There’s no getting around it, science is a social enterprise. Go ahead, try and do some by your lonesome. Oh, you may putter and dial-twirl and churn out some damn fine solo research. But you’ll undoubtedly rely upon the prior research of others to get anywhere (that whole “standing on the shoulders of giants” business). And if you have any hope of your research rippling further than your lab, you need to avail yourself of a peer review process that opens-up your work to global scrutiny and verification.
Yup, science is a group effort.
And so, it seems, is science blogging. This IS social media, after all!
I’ve had a pretty solid and satisfying solo run over at Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets… four years, nearly 1000 substantive posts, hundreds of thousands of visitors from 196 countries. Not too shabby for a mostly coral reef conservation-focused blog written with a decidedly queer agenda. But no man is an island. Not even an ocean blogging man.
I’m pleased as punch to now join the close-knit family of ocean science colleagues here at Deep Sea News. I’ve admired the writing, humor, and camaraderie on display here for years; I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t gushing with pride when Craig invited me to join the crew. And I truly love that the folks behind Deep Sea News know their audience and work hard to maintain a highly social and interactive platform.
Over the years, I’ve come to call Craig, Kevin, and Miriam dear friends. Yet while I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Kevin and Miriam in the flesh (hell, we’ve quaffed a goodly amount of booze and broken bread together on several occasions), I’ve somehow not managed to meet Craig yet. I suspect this will soon change. And I’m thrilled at the prospect of now collaborating with Holly as well. I just hope I do them all proud!
For my part, I’ll continue to provide my particular take on ocean science issues. Expect a heavy focus on coral reefs, marine biodiversity conservation, marine protected area science, and the politics and practicalities of ocean resource management (which is more about managing humans than managing the resource). And I’ll try to keep the snark to a minimum.
But please do your part too! Tell me what you like, don’t like, what piques your interest or spurs your thoughts along the way. This is a two-way conversation.
Enough with the overture. As the plebe around here I’ve got a lot of heads to scrub. Craig said that if I do a good job, I won’t have to use my own toothbrush.
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wooooooooooooo! If Sciblogs is the borg,does this make Deep Sea News the Siphonophore?
Welcome, Rick!
You’ll try to keep the snark to a minimum? O NOEZ!
Also, now I fear that Kevin will shave his head, leading to a bald majority on DSN.
Great addition! Good to have a coral guy around. :)
I KNEW it! Wooo! Glad to see all the folk I so enjoy reading in one place!
LOL Miriam. So Craig, Rick, bald heads and goatees next Science Online? ;p
This explains the 7.5 earthquake in NZ, seismic events of this magnitude express themselves in funny ways. Congrats and welcome to the hallowed home of damn cool science blogging.
Kinda like arriving at Hogwarts for the first time.
I like ninjas and dark beer.
thanks for all the welcome! kevin, bald and goatee’d it is! you can shave your head this year, but give it time… i know we’ll get you there naturally!
Bald *and* a goatee? Well, you’ll get the goatee from me but I very much enjoy the hair atop my head thankyouverymuch.
Welcome Rick!
Even by myself I represent a bald majority
Fine, Holly and I will get these and we will be the COOLEST. Behold, the Mermaid Beard!
This is a great group of bloggers here at DSN, love you guys. The addition of RickMac is pretty sweet. Any future plans to add ocean bloggers w/ less of a bio focus? Physical oceanographers or something like that? Just curious.
Also, I have a request (which you can obviously ignore and I won’t be offended) — any chance of including full posts in feed? Or, maybe at least a paragraph. I don’t know about others, but I click to the actual pages much more often when the feed offers me more than a tiny snippet.
Keep up the awesome work!
Brian, are you suggesting that we take on a marine sedimentologist? Perhaps someone that knows a bit about submarine canyons?
Seriously though, I’ve brought this up before and the fact is there is not many physical oceanography, or marine geology, bloggers. I am very much interested in branching out from biology. My initial training was in geosciences and in fact my first ever blog post was geology! We are up for good recommendations of marine geology bloggers, I just haven’t found any besides you. The oceanography bloggers, appear to be biological too.
I wasn’t trying to drop a hint about me, although it does look that way, ha ha! But I’ve got some plans of my own up my sleeve anyway.
I always find the relationship of marine life to temp, salinity, current patterns, etc. as well as geology/physiography fascinating. You guys cover this stuff pretty damn well.
Yeah, you don’t want to shave it off only to find it won’t grow back ;)
Wow, this is like if the 1927 Yankees added Alex Rodriguez. Or maybe like if Batman and Spiderman and the Fantastic 4 just teamed up with Tintin and Milou. Oh, what the heck, just as cool as if the Spice Girls just picked up Vanilla Ice.
I’m jealous.
all i can say, mark, is: “word to your mother”
agreed!! full posts in feed would be great :)
But how will I know who reads the blog if no one comes here? While its convenient for you, it makes it difficult for us to assess how we are doing. Traditionally we have very low commenting here so we don’t get enough feedback, its important for us to get an idea of what are reach is.