written by Woodie Guthrie. Woody Guthrie's Happy Joyous Hanukkah by the Klezmatics. m.youtube.com/watch?v=XpcS...

We light for those who cannot. We light for those who are afraid to. We light because darkness only wins when we let it. Chag Hanukkah Sameach. May our flames refuse to go out.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

And still, we light. We light because we understand something essential: that the act of kindling flame in the face of those who would extinguish us is itself holy resistance. That refusing to disappear is a form of prayer.

Whew. Finally finished the second Sunstealah Wheelah. Embracing the philosophy of good enough to actually get these things done. So many little goblins. This is my attempt to make the goblins look sunburned.

1984, but Room 101 is full of puppies.

The new Deep-Sea Mining Watch is LIVE. Ocean transparency matters for the up to 90% of deep sea species that may still be undiscovered — and how AIS data + Global Fishing Watch tools reveal where deep-sea exploration is happening. @globalfishingwatch.org Explore → deepseaminingwatch.msi.ucsb.edu

It's hokey, but my last truly memorable movie theatre experience was Avengers: Endgame, which I went to see by myself on a Thursday night after a long week running an oceanography workshop in a small New England town. The crowd absolutely went wild when Captain America picked up the hammer.