Scientific drilling and climate change

[charlier]

I thought that I would post 2 photographs that document drilling porites corals A large coral can provide sub-seasonal record of SST, salinity, and rainfall records. Photos from Micronesia and taken by WHOI staff photographer.

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[tphelps]

Nice! Happy to see such large Porites (lobata?) that's healthy. Our massive ones in Kona were killed in the 2015 El Nino bleaching event .

 

[Wookie]

I'm not one to criticize science, but I've sure drilled a lot of holes in live and dead coral heads without having my tender lay on the damn head, or letting my fins make contact with the head. This is piss poor science.

And by a lot, I mean hundreds. Y'all should be ashamed.

 

[charlier]

Sorry about the piss poor science. I guess you might blame the scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the incompetent post-docs, staff scientific divers and graduates students at WHOI.

 

[RyanT]

This is piss poor science.

I agree that it is poor technique, but you're confusing sample collection with science. Poor skills while sampling doesn't necessarily entail "piss poor" science.

 

[Wookie]

Science starts with data collection. Poor data collection results in poor results. And WOods Hole is not the end all be all to science, any more than Walmart is representative of excellence in retail.

 

[RyanT]

Actually science starts with observation and hypothesis development.

 

[Wookie]

Truth, but can hypothesis be truly science, or a bunch of grad students sitting around drinking beer and hoping to get their project funded?

Look. My objection to this whole thing is the bad example it sets. We harp and harp on ScubaBoard and as instructors about not having a bad interaction with marine life, but the pictures make it appear that it's OK if it's for science. The drill rig being used is obviously a tripod mount drill, but it's being used as a hand drill. Had it been used with a tripod, there would have been no coral interaction aside from the hole, which are easily patched with a cement plug made in a red Solo cup. But someone got lazy and didn't set up the tripod. They could have used a Stanley DL-07 drill and stood on the sand and drilled sideways into the head, because guess what? Coral grows in all directions, but that isn't as sexy as drilling down, and if your going to manhandle that particular drill, you have to have a ton of a$$ to hold it straight, so they used gravity instead. But the real infraction is the goober laying on the head, who was steadying the bit and videoing with the go pro. Rolling around on a coral head stresses the hell out of it and likely damaged it. So, observation in the name of science turned into killing or damaging the sample donor, which was completely unnecessary. That's like killing a sperm whale to get a DNA plug.

 

[RyanT]

More to my point though, just because the divers failed to maintain neutral buoyancy doesn't mean the core samples they collected were compromised.

So castigating the science because the divers had less than optimal in-water skills is analogous to claiming that a charter operation is inherently unsafe, because you saw the captain bump a piling while docking the boat.

 

[RyanT]

We harp and harp on ScubaBoard and as instructors about not having a bad interaction with marine life, but the pictures make it appear that it's OK if it's for science

On this point I will agree. We should all be cognizant of our impact on the reefs.

Truth, but can hypothesis be truly science, or a bunch of grad students sitting around drinking beer and hoping to get their project funded?

But likewise, it's exactly this sort of thing...I always find it amusing when non-scientists make claims about how science works. Hypothesis development is not simply a bunch of grad students sitting around and BSing. If you'd like, I'll send you one of my Science papers, that took the best form of hypothesis testing, and used it to help change our understanding of sensory cognition and evolutionary biology.