Andrew Thaler @DrAndrewThaler@oceansocial.us

I've created my own Mastodon instance.

I have posted nothing. No one else is in it. It is unfederated.

I have found digital paradise.

Checked Chek Jawa off my bucket list today. This wildlife park is one of Singapore's last wild places. I've wanted to get out there for over a decade and today I got to hike the island with extraordinary naturalist Ivan Kwan, who I've known online for a decade and finally met in person yesterday.

More people have walked on the Moon than have visited the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

More robots have crawled across the face of Mars than have explored our deepest oceans.

#IMCC5 is great for galvanizing change both large and small.

One of the conference favorite restaurants is Indah. After a week of delegates asking to "hold the straw" and having their kids attend the kids conference, the management decided to switch to only offering straws on request.

It's a small thing but a great reminder that, above all, conservationists should lead by example.

Over the last half decade, Patima Tungpuchayakul has risked her life saving over 3,000 enslaved workers in the Thai and Southeast Asian seafood industry. She is the 2018 Jairo Sandoval Courage in Conservation awardee.

Every two years we present the Jairo Award for courage in ocean conservation. Jairo Mora Sandoval was murdered by poachers while working to protect sea turtles in Costa Rica.

It is a reminder to us all that the real price for conservation is paid in blood.

We built a 3D printer in the middle of an ocean conservation conference and it was awesome! #IMCC5

What questions do you have about #make4theplanet Borneo?

Oceansocial.us is the only place where #IMCC5 delegates can use the new and emojis. #oceansonline.

The biggest bottleneck in coral reef restoration is in physically attaching aquaculture grown corals to the reef. Lots of dive time for little result. Can we make it faster?

Outplanting coral reefs at #make4theplanet Borneo. Ripe for technological innovation.

#IMCC5

"We do two things in conservation really well. We monitor change and we quantify what is lost."

That's not good enough.

#IMCC5 #make4theplanet

The Fifth International Marine Conservation Congress, and the first to be hosted in the southern hemisphere, begins today in Borneo!

Follow along with #IMCC5 and our satellite event, Make for the Planet Borneo!

This tough little Printrbot has been tortured all over the world, including to sea to support the first #OpenCTD prototypes. Now it's in Borneo for #make4theplanet at #IMCC5.

Just keep printing, just keep printing...

Toot out to the oceansocial.us folks at #IMCC5 this week.

90% of my Mastodon timeline is other Mastodon instance admins talking about adiministering their Mastodon instances.

Deleted that *other* microblogfing platform from my phone. This is going to be a relatively Twitter free trip.

We have a new National Ocean Policy.

It removes the transparency and openness clauses that prevented the feds from barring government employees from talking about climate change (or anything else).

Looks like the administration is preparing to censor NOAA.

Among the weirdest things we've found in the deep sea: A carpet roll, a yoga mat, a whole toilet, a half toilet, a plastic bag of plastic bags...

...also, there was that whole thing with the hydrogen bomb and, more recently, the other time we found an atom bomb on the sea floor: https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/canadian-men-goes-diving-for-sea-cucumbers-stumbles-across-missing-us-nuclear-weapon/news-story/692f66ada83699bc1562bfbcf8764b66

What I'm trying to say is "pick up your shit."

Meanwhile, I've been nerding out about shrunken cups at the bottom of the ocean, old, stale beer, and SPAM that will live forever beneath the waves:

Things that go “POP!” in the deep: crushed cups, whole cans, and seafloor spam.

http://www.southernfriedscience.com/things-that-go-pop-in-the-deep-crushed-cups-whole-cans-and-seafloor-spam/