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spencer roberts 🦈

@unpopularscience.bsky.social

5.7K followers 490 following 630 posts

marine ecologist 🤿 investigative journalist 🎥 environmental activist 🐠🐟🐡 diver, musician, coder, engineer words in Science, Wired, The Intercept… Blue Marble lab at U Miami RSMAES 🌴 linktr.ee/fish_defender ⓥ

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · Feb 19

We programmed a crawler to search open web marketplaces for every animal on the IUCN red list.

Nearly 2/3 of our matches were shark jaws, comprising 9 of the top 10 openly traded threatened species.

A glimpse of the global trophy trade of endangered sharks:

🌏 🦑 🧪 🧵
urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

Fig. 1. Threatened animal listings in major online marketplaces: Wedges indicate the proportion of unique full matches by English and Latin scientific names identified within a 15-week automated search crawl. A total of 546 matches were identified advertising body parts or eggs of 83 species listed as vulnerable or endangered by the IUCN or banned in international trade by CITES. 96 % of listings were hosted on domains ebay.com, etsy.com, thetaxidermystore.com, and gumtree.com.

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 1d

I agree consciousness is fascinating. But it is a question science cannot answer. As a natural scientist, I am interested in sentience, a different concept.

Sentience is, yes, by definition, a biological phenomenon. If a reflex to a *stimulus is emulated by a machine, it is artificial sentience.

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks, but this does not address the core of the argument, which is that sentience has been conflated with consciousness for motivated reasons. Consciousness is ambiguous and sentience is not. It does not deal with subjective experience. It deals with nociception and the broader tactile sense.

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 1d

Excellent thinking, that is the dominant theory for the evolution of nociception and pain. We also know that congenital pain insensitivity is highly maladaptive and shortens life expectancy. Therefore there is no reason to believe sentience would evolve without pain.

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 1d

I wrote about why slugs are better than clankers. 🦑🧪

Current Affairs @currentaffairs.bsky.social · 1d

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 3d

scenes from Neon Reef

Our local movement is fighting to make this soft coral forest off Miami Beach a no-take MPA. There’s only one other on the entire Atlantic coast of FL.

The city has officially passed the funding. Now we fight for recognition from the state.

sorry for the crop
#MarineLife

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Reposted by spencer roberts 🦈

Drop Site @dropsitenews.com · 3d

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg raised her fist as she and about 160 other Global Sumud Flotilla participants arrived in Greece to roaring cheers. Crowds welcomed them after their release from illegal Israeli detention.

Greta later addressed supporters — her remarks are below.

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Reposted by spencer roberts 🦈

Jenny Splitter @jennysplitter.bsky.social · 4d

Important reporting from @kennytorrella.bsky.social on how the meat lobby has infiltrated NYC climate week, including sponsoring Regen House and Food Tank events. Full story here: www.vox.com/future-perfe...

The Protein Pact, a coalition of meat and dairy companies and trade groups, sponsored a panel put on by the climate events company Nest Climate Campus, which listed one of Protein Pact’s representatives — who spoke on its main stage — as a “climate action expert.” The Protein Pact is also a leading sponsor of Regen House, an agriculture events company that hosted several days of Climate Week programming. Meanwhile, the Meat Institute — the founder of the Protein Pact — sponsored events put on by Food Tank, a nonprofit think tank. It would be one thing if the Protein Pact were open to compromise on environmental regulation and spoke more honestly about their industries’ climate impact. But many of its members lobby against environmental action and downplay the industry’s environmental footprint. Some even participated in the campaign against EAT-Lancet’s first report.

Given this track record, it’s hard to see the industry’s presence at Climate Week as anything but a reputation laundering effort.

The Meat Institute, Food Tank, Nest Climate Campus, and Regen House didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 4d

ABUNDANCE AGENDA

This could be your yard — your patio, even. All you need is a single giant milkweed plant.

Bring back the monarchy!

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 8d

a life lived in defiance of patriarchy and human supremacy

There will never be another Jane.

RIP Queen

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 11d

the charter fishing and commercial fishing lobbies, more specifically

Reposted by spencer roberts 🦈

Ross McNally @rossmcnally.bsky.social · 13d

The US is now seeking to open the door to shark culling to protect the fragile egos of sport fishermen from the competition of local wildlife. This is disgraceful, especially the fact that Democratic Senator @schatz.bsky.social has co-sponsored this repulsive, ecologically illiterate bill.

spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 13d

There’s a bill in the senate right now designed to revive the US shark longlining industry.

