Part V: The Solution

I know, I know, it's been a hot minute. Life happens, right?

Hello, science enthusiasts! Hello, animal lovers! Hello, conservationists! Here's your sixth stream of bubbles containing interesting information from this little corner of the California coastline. I'm Shelby, and I'm here to offer some insight on the health and function of some of the most important features of Northern California's coastal ecosystems—late, I know.

I've talked in previous posts mostly about the problems facing our kelp forest ecosystems today, and about how those problems came around. But I realize that I haven't talked much about possible solutions to these problems. What is currently being done about the transition these environments have taken from one stable state to another? Well, in an effort to stop continuing to sound like a complaining scientist who doesn't actually do anything, I'll do my best to explain exactly what the people operating in this field are doing to try and stabilize these crucial food webs. Because, despite what some people might think, efforts are being made.

It's not all bad...I swear.

Unfortunately, there's only so much that can be done about the abalone themselves. Right now, all they can do is hunker down and wait these starvation conditions out. The CDFW has closed the fishery, removing humans as a possible threat to the abalone. The fishery is expected to stay closed at least until 2021. They're in a delicate situation right now; the best that can be done right now is to leave them alone. We can't do much to help the sunflower stars either; scientists still haven't figured out what kind of disease wasting syndrome is—whether it's bacteria, or a virus, whatever—so there isn't any way for human interference or treatment. More research is needed on that front.

No flu shot for this yet.

Purple urchins, on the other hand, are the forefront of active management right now. Their natural predators are down, so they've been operating pretty much unimpeded in Sonoma and Mendocino County. Now, I don't mean to make it sound like the urchins are sinister or anything; they're just doing what any other species does when the usual pressure it experiences from predators. If there's nothing around to eat you, you're free to eat and breed on a much more successful rate (humans have been doing that since the Pleistocene epoch). So, a CDFW along with a coalition of scientists and stakeholders, known as KELPRR (Kelp Ecosystem and Landscape Partnership for Research on Resilience) have decided to take measures needed to address the issue of the purple urchin blooms. These efforts have included collaboration with commercial and recreational urchin divers.

These little spiky balls of death we actually can do something about.

One effort made to combat the purple urchin numbers is the institution of an increase in daily bag limits for urchin divers (both commercial and recreational). The original law for urchin harvest was 35 individuals per bag—a regulation that applies to general invertebrate take—but with this shift has taken place, and emergency regulations were put into place to increase the bag limit to 20 gallons. This limit was supposed to be in place from April 2018 to November 2018; I don't know if the limit is still in effect. KELPRR also organized large group efforts to remove purple urchins en masse, such as the removal events in Ocean Cove—which took place in May—and in Albion—which took place in July. These were open to both commercial and recreational divers. Since the first harvest, an estimated 200,000 purple urchins have been removed. These large scale removal events could take place again this year if the numbers haven't decreased. Removing the urchins will remove them as a source of pressure on algae, thereby allowing bull kelp spores to settle and grow on the available rock.

People use whatever tools they have at their disposal to collect the urchins. https://www.pressdemocrat.com/lifestyle/8353809-181/north-coast-divers-take-the

A member of the KELPRR coalition, the Noyo Center for Marine Science, has been working especially closely with commercial red urchin divers. Since the red urchin fishery has also experienced collapse during these starvation periods, the Noyo Center has enlisted commercial divers who would otherwise not be working. Since they use SCUBA gear, they can stay under water longer and collect more purple urchins at a time. In 2018, these commercial divers removed an estimated 1.2 million purple urchins from the most affected areas.

