Washed Ashore Research Articles

Homo Sovieticus Washed Ashore: A Research Agenda for Studying the Second Wave of the Russian Emigration

Homo Sovieticus Washed Ashore: A Research Agenda for Studying the Second Wave of the Russian Emigration

Sea turtle strandings in the temperate Southwest Atlantic: Analysis of drivers and potential causes

Abstract Marine megafauna are subject to several threats due to the increasing exploitation of marine ecosystems. Mortality is frequently evidenced by the occurrence of stranded individuals in coastal zones; however, conclusive identification of its drivers and causes is challenging. In this study, we explore the hypothesis that bycatch in trawling is one of the anthropic drivers of sea turtle strandings in the temperate Southwest (SW) Atlantic, where green (Chelonia mydas), loggerhead (Caretta caretta) and leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) turtles forage seasonally. Beach survey data during March, April and May from 2014 to 2018 were used to characterize strandings and relate their spatio‐temporal distribution to physical and anthropic variables. Loggerhead (47.4%) and leatherback turtles (49.3%) were the most common stranded species, whereas green turtles were recorded only occasionally (3.3%). Based on the size distribution, strandings reflected both juvenile and adult mortality, with variations between species. Generalized linear models showed that sea turtle strandings were influenced by winds and sea surface temperature, while there was no evidence of a relationship with fishing effort. Further studies should assess drowning due to bycatch as a cause of turtle death, since interaction with fisheries is commonly reported in the area and drowned animals may or may not wash ashore. This study raises awareness and assesses, for the first time, the mortality of threatened sea turtle species in a poorly known region of its distribution.

Washed Ashore at High Tide: Music in Contemporary Science Fiction

Abstract Music, with its strong role in the politics of memory, has socialized the linguistically speculative, giving science fiction a groove that bends prose for queer, Black, and indie-minded futurity.

Washed Ashore

Washed Ashore

Quantifying seaweed and seagrass beach deposits using high-resolution UAV imagery

Macroalgae and seagrass wash ashore by tidal waters and episodic events and create an ocean-to-land transport of carbon and nutrients. On land, these deposits (beach wrack) are consumed by macrofauna, remineralized by microorganisms, or washed back to the sea, during which recycling of carbon and nitrogen affect the biochemical cycles in coastal zones. Manual quantification of beach wracks is time-consuming and often difficult due to complex topography and remote locations. Here, we present a novel method using Unoccupied Aerial Vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry combined with in situ measurements of carbon and nitrogen contents of wrack to quantify marine carbon and nutrient deposits in beach zones. The UAV method was tested against placed cubes ranging from 125 to 88,218 cm3 and demonstrated a high accuracy (R2 > 0.99) for volume acquisition when compared to manual measurements. Also, the UAV-based assessments of the cross-sectional area of beach deposits demonstrated a high accuracy when compared to manual and high-precision GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) measurements without significant differences between the methods. This demonstrated that UAVs can provide detailed spatial maps, three-dimensional (3D) surface models, and accurate volumetric assessments of beach wrack deposits. In three case studies, combined with carbon and nitrogen measures, total organic carbon and nitrogen deposits in beach wracks were quantified ranging from 4.3 to 9.7 and from 0.3 to 0.5 kg per meter coastline, respectively. In conclusion, this UAV method demonstrated an effective tool to quantify ecosystem carbon and nitrogen deposits relevant to ecosystem assessments and quantification of blue carbon stocks. The method is optimal when the terrain below beach wrack deposits is known, as in the case with before-and-after or repeated surveys. Further, UAVs display strong time- and cost-effective advantages over manual methods which is amplified with increasing project scale. We propose it as a valuable method for multiple scientific and commercial applications related to environmental monitoring and management, including marine resource exploration and exploitation.

