Happy Thursday. We’re all recovered from CITES, and are taking a breather from our all-sharks-all-the-time reporting. Today, we’ve got a video on ocean acidification that we think is internet gold, some impressive news from the supermarket sector on genetically modified salmon, and a call to save a species of fish that’s critical to Senegalese people. We’ve also got a look at a shiny new tool for mining TV news that promises to give us all sorts of new data to play with. And you know how we love data. Mmmm, charts.
In this issue
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Ocean Acidification Hits the Top 40
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Supermarkets Don’t Wait for the FDA, Put Their Foot Down on GE Salmon
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A Drumroll in Senegal
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TV News Archive
Ocean Acidification Hits the Top 40
Take some creative environmental science students from UCLA, give them an assignment to make a creative video about the oceans, and what do you get? This autotuned, green-screened masterpiece, to the tune of the hit song “Glad You Came” by The Wanted.
What does this group of pantless lads from The Wanted have to do with ocean acidification? Nothing - until now.
We love this video because these two students manage to pivot away from their gloomy message (“the shells will melt, the reefs will die”) into a message of hope (“It’s time to change”). Also we love their glasses and their excellent use of low-tech green-screening.
Currently, this video isn’t playable on mobile devices, but Upwell loves it so much that we reached out to the professor who made this brilliant assignment to ask her to pass along a message to the filmmakers. We’re crossing our fingers this will be updated soon, but in the meantime, there’s no reason to keep this masterpiece to yourself.
Amplify This: Tweet the video to your followers:
These @UCLA students officially win the prize for Best Use of a Green Screen. Find out why it's time to change. http://bit.ly/ZB9iRk
Supermarkets Don’t Wait for the FDA, Put Their Foot Down on GE Salmon
The seafood world is abuzz.
The New York Times has the gist:
Several supermarket chains have pledged not to sell what could become the first genetically modified animal to reach the nation’s dinner plates — a salmon engineered to grow about twice as fast as normal.
AquaBounty has been seeking FDA approval for its GE salmon for years, and recently, after an influx of public comments (due to efforts by so many of you!), the FDA extended the comment period, holding off their decision. But many experts say its a foregone conclusion: GE salmon is coming, and it’s up to us to educate people and make our own decisions about what we put in our shopping carts and on our plates.
Ocean Conservancy’s George Leonard, who testified before Congress about GE salmon, told Friend-of-Upwell Clare Leschin-Hoar of TakePart: “While the FDA thinks the fish are ready for prime time, the massive response of retailers show that those that would actually eat the fish remain unconvinced.”
Amplify This: Share the news and give Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s props by
sharing this image on Facebook:
Amplify This: Share the news on Twitter:
Trader Joe’s and @WholeFoods don’t care what the FDA says: they aren’t selling #GMO salmon to their customers. http://nyti.ms/WVDV7f
A Drumroll in Senegal
Thiof, or white grouper, is one of the most iconic fish in Senegal. Thiof is also severely threatened by overfishing. Despite the threat, the Casino supermarket chain persists in selling the species in its stores. They’re like a casino where the house always wins but the oceans always lose. Thankfully, a growing band of opposition makes Casino’s position ever more untenable.
Band of opposition you say? Why yes. Legendary drummer, Doudou N'Diaye Rose, is speaking out to save the thiof and call attention to the plague of overfishing.
“The ocean has always fed humanity”
The video is a simple and compelling message, but it’s just a start. Our friends at Greenpeace Africa report that petition pressure still has potency in Senegal, and can bring Casino to the table, so they’ve asked for international support. What say you, dear readers? Will you, ahem, drum up more signatures?
Watch this
TV News Archive Back in 1982, the internet
looked like this:
Internet user directory, circa ‘82.
These days it’s not quite that easy to print out the whole internet, let alone back it up, but the good folks at the Internet Archive are making a go of the herculean task. Their latest effort to back-up humanity’s collective hard drive involves a nifty new search tool for TV news.
Now, with a clickety-clack of your keyboard, you can search more than 400,000 news broadcasts with the same ease that you search for “cute onesies.” The broadcasts are transcribed and indexed, so your search results are displayed as video clips. Super. Frickin. Cool.
Guess what happens when you search for “sustainable seafood”? This.
Upwell goes a little Perez Hilton with our love sometimes
That’s correct, Tide Reporteros! The first result is your very own co-subscriber - Martin from
I Love Blue Sea! We get a special flutter in our hearts for televised advocates of sustainable seafood, and we couldn’t miss a chance to congratulate Martin on his internet archival arrival.
What will you search for? How will you use the results? When will you next be appearing
on Fox News to talk fisheries? Tell us at
tips@upwell.us
P.S. Super duper thanks to Matt Stempeck (
@mstem) from MIT’s Center for Civic Media who tipped us to the TVNews Archive. Check out his
post on tracking memes across television news for some great tips and techniques for using the archive for media analysis. We <3.
