In this issue's Sightings column ("Giants in Traffic," pages 270-271), I spoke to a group of Chilean researchers about their study that tracks blue whales and ships. The team used multiple types of data to create detailed maps for their peer-reviewed paper, but for social media, they created a GIF of a week in the life of one whale, showing how it had to constantly duck and dodge around boats. The GIF raised questions from other scientists about the scale, the speed of the display, whether it was real data or an animation, and whether the whale's position was at the surface or at depths below the boats-points that were all addressed in the researchers' paper. But for most of the people who viewed the GIF, which was widely shared, the whale's plight simply evoked sympathy and awareness. As a member of the research team, Luis Bedrinana-Romano, said to me, "You can put up a lovely chart with graphics and it's going to only reach the scientific community. But if you have a nice data visualization, it can reach everyone."
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