Washed Ashore – New Elasmosaurid Specimens (Plesiosauria: Sauropterygia) from the Late Cretaceous of Colorado and Kansas and Their Bearing on Elasmosaurid Lineages of the Western Interior Seaway

A partial elasmosaurid plesiosaur skeleton (DMNH V.90000) recovered from the Juana Lopez Member, Carlile Shale of southeastern Colorado is stratigraphically unique. The contextual occurrence of the ‘Juana Lopez elasmosaur’ is rare both in terms of geologic age (late Middle Turonian) and paleoecology (littoral shore deposit). The skeletal anatomy contains diagnostic characters of an ‘intermediate’ grade of derivation although the paucity of material prevents formal naming of a new taxon. Another partial elasmosaurid skeleton (UNSM 50134, also known as the ‘Holyrood elasmosaur’) from the Lincoln Limestone (Middle Cenomanian), Greenhorn Limestone of central Kansas is similarly unique in terms of context. The ‘Holyrood elasmosaur’ also occurs in littoral shore deposits and possesses a unique suite of plesiomorphic characters previously undocumented within Elasmosauridae of the Western Interior Seaway. Dimensional data for vertebrae and appendicular elements leads to a refined generalization that there are minimally three lineages of elasmosaurids present in the Western Interior Seaway; a plesiomorphic group (equidimensional mid-cervical centra, elongate podials), a group intermediate in morphology (elongate mid-cervicals, equidimensional podials), and a derived group (highly elongate mid-cervicals, foreshortened podials). The plesiomorphic group is represented by UNSM 50134 (Holyrood elasmosaur), a new genus and species described herein (Plesioelasmosaurus walkeri, gen. et sp. nov.). Gastroliths are present with both specimens, reinforcing the prevalence of silicic stones routinely occurring within elasmosaurid partial skeletons, and the link of elasmosaurid ecology to nearshore environments. Shared plesiomorphic limb traits among early (Cenomanian) representatives of both elasmosaurid and polycotylid lineages may serve as an indicator of shared heritage (Xenopsaria) and subsequent convergent evolution of foreshortened limb elements.

Reading The Divan of Edirneli Nazmi in the Light of Tazkiras: Pearls Washed Ashore from an Artist’s Stylistic Evaluations

Şairler ilâhî bir kudretle şiir söyleme yetisine sahip olup günlük konuşma dilinin söz dağarcığı onlar için kifayetsiz kalmaktadır. Böyle bir durumda sanatçı, duygu dünyasını karşılayacak yeni kelimeler türetemeyeceği için var olan kelimelere yeni anlamlar yükleme yoluna gider. Geniş hayalleri ve derin duyguları onu bu yola sevk eder. İşte bu serüvendeki farkındalık noktasında her sanatçı kendi üslubunu oluşturur. Terry Eagleton’un ifadesiyle bir yazı parçasının yüzeyi gizli derinliklerinin itaatkȃr yansımasından başka bir şey değildir. Modern dünyada üslup değerlendirmeleriyle alakalı dil bilimsel metodlar denenmekle beraber gelenekten de istifade edilmesi gerekmektedir. Tezkireler, çok sayıda Osmanlı Dönemi şairlerinin biyografisini sunarken sanatçının dili nasıl kullanması gerektiği konusunda ipuçları sunar. Üslupla ilgili bu değerlendirmelerde ise ortak bir terminolojinin kullanıldığı dikkat çekicidir. Tezkirelerdeki bu terminoloji ışığında bir sanat eserine nasıl bakılması gerektiği ve eserin nasıl yazılması gerektiği konusundaki düşüncelere sahip olmak mümkündür. Edirneli Nazmî Dîvân’ı hem birçok türü barındırması hem de şiir sayısı bakımından oldukça dikkat çekici bir eserdir. Çalışmamızın amacı XVI. yüzyıl şairlerinden Edirneli Nazmî Dîvân’ını tezkireler ışığında okuyarak geleneksel terimlerle üslup bilgisinin çalışılabileceğini göstermektir. Üç bölümden oluşan çalışmamızın ilk bölümünde; tezkirelerdeki poetik terimlerden yola çıkarak Edirneli Nazmî’nin üslup değerlendirmeleri tespit edilmiştir. Bu bölümde Dȋvȃn içinde yer alan Arz-ı Hâl-i Be-Pȃdişȃh isimli mesnevȋ sebeb-i te’lîf bölümünden dolayı konu dahilinde ayrıca incelenmiştir. İkinci bölümde, ilk bölümden hareketle şairin poetikası ortaya konmuştur. Son bölümde ise şairin poetikasıyla eserinin ne kadar örtüşüp örtüşmediği konusunda karşılaştırma metoduna gidilerek çıkarımlarda bulunulmuştur.