Today we’re launching a campaign to stop it and this film trailer to expose this American shark cull conspiracy.

Details and action items below:
🦈🧵

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 13d

2. Help us pressure Senator Brian Schatz, the Democratic cosponsor, to withdraw his support from this deceptive bill & remove its bipartisan status.

3. Pitch in to our film fundraiser on gram @/fish_defender.

3. Share the video!

Long l̶i̶n̶e̶ live the sharks. 🦈

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 13d

How you can help:

1. If you live in the US, write a letter urging your senators to vote no. Use this link to send the template in seconds or personalize it for more impact.

t.co/K0l3lk4ZU4

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/protect-endangered-sharks-stop-the-deceptive-sharked-act

t.co

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 13d

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 22d

yes

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 22d

I’m presenting at this free online @faunalytics.bsky.social conference today.

See you there.
faunalytics.org/fauna-connec...

1:40pm - Spencer Roberts
- How To Use The Fishing Industry's Own Data Against It
Fishes are the most hunted animals in the world. The fishing industry amasses immense quantities of data detailing the exploitation and persecution of marine life. While advocating for fishes is socially challenging, we have an array of analytical tools at our disposal that do not exist for other animals, which we can use to illustrate and expose the immense scale and toll of marine life extraction.

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 23d

Today we launched a campaign to ban shark fishing in Miami city & county.

Our sharks are famous online, beloved around the world. These creeps turn them into tacky trinkets, killing endangered species.

Let’s shut it down.

change.org/p/save-endangered-sharks-ban-land-based-shark-fishing-in-miami

Sign the Petition

Save Miami Sharks: Ban Land-Based Shark Fishing

change.org

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Reposted by spencer roberts 🦈

Blue Planet Society @blueplanetsociety.bsky.social · 24d

Do Lobsters and Crabs Feel? We’ve had the answer for years. 🦀🦞

Research indicates that marine animals experience pain and are capable of making complex, conscious
decisions.

www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/minds-unknown/202507/do-lobsters-and-crabs-feel-weve-had-the-answer-for-years/amp

Do Lobsters and Crabs Feel? We’ve Had the Answer for Years

Scientific research and personal experiences are shaping our understanding of fish and invertebrate minds. Are we ready to rethink how we treat them?

www.psychologytoday.com

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 25d

That’s definitely not the takeaway. Extinction impacts are based on occupied land. Foods associated w/ tropical deforestation displace more wildlife. Pig & chicken farming occupies less land, but creates immense pollution. Seafood is not shown here, but is literally just eating wildlife directly.

spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 26d

The extinction impact of the beef industry is immense. Eating even a little bit multiplies a diet’s impact on endangered species.

insane chart from a new open access study comparing extinction impacts of different food production systems

t.co/Nc7c8ynR0N

Fig. 4: The extinction impacts of average daily per capita food consumption in the United States for consumption in 2021, the EAT–Lancet planetary health diet and hypothetical vegetarian and vegan diets.

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 29d

truly sickening to see liberal politicians eulogize kirk without a word for these children whose lives he called the price of gun freedom

Number of victims (fatal and wounded) on K-12 school property

(massive increase since 1970s)

http://k12ssdb.org

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · Sep 7

one of my favorite books

spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · Sep 6

stole another dying fish from petsmart

Here’s Glowi’s one-week glow-up.

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Reposted by spencer roberts 🦈

George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · Aug 28

This week's column. The details will make you gasp and rage. This massive desecration of nature is almost unbelievable, but it is happening in the UK right now.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Bluefin tuna are miraculously returning to UK shores – only to be tormented for ‘sport’ | George Monbiot

A tournament in Cornwall will pit anglers against these magnificent creatures, as part of a rising trend for so-called ‘sportfishing’, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by spencer roberts 🦈

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · Aug 27

Deforestation kills more than trees.

Deforestation has killed half a million people in past 20 years, study finds

Localised rises in temperature caused by land clearance cause 28,330 heat-related deaths a year, researchers find

www.theguardian.com

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