Commercial urchin divers can legally use SCUBA gear to harvest urchins, so they can get a lot more done during a removal effort. Source:https://oceanleadership.org/kelp-forest-restoration-project-begins-off-southern-california-coast/ 

In an effort to generate lost revenue (see previous posts) and encourage an interest in a market for purple urchins, KELPRR has partnered with a Norway-based company called Urchinomics, already operating in Canada and Japan. Urchinomics has a goal of instigating a regular practice at urchin barren sites, where purple urchins are harvested, taken back to special aquaculture (marine-farming) facilities to be fed and fattened up, and then sold for their gonads at fish markets. This could remove enough urchins to allow kelp forests to recover, while also putting the urchins to use rather than simply trashing them. The only reason purple urchins have never had much of a market here is because the urchins harvested in Southern California always had little meat on them and didn't taste very good. Turns out, they didn't taste good is because all they ate was sea grass; it makes them bitter. The urchins up here eat kelp, which has more protein in it, so they're sweeter and have more umami quality. Urchinomics is hoping to set up shop in Bodega Bay, to bring more of a market to local Northern California purple urchin harvesting.

Urchinomics help turn urchins from this....(https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/sea-urchin-farming-canada-1.3930965)

...to this! Source: https://www.vikebladet.no/naeringsliv/2016/11/15/Norsk-canadisk-kr%C3%A5kebolle-samarbeid-13792905.ece 

These efforts can help in the long run, but it is unfortunate they're only being instilled now, when conditions are so dire. It's brought the reality of climate change into the light for a lot of people; we can see it. Now we can only do our best as scientists.

I hope this series on the issues currently facing the abalone fishery. If you'd like to learn more about the problem, and if you'd like to know how you can help, visit NoyoCenter.org and click on “Help the Kelp”. I'm hopefully going to eventually find a way to raise money to donate to the Noyo Center, since they're one of the main nonprofits working on the KELPRR coalition and they're on the front lines of this problem. When I eventually get my collective sh*t together and figure out something, I hope I can count on you guys to help me donate to these guys.

Check these guys out, they're great! Source: https://noyocenter.org/

This has been a long and important project, but I'd like to keep continuing educating people on a citizen science level. I'm going to be holding a poll on my Facebook page about what kind of topic people would like to see me cover next. Spoilers: I'm definitely going to be doing a thread on scientific inaccuracies in kids' movies, but I haven't decided if I want to do that next or after something else.

I'll give you a hint; these motherf*ckers will definitely make an appearance on this blog.

Stay curious.

"Sea" you later!

Sources: https://cdfwmarine.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/perfect-storm-decimates-kelp/

https://www.kzyx.org/post/north-coast-red-abalone-fishery-closes-first-time-history#stream/0

https://cdfgnews.wordpress.com/2018/05/15/fish-and-game-commission-adopts-emergency-regulations-to-increase-purple-sea-urchin-bag-limit-in-sonoma-and-mendocino-counties/

http://www.reefcheck.org/reef-news/commercial-and-recreational-urchin-removal-efforts-tested-along-california-s-north-coast-in-hopes-of-kelp-forest-restoration

http://ediblemarinandwinecountry.ediblecommunities.com/eat/urchin-explosion

Part IV (C): The Opinion on the Abalone Fishery

Hello there!

Hello, science enthusiasts! Hello, animal lovers! Hello, conservationists! Here's part three of your fifth stream of bubbles containing interesting information from this little corner of the California coastline. I'm Shelby, and I'm here to offer some insight on the health and function of some of the most important features of Northern California's coastal ecosystems.

In this third part of my piece on the abalone fishery in California, I'm going to just go ahead and present my full opinion on this subject. Warning: I'm going to use a lot of anecdotes. Hopefully it won't sound like a rant. Again, even if it's presented from a perspective of science, it's still just an opinion.

I first found out about the issues facing the abalone fishery about three years ago, while I was still an undergrad. I was getting ready to enter a three-day SCUBA course—which I ended up not getting to finish—and I had to rent and buy all the gear I was going to learn how to use. I went to a dive shop and had to pay out the absolute a** for both rental gear and the stuff I had to buy. While waiting for something, I noticed that they also sold gear and cards for abalone fishing. There was a diorama with an unrealistically large fake abalone next to the gear they were selling. There was a handout next to this diorama as well, talking about something the Department of Fish and Wildlife was going to do, or was doing. It was red and flashy; there was definitely a sense of urgency. When I checked out, the guy helping me asked if I wanted to be added to their newsletter. I said yes, thinking they would be a good source of dive practice.