Lipophilic Constituents of the Blubber from Blue Whale, Balaenoptera musculus, Washed Ashore at Pakistan Coast

The blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus (Linnaeus, 1758), is the biggest animal recognized to exist today throughout world’s oceans. High commercial value of lipids has made this species vulnerable. Blubber, a crucial adaptation for mammals living in water, serves as energy reservoir. Surplus energy is deposited in the form of fatty acids (FA) and therefore have been analysed. The compositional analysis also helps in understanding the dietary and structural role of FAs in blubber. Lipid analysis of blubber from stranded, dead blue whale through Thin layer chromatography (TLC) has resulted in identifying 6 constituents. These constituents are a triacyl glyceride (TAG), 2 steroids, and 3 FAs. Approximate analysis of waxy constituents has also been attempted exploiting TLC. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analyses has resulted in identification of 86 compounds, which were further confirmed through the Retention Indices. Altogether 17 SFAs including 4 Branched FAs, 5 MUFAs, and a PUFA were identified. These accounted to a total concentration of 85.7, 86.1, 84.8, and 89.7 % in jaw, abdomen, peduncle, and fluke, respectively. The main reasons for the low quantitative and qualitative content of PUFAs were susceptibility of PUFAs towards oxidation. Thus 8 FAlds, 4 FAlcs, and 3 other oxygenated FAs, which made a total of 2.7, 0.9, 1.3, and 5.2% in jaw, abdomen, peduncle, and fluke, respectively were justified. Further the chromatographic region where PUFAs are expected to resolve has been found masked with significant concentration of anthropogenic compounds, which accounted to 43.4, 35.6, 34.6, and 30.7% in jaw, abdomen, peduncle, and fluke, respectively. These pollutants included 25 hydrocarbons, 4 phthalates, 2 siloxanes, 2 bisphenols, and diphenyl carbonate. 4 natural Prenols were also identified. Altogether 16 constituents with concentration of 14.2, 8.0, 15.7, and 10.8% in jaw, abdomen, peduncle, and fluke, respectively, were remained unidentified. Few constituents were justified through food chain.

Shipwrecked: Coastal Disasters and the Making of the American Beach by Jamin Wells

