Dr. Andrew Thaler is one of the most prolific voices in ocean science communication working today, and in this Ocean People profile from Ocean Decoded Live, host Andrew Lewin breaks down why. Thaler is a deep sea ecologist and population geneticist who earned his PhD in marine science and conservation at Duke University, with a thesis on the environmental impacts of deep sea mining on hydrothermal vent communities in the Western Pacific. He's the CEO of Blackbeard Biologic: Science and Environmental Advisors, and he founded and still runs southernfriedscience.com, one of the longest-running independent ocean science communication platforms online, covering everything from deep sea ecology to ocean policy to conservation technology.

Thaler's signature project is OpenCTD, a low-cost, open-source oceanographic instrument that measures conductivity, temperature, and depth, co-created through an informal collective called Oceanography for Everyone. Traditional CTDs can run anywhere from $10,000 to millions of dollars, so Thaler designed OpenCTD from accessible components specifically to remove that cost barrier, letting students, citizen scientists, and under-resourced researchers build, calibrate, and deploy their own instruments. It's been paired with real citizen-science programs, including a community oceanography project that combined OpenCTD casts with whale-watching trips in Maine, and it's open source and expandable, so users can add sensors for dissolved oxygen, pH, and more. He's funded ongoing OpenCTD work through Patreon.

Thaler also spent years at the center of the deep sea mining conversation as editor-in-chief of The Deep Sea Mining Observer, an online trade journal originally conceived by the Pew Charitable Trusts that covered International Seabed Authority negotiations, the industry's environmental record, and the rise and fall of early mining companies over its six-year run. Alongside that, he's led hands-on ROV workshops through OpenROV, including a capacity-building program in Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, that trained local facilitators and students to build, operate, and repair their own underwater robots, so the equipment and expertise stayed on the islands after the visiting scientists left. He's currently writing a book about the deep sea, chairs his local town's climate change committee, and has been a frequent guest on the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Follow his ongoing work at andrewdavidthaler.org, southernfriedscience.com, and on Instagram @drandrewthaler. Catch Ocean Decoded Live for daily ocean news breakdowns like this, Monday to Thursday at 5:00 PM Eastern. Subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss it.

Chapters:
0:00 – Cold Open: Meet Dr. Andrew Thaler, Deep Sea Ecologist
2:40 – OpenCTD: The Open-Source Ocean Sensor Built to Cut Out the Cost Barrier
4:53 – Inside The Deep Sea Mining Observer and the ISA Negotiations
5:54 – Teaching Remote Island Communities to Build and Fix Their Own ROVs
8:34 – Where to Follow Andrew Thaler (Website, Blog, Instagram)

Takeaways:

Dr. Andrew Thaler is a deep sea ecologist, population geneticist, and CEO of Blackbeard Biologic: Science and Environmental Advisors, with a PhD in marine science and conservation from Duke University.

He founded and still runs southernfriedscience.com, one of the longest-running independent ocean science communication platforms online; his personal site is andrewdavidthaler.org.

He co-created OpenCTD, a low-cost, open-source ocean sensor built to remove the cost barrier of traditional CTDs (which can run $10,000 to millions of dollars), through the informal collective Oceanography for Everyone.

OpenCTD has been deployed in real citizen-science programs, including pairing casts with whale-watching trips in Maine, and is open source and expandable for additional sensors.

He served as editor-in-chief of The Deep Sea Mining Observer, an online trade journal covering International Seabed Authority negotiations and the deep sea mining industry, which ran for six years before closing in 2023.

He led OpenROV-based robotics workshops, including a capacity-building program in Saipan, CNMI, that trained local facilitators and students to build, operate, and repair their own ROVs.

He's writing a book about the deep sea, chairs his town's climate change committee, and is a frequent guest on the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

#OceanConservation #MarineBiology #SaveOurOceans #ProtectTheOcean #OceanAwareness #BluePlanet #ConservationMatters
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