Later on, I got an email from the dive shop's newsletter. It wasn't what I was expecting. To paraphrase a lot, the article warned divers about an upcoming threat by the CDFW to close the 2016 abalone season. It called to arms all abalone divers who didn't want their “rights” to be violated. Their sport was under attack; this closure had to be protested. Being a scientist—even if I hadn't yet gotten my degree—I was inherently skeptical. I was pretty deep into wanting to be in the fisheries biology/invertebrate physiology/fisheries management field at this point. I'd decided my priority was going to be taking care of our natural resources. I'm still there now. So, when I was told the fishery was going to close, my first reaction wasn't,

“How dare they!” 

Instead, my go to was,

“Well, there must be a reason.” If a fishery is closed, it's probably because the species we've been harvesting is no longer plentiful enough for us to harvest it, at least without it going extinct. There was no mention of why the season was being closed. It just was, and it was an affront!

I didn't get any more information about the abalone fishery closure until after I'd graduated and become a volunteer intern for some Fish and Wildlife environmental scientists. My supervisor explained to me, in detail, the issues our kelp forests have been facing (see previous blog posts). Long story short, abalone are starving because, purple urchins are everywhere and eating everything, because sunflower sea stars are dying from disease, and kelp is dying because climate change. My first response then was,

“Well, of course!” 

And that was that. I didn't need any other reason to care about this issue and to want to see it resolved. So, where was the issue? Why did that dive shop have against the closure?

Here's the thing; something I've (very generally) noticed about people, at least those who aren't at least somehow interested in the science of the world around them, don't give much thought to the stuff they use, especially if its a living resource. This might not come as a surprise to most of you; we've definitely seen over the years direct results of this kind of thinking. But it seems to be especially prevalent in fisheries, or in the harvest of marine resources (again, very generally; my dad is a fisherman who appreciates healthy management). They tend to be very at odds with fishery management efforts, resisting restrictions and resenting the people drafting and enforcing them. Sometimes this is warranted, since CDFW people in positions of power—like wardens and officers—abuse their authority like many other law enforcement members, especially in the recreational sector. These few bad apples end up giving the mere idea of fisheries management a bad reputation.

Thanks to this tainted relationship between the CDFW and fishermen, something as radical a season closure comes across as an attack on peoples' rights. It doesn't matter how the animals themselves are doing, if their populations are healthy or not; fishing is a right! Ironic, given how quickly fishermen are ready to blame Fish and Wildlife when the fishing starts going bad.

This probably wouldn't be such an issue if people actually went to the effort of learning about why the abalone are in trouble; the information is readily available. Yet no one seems to want to learn about it. I had a conversation with an older family member last summer about this subject that, basically, went like this:

Literally the face he made while I explained everything.

This coming from a guy who doesn't think climate change is real.

I mean, really.

It's like people don't want to hear about this stuff. Now, to be very, very fair, the main complaining crowd seems to be made up of people who only occasionally go abalone fishing. They love it, sure, but maybe they don't do it very regularly; it takes travel and money for many, since the bulk of recreational fishing takes place up here in Sonoma and Mendocino county. I say this because a lot of the articles and information put out by Fish and Wildlife itself takes anecdotal evidence from regular abalone fishermen, the kind that go out multiple times every season. They have seen the changes affecting these resources over the last couple of years; they've seen the starving animals, the empty shells, the vanished kelp, the barren rock. These people have been quoted agreeing with the need to close the season. Everyone else clings to the nostalgia and ideal of the fishery; they don't want to believe anything could be wrong because they don't “see it.”

