I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Just another day in the office moving liquids from one bag to another. Small step towards our first mooring deployment - proof of priming :) (Food coloring is fun, please try this at home)

Having way too much fun with my first new camera in 11 years Excited to bring this new camera for a long vacation to Malawi (more pics to come)

📣 New #eDNA Publication Alert! 📣 Knauss M, Barnes MA, Begum MZFA, Fokar M, and Lockwood SA. 2025. Assessing the performance of environmental DNA metabarcoding in fish diversity surveys of the Texas Gulf Coast. Estuaries and Coasts 48: 177. doi.org/10.1007/s122...

Another successful field season made possible by large research vessels! 4 cruises and >600 eDNA samples samples in freezer Hats off to all the technicians, crew, and PIs that made it possible to get key long term ocean observations www.pmel.noaa.gov/ocean-molecu...

Experience career pathway options available in Alaska’s maritime industry! Mariculture, research, ship building and repair, fishing, piloting Alaska’s ferries, and more! 🧪🌊 Open to all students in grades 8-12, welcoming both T3 Alaska participants and non-members. t3.alaska.edu/maritime/

Microbial dark matter! Can't see it, can't grow it, but we know it's there... This is some branding illustration I did for the microbial dark matter symposium this year. Thanks @katrinewhiteson.bsky.social and @zymoresearch.bsky.social for the fun commission! #microbes #ecoevo 🧪🐡🧫

This paper and its findings live rent free in my head. Enormous biogeochemical shifts in Southern California from human nitrogen pollution on the scale of upwelling. Building a 25 year time series of zooplankton to understand the biological impacts. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🔬 Free microscopes + teacher training! 📅 Applications are now open. To apply, visit www.foldscope.com or scan the QR code (video) ✉️ Any questions? Email us at [email protected] #stem #education #science #teachers #training #free #microscopy #educators #professionaldevelopment #microscope

In before we lose freedom of speech: Mola molas are rad

Are you an undergraduate or graduate student whose research would benefit from visiting a collection at the @nhm.org? Apply now for our Collections Study Award! Deadline is Oct. 1; learn more at nhm.org/student-coll...

🔥 🌊 Were the #LAWildfires to blame for this year's record-breaking harmful algal blooms? Not necessarily, according to Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System Director Clarissa Anderson. She explains more in this @latimes.com#LAWildfirespiece. ⬇️

For the first time this Spring, NOAA adopted eDNA into a formal stock assessment of Pacific Hake and this was supported by the Scientific Review Group for the Pacific Fisheries Management Council. www.fisheries.noaa.gov/s3/2025-03/2...

Compositional data is wild. It can be both true that proportionally something is functionally zero and also that there is a lot of it. And I know conceptually this is the case, but wow it’s whack when you fail to detect a species with metabarcoding but qPCR assay is 1,000+ copies per uL input 🤯🧬🙈

Giving at talk to my center today on ‘Omics 101. Folks want to learn about this “new” science NOAA has been doing ‘Omics since AT LEAST 1979. A full 24 years before I was born. And arguably there’s Bureau of Fisheries work from the 30s (future quest) Anyways, we’re still new! Young at heart🧬😂🐠🧪

At last, #DNA #Divers is here! A blueprint for a transformative way of capturing #eDNA, from everywhere, through the engagement of #SCUBA divers - a huge team effort led by #ErikaNeave @ukri.org @ljmuimpact.bsky.social @bes-aquaticgroup.bsky.social besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The GRFP lives!! (due end of October) www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

have never clicked a headline so fast www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“Over the past 20 years, Paris has undergone a major physical transformation, trading automotive arteries for bike lanes, adding green spaces and eliminating 50,000 parking spaces. Part of the payoff has been invisible — in the air itself.” Leadership, strategy, real action, common sense. #Paris

This is great - we a huge need in the #eDNA community to have data-informed standards for eDNA identity cutoffs, not just the bog-standard 97% besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... For Chordata there is no cutoff that leads to 0% error when assigning species!! (Table S4)

www.fisheries.noaa.gov/new-england-... Just gunna share this

Following the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, Julie Dinasquet, a project scientist at Scripps Oceanography, studied how the ocean was impacted. Learn more. ⬇️

Immune system is taking its SAT prep today typhoid and rabies vaccines in the system in prep for an upcoming trip to Malawi 🇲🇼. Molecular biology at its finest! 💉🦠

Today a friend in Boston was telling me they don’t swim in the ocean anymore because of sharks. I confirmed that more people have died in Fenway by an order of magnitude than by a shark. And they seem to be ok accepting the risk of the Green Monster but not our cartilaginous friends. Perspective