Today, America’s east coast teems with people each summer, and oceanfront property demands top dollar. As Wells shows in this book, such was not always the case. Until the mid-nineteenth century, America’s east coast was uninhabited, remote, and generally avoided by people. Wells argues that this “coastal frontier” transformed into the “modern beach” within a single generation because of shipwrecks (2). These coastal disasters disrupted the “physical, social, and cultural world,” acting as a catalyzing force that first rationalized and later popularized the beach (34).American coasts were largely isolated or uninhabited spaces until the turn of the nineteenth century. Shipwreck survivors lucky enough to wash ashore often froze to death before help arrived. Investment from the American federal government served as the impetus for initial growth on beaches. Given that approximately 90 percent of federal revenue came from customs duties, the young federal government became heavily invested in protecting foreign commerce. Shipwrecked highlights the importance of improving navigational safety to the young U.S. government, which built lighthouses and organized coastal communities under the watchful eye of “wreckmasters” who patrolled beaches, rescued ships, and distributed funds to assistants and information to insurance companies.As shipping and ships changed in the nineteenth century, so did beach communities. Shipping grew with America’s economy and population, and shipwrecks peaked between 1860 and 1890. To mitigate the loss of life and property, the federal government financed the construction of shelters where people and equipment were available to respond to shipwrecks, culminating in the creation of the United States Life-Saving Service in 1878. According to Wells, these government programs stationed people on the beach and provided the infrastructure for beach tourism. People congregated to observe “shipwreck spectacles” from shore, as well as the heroic men rushing toward the beleaguered crews (8).The capitalist transformation of the United States even extended to the beach. Meticulous surveys to prevent shipwrecks rendered beach spaces legible for the state and for capital. Iron-hulled steamships carried ever-larger loads and were more valuable than their cargo, increasing the incentive to recover them. A capital-intensive “Industrial Corporate Wrecking Complex” emerged in the late nineteenth century (106). Salvage equipment became much more sophisticated, technical, and expensive, wresting control of the salvage industry from locals to a limited number of specialized professional outfits. Like necromancers, these companies summoned sunken ships to the surface with cranes and the iconic diving suits that now ornamentally grace fish tanks or restaurant walls. When the number of shipwrecks declined in the twentieth century, a thriving beach tourism industry had replaced them on the coast in both size and importance.Throughout the book Wells analyzes the place that shipwrecks and the beach held in American culture. Interest in beaches increased as people sought to escape the nation’s crowded industrial cities for picturesque natural settings. Crowds rushed to shipwreck sites in order to witness the salvage and rescue operations. Shipwrecks appealed to Progressive Era Americans because they “combined the fear of seeing the pinnacle of modern technology destroyed with the hope of seeing it saved” (153). Coastal salvors were like eastern cowboys, exemplifying the rugged masculine traits of the vigorous life, as celebrated during that era. Ironically, the popularity of dramatic coastal scenes peaked in literature and art as the phenomenon itself declined during the 1890s.Shipwrecked succeeds in bringing attention to a unique and overlooked form of disaster. It strains, however, to make its argument that shipwrecks created the modern beach. Improvements in transportation, explosive population growth, and Western culture’s rapprochement with beaches all seem to play at least equally important roles in the development of the coast. For example, Wells does not develop his claim that locals involved in ship salvage were often the first to open beach resorts. Nor does he make a convincing case that beach tourism in places like New Jersey depended on shipwrecks; shipwrecks were probably more a contributing factor than a causal one. In sum, the book succeeds as a study of shipwrecks themselves and their interesting and important place in the nineteenth-century American economy and consciousness.

Why Trillions of Jellyfish Washed Ashore from Canada to California

Although warming oceans may make population booms and mass strandings more common, the species may ultimately be one of the beneficiaries of climate change.

Possible Transoceanic Rafting of Lepas Spp. on an Unopened Plastic Bottle of Chinese Origin Washed Ashore in Victoria, Australia

Floating marine debris and litter act as a vector transporting various species across long distances. The present study reports possible transoceanic rafting of a small colony of barnacles on an unopened plastic bottle of Chinese origin found washed ashore on the Ninety Mile Beach in Victoria, Australia. The crustaceans attached were identified to be the goose barnacle Lepas pectinata. Based on the number and size of the colony the marine pollutant was estimated to adrift for several months. We hypothesised the origin of the flotsam, especially the barnacles and how it made its way from the Pacific to be washed ashore in Australia. Furthermore, we identified two types of microbes, Vibrio alginolyticus and Vibrio parahaemolyticus, associated with the Lepas pectinata growing on the bottle. This study appears to be the first report of possible transoceanic rafting on unused plastic pollutants and highlights the potential environmental threats caused by plastic.

An Analysis of Selected Oil Spill Case Studies on the Shorelines of Canada

After an oil spill, oil may wash ashore and there is only a short window of opportunity to respond. Analysis of historical incident data is valuable to guide future responses and cleanup practices. This study summarized the oil spill accidents that impacted the Canadian shoreline and analyzed the related information including location, incident characteristics, and shoreline treatment. Major spills due to tanker accidents in Canadian marine waters fortunately have been infrequent. Most of the accidents have happened on Canada’s Pacific coast, accounting for 52% of the total accidents recorded. The Atlantic coast accounted for 39% and the remaining accidents happened in the Arctic region. Regarding spilled volume, 55% of the accidents spilled oil volumes smaller than 100 m3. Spilled volumes between 100 ~ 1000 m3 represent 30% of the incidents and 15% had spilled volume greater than 1000 m3. Bunker C fuel and diesel were the main types of the spilled oil, accounting for 33% of the spills, respectively. Within the oil spill accidents impacting Canadian shore- lines, marine vessel accidents were the major sources accounting for 70% of the spill accidents. In terms of the shoreline treatment, the commonly employed treatments were manual, vacuum, mechanical, and sorbent removal. The dataset highlighted the significance of a more comprehensive record for response phase details and environmental effects monitoring.