You probably wouldn't guess that the kelp forests have turned into urchin barrens covered in dead abalone just by looking at it from here (this is an old picture), right? Source: http://www.shorediving.com/Earth/USA_West/CalN/Van_Damme/ 

Now, there is some reasoning behind this, albeit a bit misguided. As I've shown in the last two posts, the abalone fishery has gone through a lot of ups and downs as long as its been a thing. The commercial season was a huge industry all the way up until the 1990s; there are still people who used to work in that field. In fact, they've been The recreational fishery then became the only way people were able to harvest these animals themselves. It gained popularity; it was a sport that people enjoyed taking part in. Then, it gets ripped away, only two decades after the loss of the commercial fishery. It must feel like a blow.

But there's being upset at change, and then there's displaced anger and denial. As I've seen while researching the history of this fishery, those in charge of managing it have only recently been motivated to take steps to do so. In the past, when one abalone species grew scarce, people just moved on to a more plentiful species. When that one ran out, they moved on to the next, and so on. It's why white abalone (a southern species) were put on the endangered species list in 2001, and their fishery was closed indefinitely. They were harvested pretty uncontrollably (even after the commercial fishery had been closed) for years, and then they fell prey to withering syndrome, a muscle-eating disease that is still a problem for abalone today. The fishery wasn't given the break it needed to let the animals deal with the disease, and they were nearly driven to extinction. Without them, people turned to red abalone. Now they're in trouble too. This phenomena is called 'serial depletion'; the continuous using up of a resource in a repetitive pattern.

I mean, there'll always be another species, right? Source: http://www.asnailsodyssey.com/LEARNABOUT/ABALONE/abalOver.php

In all my experience in and learning about fisheries, especially with the abalone fishery, I've come to an unfortunate conclusion. I almost feel foolish for saying it, because it might seem pretty obvious given what we know today, but somehow I still felt pretty dismayed when I realized this. People don't really give thought to what they use. To me, the mentality when using animals that we don't cultivate should be,

“Well, I want to use this thing. Therefore, I want it around.” 

Easy, right? When you want to keep using something, you should want to take care of it. However, I've come to realize that the mentality of using things today is the same as it was when we hunted the woolly mammoth, Irish elk, Stellar's sea cow, great auk, dodo, pink duck, and passenger pigeon to extinction.

“Gotta get it while it's still there; at this rate, it'll be gone!” 

That's how serial depletion works; grab as much as you can while its still around, and when it's gone, move on to the next species. It's not about the thing you're using; its the fact that you are using it. People view using something as a right more often enough, not a privilege. It doesn't matter if the abalone are starving; the fishery belongs to the ab divers. If Fish and Wildlife wants to regulate the fishery, they're infringing on the the divers' rights. It's not the animals; it's the principle.

Oddly enough, the only time I've seen this 'principle' idea applied to the mentality of keeping the thing you want to use around came from Native Alaskans. According to a marine physiology professor I had in college, Native Alaskans are all about conservation efforts for right and bowhead whales, but not for the reason you think. They want to protect the whales not because, well, the whales need protecting, but because they want to keep hunting them. They view the whales as theirs; they belong to the natives. Thus, in order to be able to keep hunting them, they want their populations maintained. It's less about the whales and more about the tradition and cultural significance they represent. Sounds....odd, right? Well, it might be a bit misguided, but it's better than you can expect from most people. Same idea applies to rhino and elephant cultivators in Africa. They work to protect the species from poachers and make sure they have enough food, water, and land to survive. But they don't do this out of the goodness of their hearts; they do it to cultivate the animals for trophy hunting. They make money from trophy hunters who pay to hunt these large animals. In turn, only animals that aren't contributing to the population, like those who can't breed anymore or are sick (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUA8i5S0YMU). Again, not ideal but at least its something.

That's why I did the second part of this blog series on the economic impact of the abalone fishery because right now, that seems to be the only way many people are willing to care. It doesn't matter what part an animal plays in the food web; if we can't see a benefit for us, why should we care? But then if we can't have it, it's injustice.

That....all of this...to me, seems like utter nonsense.

I'd like to know what the people reading this think. Please comment your thoughts on this subject, if not there, then on my Facebook page.

Stay curious.

"Sea" you later!

Helpful sources: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/No-abalone-diving-allowed-in-California-until-2021-13460882.php

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUA8i5S0YMU