It’s not like Earth is famously the only planet with any life on it or the only planet with sub sandwiches and nudibranchs

Biodiversity in tropical rainforest canopies can be monitored using eDNA in rain throughfall from canopies, collected w/low-cost collectors. Demo detects eDNA from woody & epiphyte plants, mammals, birds, amphibians & insects in Amazon rainforest & nearby plantation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Please help us spread the word! Please amplify! We are searching for an associate or full professor (Canada Excellence Research Chair) in Biodiversity Genomics at the University of Guelph! 🐟🌿🦠🐜🐸🐝 Applications are due October 6 2025. careers.uoguelph.ca/job/Guelph-C... #AcademicJobs #EvoBio

The great and good Steve Shapin was very entertaining on this when he reviewed Michael Gordin's "The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe" in the LRB some years ago (cc @tamarhaspel.bsky.social) www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...

1. "'Trusting the experts is not a feature of either a science or democracy," Kennedy said." It's literally a vital feature of both science and of representative democracy. I've written a fair bit about trust in expertise as a vital mechanism in the collective epistemology of science.

8. This has been a short and honestly rather peevish thread, so if you want read more that has been written in a more equanimous tone, here's a short piece that I coauthored a few years ago, precisely about how we deal with this kind of duplicity.

"PhD-level experts in your back pocket" is a completely nonsensical description of AI but a pretty good description of social media if you follow the right people

To have this paper appear the same day that RFK Jr is canceling all mRNA vaccine funding is further indication that irony is not dead, even though we might all be soon.

great article in NYT about our discovery of the bacterium causing sea star wasting. This is also a chapter in my new book The Oceans Menagerie. @vikingbooks.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/s...

We are so proud of our sea star wasting work that came out today. This interactive article is very complete and includes beautiful videos. Unmasking the Sea Star Killer www.biographic.com/unmasking-th...

For @biographic.bsky.social, writer @craigwelch.bsky.social followed @hakai.org scientist @rhizalyssa.bsky.social's quest to unveil the the killer that decimated populations of sea stars off the West Coast. It took a few years but the lab's hard work paid off: www.biographic.com/unmasking-th...

After a four-year investigation, a breakthrough study reveals the cause of sea star wasting disease (SSWD). A strain of the bacterium Vibrio pectenicida is the culprit behind the marine epidemic that has killed billions of sea stars since 2013. Read the study: 🔗https://tinyurl.com/4rcb3xpf

A marine serial killer at large, caught at last: researchers identify the agent of the sea star wasting disease that nearly caused the collapse of kelp forests along the Pacific Northwest www.nature.com/articles/s41... @hakai.org @science.ubc.ca @tula.org @nature.org @uwenvironment.bsky.social

There is one month left to apply for our Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution! These awards provide support for students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs with a plan to perform research in #ecology and #evolution. www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons... #science

The boys are back in town Another Seattle Shark Summer

My paper "Social media for fisheries science and management professionals: How to use Bluesky and Instagram, and why you should" is formally published in an issue. It's a how-to guide to using Bluesky, the first ever published in the scientific literature! 🧪🦑🌎🐟 academic.oup.com/fisheries/ar...

Stoked to bike to this!

Definitely not timely or relevant for any particular reason. Absolutely nothing to see here. Totally not the droids you are looking for bruh 2025= 1930+ 1984 mash up no one asked for

Motherfucking wind farms…

Our latest review:“The essential role of large research vessels in marine ecosystem observations and ocean sustainability” led by Erin Satterthwaite for CalCOFI’s 75th! BIG ships do BIG science 🚢⛴️ Timely given our struggles to pull off chemistry + biology on a mini-RV 🥵😅🧬🧪 doi.org/10.1002/lno....

🧪 What if we could share genetic sequences in a way that is equitable, and works for the greater good? Now in @natgenet.nature.com, we establish a framework for the open sharing of digital sequence information 🧬, compatible with FAIR, and designed to support access and benefit-sharing. 🧵

Science in action on the Mini- West Coast Ocean Acidification cruise! Sampling in an intense hypoxic event off Oregon shelf to look at depth specific responses of species and whole communities. Awesome last minute collaboration with NOAA PMEL + NWFSC & OSU CIMERS #eDNA #hypoxia #multistressors 🧬🧪🌊

Dr. Kathi Lefebvre from NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center led this new @nature.com paper linking harmful algal blooms #HABs, ocean warming, and aġviq (bowhead whale) in the #Arctic. 🧪🌊🦑 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Everything else seems upside down, radioactive, and cursed these days But my succulent is blooming against all the odds

We really need to see more robust integration of social scientists into the day-to-day work of real-time weather forecasting, evacuation / post-event planning, and other risk mitigation strategies.