An Analysis of Selected Oil Spill Case Studies on the Shorelines of Canada

After an oil spill, oil may wash ashore and there is only a short window of opportunity to respond. Analysis of historical incident data is valuable to guide future responses and cleanup practices. This study summarized the oil spill accidents that impacted the Canadian shoreline and analyzed the related information including location, incident characteristics, and shoreline treatment. Major spills due to tanker accidents in Canadian marine waters fortunately have been infrequent. Most of the accidents have happened on Canada’s Pacific coast, accounting for 52% of the total accidents recorded. The Atlantic coast accounted for 39% and the remaining accidents happened in the Arctic region. Regarding spilled volume, 55% of the accidents spilled oil volumes smaller than 100 m3. Spilled volumes between 100 ~ 1000 m3 represent 30% of the incidents and 15% had spilled volume greater than 1000 m3. Bunker C fuel and diesel were the main types of the spilled oil, accounting for 33% of the spills, respectively. Within the oil spill accidents impacting Canadian shore- lines, marine vessel accidents were the major sources accounting for 70% of the spill accidents. In terms of the shoreline treatment, the commonly employed treatments were manual, vacuum, mechanical, and sorbent removal. The dataset highlighted the significance of a more comprehensive record for response phase details and environmental effects monitoring.

A Surgery of a Star by Margarita Serafimova

BOOKS IN REVIEW the inevitable change of seasons and the elementary techniques of rendering raw nature hospitable. Jacobsen depicts the harshness in the encounters between people and their surroundings as well as the one between people themselves by strictly undernarrating the emotional dimension of his taciturn characters while sharing their rich knowledge of sustaining themselves in great detail. As a result, we learn more about their ways of gutting cod or selling the precious feathers of eider ducks than about the inner lives of men and women who don’t dwell in the pain inflicted on them. This is not to suggest that the tight economy of Jacobsen’s art of storytelling would deny his readers a suspenseful line of events. A plot is slowly set into motion when Ingrid clandestinely offers a soldier of unknown colors refuge in her home and in her heart. Washed ashore on Ingrid’s poverty-stricken island from a troop carrier sunk by British planes, the survival of the badly injured man needs to be hidden from the German occupying forces. The readers, too, will get to learn only specks of his identity: Ingrid “asked whether he was a Russian and he said Da, but only after she had repeated the question three times. She asked if he was a soldier and he answered yes and no, she had never felt more attractive , and she stopped asking questions.” Jacobsen does deny us, however, the illusion that there can be happiness in the time of collaboration and war, when knowing as little as possible appears to be as tantamount to survival as sharing even less. The brief moment in which Ingrid and her torn-up soldier “lay in the North Chamber like husband and wife” is crushed by the pitiless realities of brute force that threaten to render Ingrid helpless, if not lifeless altogether. After a vicious assault that robs Ingrid of her memory of the attack on her, she needs to set out to rebuild her sense of self as a member of a community in which it is at times impossible to tell friend from foe. Bodily harmed, she is also emotionally scarred as she and her readers are trying to reconstruct the circumstances and the motive of the assault on her. Despite the inability of the protagonist to articulate what she is experiencing and her lack of introspection, White Shadow is a powerful psychological novel precisely because it doesn’t bother to give a voice to Ingrid. Not knowing “the difference between what has to be remembered and what forgotten,” Ingrid emerges as a cipher for a people ravaged by an enemy who has taken more than just their land and homes. Over the course of the novel, it becomes clear that White Shadow is a powerful psychological novel about a people’s devastation by the war and their subsequent attempts at reestablishing order out of persecution; loss of property, memory, and honor; of poverty; and of nameless crimes. The narrowly constricted world of Ingrid’s tiny island—which in the first part of the Ingrid Barrøy trilogy could still be told as the story of a family—has been shattered and is replaced by the story of the displaced “Finns and Lapps,” no longer “kept separate from the Norwegians,” as they join Ingrid in rebuilding her home. Don Bartlett and Don Shaw offer a translation that conveys the book’s regionalisms (“Ingrid told him to clear off, an’ don’t show tha face hier again”) as well as the bone-dry cadence of a prose whose sentences tend to be anticlimactic—just like the lives that they tell. Thomas Nolden Wellesley College Margarita Serafimova A Surgery of a Star Trans. by the author. Sonoma County, Calif. Staring Problem Press. 2020. 48 pages. My eyes goldened. / You are mirrored in the surface / of my internal organs. –Margarita Serafimova, “My eyes goldened” ONE BLINK. A snapshot taken. Time frozen in a few lines. Margarita Serafimova’s poetry captures a moment in time as perceived by the poet, revealing her bodily and mental experiences to readers in words that appear simple in their choice but create complex, thought-provoking scenes from that simplicity...

