The WFSU Ecology Blog
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A Geologist’s View of the Apalachicola River |...
Upper Chipola River Kayak Adventure | Ghosts &...
Tate’s Hell & the Apalachicola River Delta |...
Kayak Scouting Mission on the Ochlockonee Water Trail
Merritt’s Mill Pond | Kayaking and Spring Caves

The WFSU Ecology Blog

  • Home
    • About
    • EcoAdventures
      • Kayak and Canoe Adventures
      • Hiking
      • Wildlife Watching
    • Observations From the Field
      • White Pelicans Visit Dr. Charles L. Evans Pond in Tallahassee
      • An April Walk at Ochlockonee River WMA
      • Nesting Raptors at Honeymoon Island State Park
    • WFSU Public Media Home
  • Documentaries
    • In Their Words: Black Legacy Communities in North Florida
    • EcoCitizen Show | Seasons in South Tallahassee
    • Red Wolf Family Celebrates First Year at the Tallahassee Museum
    • Roaming the Red Hills
    • Oyster Doctors
    • Testing the Ecology of Fear
    • EcoShakespeare
    • Stories from the Apalachicola
    • Classic WFSU Ecology Documentaries
  • Habitats
    • Estuaries
      • Oyster Reef
        • The Effects of Predators and Fear on Oyster Reefs
        • Apalachicola Oyster Research
        • Animal Species in a North Florida Intertidal Oyster Reef
        • Oyster Reef Ecology | On the Reef
      • Salt Marsh
        • In the Grass- Salt Marsh Biodiversity Study
        • Plants and Animals of a North Florida Salt Marsh
        • Salt Marsh Ecology | In the Grass
      • Seagrass Bed
        • Predatory Snails, and Prey, of the Bay Mouth Bar Seagrass Beds
      • In the Grass, On the Reef Glossary
    • Waterways Big and Small
      • Aucilla/ Wacissa Watershed
      • Apalachicola Basin
        • Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines | Virtual Field Trip
        • The Age of Nature Screening & Discussion | The Future of the Apalachicola
        • Apalachicola River and Bay
        • Apalachicola RiverTrek | Kayaking, Camping, & Hiking the River Basin
    • Longleaf Pine & Fire Ecology
  • Backyard Habitat
    • Backyard Blog
      • My Year in Bugs: the 2022 Backyard Blog
      • Backyard Ecology Blog | 2021
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      • Backyard Blog June 2019
      • Backyard Blog May 2019
      • Backyard Blog April 2019
      • Backyard Blog March 2019
      • Backyard Blog February 2019
      • Backyard Blog January 2019
      • The Backyard Bug Blog 2018
    • Backyard Flora and Fauna
      • Bees of North Florida and South Georgia
      • The Seasonality of Bees (and Bee Plants) in North Florida
      • Woody Vines of North Florida
      • Flies of North Florida are More Diverse than You’d Think
      • The Case for Weeds, Our Unsung Florida Native Plants
      • Devil’s Walkingstick: Your New Favorite Thorny Pollinator Plant?
      • Florida Native Milkweed | Tips for Growing Your Monarch Friendly Garden
      • Mistletoe | A Parasite for the Holidays (But Maybe We Like it Anyway?)
    • Florida Friendly Seasonal Planting Guide
    • Pollinator and Gardening Posts
    • Gardening Web Resources
Stumbling on Science

Soccer Balls, Bucky Balls, #sciooceans, & Purple Gallinules

by Rob Diaz de Villegas October 16, 2013
by Rob Diaz de Villegas October 16, 2013 0 comment

Rob Diaz de Villegas WFSU-TV

Dr. Harold Kroto has a soccer ball.  Drs. Randall Hughes and David Kimbro have WFSU-TV (and me).  IGOR associate producer Rebecca Wilkerson produced the video above, the first SciTalk, our new video series on how scientists talk to people who aren’t scientists, about science.  It stars Dr. Kroto, a Nobel Laureate for his co-discovery of buckminsterfullerenes.  And hey, how about that, bucky balls look exactly like soccer balls!  For Kroto’s audiences, this is the gateway to the complex chemistry of carbon composites, made simple and clean.

Simple and clean is not so much our approach to communicating science.  We do ecology, and ecology has a lot of connectedness.  A river carries fresh water and nutrients (our participation in the RiverTrek paddle down the Apalachicola the last couple of years).  If that water doesn’t flow, there can be problems with oysters in the bay (our coverage of David’s research into the failure of Apalachicola Bay reefs).  When the oysters die, the seafood industry crashes (how we incorporated oystermen into our coverage of David’s research).

Old Growth Cypress and Ogeechee Tupelo in Sutton Lake, off of the Apalachicola River on RiverTrek 2013.

How about a kayak adventure as a way to communicate ecology? On this year’s RiverTrek (also this past week), we explored ecosystems other than oysters that are affected by low water flow. This is Sutton lake, which runs off of the Apalachicola River. With last year’s record low flow, we never got to paddle to these old growth cypress and ogeechee tupelo trees further off the river. In our upcoming RiverTrek 2013 videos, we get deeper into this and other ecosystems surrounding the river. Look for a two-part EcoAdventure in November.

We don’t have a soccer ball.  We have a soccer stadium.

Sometimes you can shrink a research topic down into a icon; sometimes you zoom out and look at the world around it.

Our first SciTalk video happened to air the same week as Science Online Oceans, a conference where marine scientists are hard at work trying to get you (the nonscientists reading this) to care about ocean science.  I moderated a discussion on scientist/ filmmaker collaboration (follow the online side of that discussion at #sciofilmmaker), and attended a few very helpful sessions where I gained some knowledge I’d like to use.  Technology offers some tantalizing opportunities, but new gadgets and web tools aren’t an automatic guarantee that people will pay attention to and absorb your message.  As you can tell from the hashtags, for instance, ScioOceans is a Twitter-heavy affair. But who’s seeing our tweets?  And I would love to set up a virtual field trip to an oyster reef for school children using a Google Meetup.  There are so many new tools, and yet, watching the video above, I can’t help but notice how engaged the kids look as they build bucky ball models.  Dr. Kroto is doing a good deal of outreach in person, with a soccer ball.  In the end, the content of the message is still more important than the device that delivers it.

We will continue our SciTalk videos (not the newest technology, but still effective), looking at what scientists, educators, and community organizations are doing to make science interesting.  We’ll also continue exploring our local ecology.  Look for a two part RiverTrek 2013 EcoAdventure.  The water was higher on the Apalachicola this year, and we’re exploring more of the area around it.

Of course, when you’re communicating ecology, flashy animals are always a big help.  So I leave you with this purple gallinule, spotted on our ScioOceans Everglades field trip (#scioglades).

Purple Gallinule in Loxahatchee, Florida.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 1161194.  Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Rob Diaz de Villegas

Rob Diaz de Villegas is a senior producer for WFSU-TV, covering outdoors and ecology. After years of producing the music program OutLoud, Rob found himself in a salt marsh with a camera, and found a new professional calling as well. That project, the National Science Foundation funded "In the Grass, On the Reef," spawned the award winning WFSU Ecology Blog. Now he spends time exploring north Florida's forests, coasts, waterways, and the endlessly fascinating ecosystem that is the backyard garden. Rob is married with two young sons, who make a pretty fantastic adventure squad.

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