Outreach!

And "Ya Like Dags?" is born.

I'm Chuck, a grad student in North Carolina working on a study of spiny dogfish feeding habits and community interactions. I figured that since I'm doing some work that some might find interesting, and because I've spent a good chunk of my online time reading blogs about marine science (Deep Sea News and Southern Fried Science have been inspirations), I'd throw my hat into the blogging ring. I'm hoping to use this blog as a source of outreach for my research and hope to get some of my fellow researchers to chime in about theirs (some of which is much more interesting than mine). I'll also be writing about marine science news and other interesting research that I happen across, and since this is the internet, there will probably be a fair amount of YouTube videos and other goofiness as well. There will be an overarching theme of dogfish, sharks, fisheries, and marine science.

As to origins of this blog's ridiculous title, it comes partially from a line in the excellent Guy Ritchie movie Snatch, and partially from a fishing trip. My friends and I were out fishing off of Rhode Island and ran into a big school of spiny dogfish. Thinking it was witty, I asked my fishing buddies if they "liked dags" as I pulled one up. Somehow, it caught on to the point where we no longer call these little sharks dogfish, we just call them "dags." Since I'm now researching these animals, i guess my answer to this blog's title is "yes, I like dags."