<sup>14</sup>C Ages of Large Coral Boulders Washed Ashore on the Southeast Coast of Miyako Island, Okinawa Prefecture

宮古島南東，東平安名岬西部のマイバーバマおよび北部の吉野海岸に打ち上げられた津波石と推定したサンゴ岩塊（Porites sp.）についてAMS 14C年代測定を行った。 その結果，マイバーバマ東部のサンゴ岩塊から675±22 BP （1,633～1,699 cal AD:平均1,664±33 cal AD） の年代が，また吉野海岸のサンゴ岩塊から559±22 BP （1,711～1,837 AD:平均1,791±33 cal AD） の年代が得られた。 これらの較正年代は1667年に沖縄トラフで発生したとされる津波の年代や，1771年に石垣島南南東の海底で発生した明和地震津波の年代と統計誤差範囲で一致しており，上記のサンゴ岩塊は津波で打ち上げられた可能性が高いことが明らかになった。

Washed Ashore by Kerr Thomson

Reviewed by: Washed Ashore by Kerr Thomson Kate Quealy-Gainer Thomson, Kerr Washed Ashore. Chicken House/Scholastic, 2017 [320p] ISBN 978-0-545-90420-9 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 6-9 There's not much to do on the small Scottish island of Nin, but there is plenty of water, so as an aspiring marine biologist, fifteen-year-old Fraser happily accompanies a visiting whale scientist on his trips out to the sea. A recent transplant from Texas, Hayley is decidedly unhappy but she makes a tentative connection with Dunny, Fraser's mildly autistic brother, whom Fraser deeply resents. Dunny's random [End Page 428] roaming of the island brings Hayley and Fraser together as they search for him, but they end up finding someone else in one of the island's caves: Jonah, a young man from Africa who escaped a ship involved in human trafficking. The next day, Jonah's friend and fellow escapee turns up dead on the shore, and now Hayley and Fraser have to figure out who, if anyone, on the island might know something. The characterization is sometimes paper thin; Hayley plays the pouty, displaced cheerleader and Dunny is the on-the-spectrum mystic, who speaks with whales and eventually saves the day with that skill. Fraser is rather unbelievable in his insistence that they tell no adults about their situation, but fortunately the fact that he turns out to be wrong on many levels pulls him back from being the all-knowing hero and instead makes him a kid who's just trying to do the best he can. The mystery surrounding Jonah is an intriguing one, and the twists and turns Fraser and Hayley must follow, along with the realistic portrayal of human trafficking, may provide enough interest to sustain readers past the weak spots. Copyright © 2017 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Thermo-Acidic Pretreatment of Beach Macroalgae from Rügen to Optimize Biomethane Production--Double Benefit with Simultaneous Bioenergy Production and Improvement of Local Beach and Waste Management.

Eutrophication is a phenomenon which can rapidly generate masses of marine macroalgae, particularly in areas with high nutrient pollution. Washed ashore, this biomass impairs coastal tourism and negatively affects the coastal ecosystem. The present study evaluates the biochemical methane potential (BMP) of a macroalgae mix (Rügen-Mix, RM (RM = Rügen-Mix)) originating from Rügen, Germany. To improve biomethane recovery, thermo-acidic pretreatment was applied to the biomass prior to biomethanation to disintegrate the biomass macrostructure. Acid hydrolysis was successfully triggered with 0.2 M industry-grade HCl at 80 °C for a 2 h period, increasing biomethane recovery by +39%, with a maximum BMP of 121 mL·g−1 volatile solids (VS). To reduce the necessity for input material, HCl was replaced by the acidic waste product flue gas condensate (FGC). Improved performance was achieved by showing an increase in biomethane recovery of +24% and a maximum BMP of 108 mL·g−1 VS. Continuous anaerobic digestion trials of RM were conducted for three hydraulic retention times, showing the feasibility of monodigestion. The biomethane recovery was 60 mL and 65 mL·g−1 VS·d−1 for thermophilic and mesophilic operation, respectively. The quality of biomethanation performance aligned to the composition of the source material which exhibited a low carbon/nitrogen ratio and an increased concentration of sulfur compounds.

“The broken schippus he ther fonde”: Shipwrecks and the Human Costs of Investment Capital in Middle English Romance

Featuring prominently in the romance imagination as terrifying obstacles in the hero’s path, shipwrecks are nevertheless often presented from the salvager’s perspective. Romances abound with knights, clerks, and merchants who obsessively observe nearby beaches and cautiously (yet excitedly) examine the contents of wrecked vessels. Washed ashore, such fruits of maritime disaster delineate medieval English conceptions of seashores as dangerous yet profitable spaces, wherein seaside harvests of (un)natural resources help to stimulate local economic networks. Designations of these shipwrecks as “magical” or “fortuitous” cannot, however, completely elide the source of such wealth in others’ suffering—an unavoidable implication that interrogates contemporary means of attaining investment capital. As such, this paper examines how the littoral space of the seashore is cast as a source of perilous and problematic material bounty in many Middle English romances.

Mark-recapture of the endangered franciscana dolphin (Pontoporia blainvillei) killed in gillnet fisheries to estimate past bycatch from time series of stranded carcasses in southern Brazil

Incidental fishery mortality estimates of franciscana based on stranding data are biased downwards, as only a fraction of the total bycatch ends up ashore. We estimated the probability of a franciscana incidentally killed by the coastal gillnet fisheries in southern Brazil to wash ashore and used this as a correction factor to back-calculate fishing related mortality from a dataset of carcasses collected between 1979 and 1998. From November 2005 to January 2009, 145 franciscanas incidentally killed in nets were tagged and returned to the sea. Only 11 of the tagged animals were found during beach surveys. Generalized Linear Models were used to model the probability of a tagged franciscana reaching the shore as a function of the covariates wave period, wind direction and intensity, distance from coast and the target species of the fishery. The target species had a significant effect on the stranding probability. The stranding probability of a tagged franciscana was higher in the fishery targeting white croaker (Micropogonias furnieri) (median=0.105; 95% CI=0.05–0.18) rather than weakfish (Cynoscion guatucupa) (0.013; 0.0003–0.069). As the stranding probability estimate for weakfish was imprecise (wide credible interval) we decided to hind cast the number of franciscanas incidentally killed for white croaker season only. The corrected estimate of franciscana mortality was approximately 10 times higher than previous estimates based solely on stranding data. Finally, this novel mark-recapture approach provides a useful correction factor to reduce the bias in incidental mortality estimates derived from stranding data.

The mining law of 1872: past, politics, and prospects

History has left us a classic image of western mining in the grizzly forty-niner squatting by a clear stream sifting through gravel to reveal gold. What this slice of Western Americana does not reveal, however, is thousands of miners doing the same, their gravel washing downstream, causing the water to grow dark with debris while trout choke to death and wash ashore. Instead of the havoc wreaked upon the western landscape, we are told stories of American enterprise, ingenuity, and fortune.The General Mining Act of 1872, which declared all valuable mineral deposits on public lands to be free and open to exploration and purchase, has had a controversial impact on the western environment as, under the protection of federal law, various twentieth-century entrepreneurs have manipulated it in order to dump waste, cut timber, create resorts, and engage in a host of other activities damaging to the environment. In this in-depth analysis, legal historian Gordon Morris Bakken traces the roots of the mining law and details the way its unintended consequences have shaped western legal thought from Nome to Tombstone and how it has informed much of the lore of the settlement of the West.