Different announcer earth focus is made possible in part by a grant from anne ray foundation, a margaret a. Cargill philanthropy; the Orange County community foundation; and the farvue foundation. [surf crashing] [distant chatter] man it was a big thing. It was a big tradition for generations, you know, just, for me, as 3 generations. I know some locals that are 4th generation of really kind of rockpicking and then evolving into diving and harvesting the abalone. And its justits an incredible opportunity. Itsthe oceans free to go into. Theres education, theres science, theres a physical workout. Its really just sort of a magical. Opportunity, really a rich part of a lot of thlocals lives he. Abale brought lot of people here thatit was the big vacation of the year. Come over with, you know, mom, dad, and the grandkids and camp out and relive the memories that they had when they were children. Woman abalone is a hot topic across california because the harvest of abalone is deeply embedded in the culture of californians, going back to indigenous communities that lived here before our colonization. Doug bush its just like a garden snail, except instead of eating your basil and your little baby arugula starts, its eating seaweed. One shell and a foot. This is what you eat. This is just a big, muscular foot that it crawls arounand holds onto the rock. Kristin aquilino abalone ha a really important Economic Impact on this state. They supported a lucrative commercial fishery for decades. They also supported a recreational fishery that brought about 45 million to the north coast of california until recently, and they support really sustainable aquaculture in the state. Woman the red abalone fishery was a major fishery, recreational fishery on the north coast for decades and are really critical for the culture of california for at time. We had to recommend to the fish and Game Commission that it be closed after several years of severe impacts to the kelp forest. Lackey its definitely affected business, and my tours have been greatly affected for the ab diving. And they estimate that its, you know, anywhere from 44 to 54 million out of our local economy, just from the abalone, and that really hurt. With business down, you know, considerably, less than 50 , its almost at a breakeven point for me. Im hanging in there. Im still doing it. The economy is on everyone. You know, the gas stations, the markets, the hels, state parks. Catton weve been surveying the kelp forest for the last 20 years now. Weve seen a severe decline of the kelp forest and severe impact to the algal communities, and those are directly impacting the abalone fishery because the abalone rely on the kelp for food. So weve had 4 years of severe starvation conditions for abalone and other herbivores in the system, and were seeing evidence of mass moalities of the abalone in the wild. So the kelp forest has declined dramatically, basically, because of this run of incredibly warm water weve had on the california coast. Basically, you know, the warmest the california coast has gotten in recent history for the longest period of time. So that is the first symptom of broader Global Change that we are expecting along the california coast. Catton this is what it looks like to be underwater in a bull kelp fort. This is what we used to survey through, and today, where we are seeing this vast expanse of no bull kelp, the culmination of thesethis persistent starvation is, in part, due to an expansion of the purple urchin population. And purple urchins are a natural part of the system. Were seeing these urchins, which are little balls of spines, basically, with a mouth on the bottom that will start to form feeding fronts and mow down everything that they come across on the reef. Lackey it really started to change quickly. We saw a lot more purple urchins. The kelp started to not look as healthy. We really started seeing the last kelp, more urchins, and i think there were a lot of people surprised. Man when we started this urchin removal project, it was really small. It was just a few people that really wanted to do something about the urchin explosion because the department hadnt been doing anything. We removed 57 tons of purple urchins, between the recreational and the commercial divers. Our program is now what i consider a success, ok, so giveourselves a big round of applause, please. [cheering] this event basically was spawned by the closure of abalone seasons. You know, the ab seasons were closed due to the lack of kelp and the increased number of urchin that were preventing the kelp from coming up. So, you know, basically, our best chance of getting an abalone fishery back is to do something about the urchin first. Theres no way to predict whatll happen. Things change, but a lot of the things that we know, a lot of the businesses that we know are in threat, are in danger of closing now, and as this progresses more, will be in danger of closing. You know, the commercial fisheries, th recreational fisheriesif theres no kelp, theres no fish. Catton one of the things that the watermens alliance is doing to help progress our goals is to engage the abalone divers and other recreational divers in the area that are passionate about helping to bring back the kelp forest, to target the purple urchins in their recreational harvest. [overlapping chatter] russo in 2013, there was an abnormal spawning event with the purple urchin in sonoma, where they spawned in deep water and it washed ashore, basically the entire sonoma coast. So what happened then is you have the kelp trying to come back in the coldwater years, but in an abnormally Large Population of purple urchin. So every time the kelp would pop up, it was dogpiled by urchin, so theres an urgency to getting th done sooner rather than later. Catton so were here to estimate the number, the total numbers of urchins that are being caught. Were taking a look at the sizes of those urchins and looking at what their condition is, what theyve been eating. Man i think the big thi is that theyyou know, when the kelp comes back, when the kelp come back, thatll bring the abs back. Man 2 ive been out here ding for abalone for decades, and weve got third and fourth generation coming up that we want to preser all this r them and for everyone else, not to mention the economy out here. It justits a very special place, and to have the industry brings a lot of money to the economy, and wed like to see this economy built back up. Man and its emotional, you know . Because herethis is where i learned to abalonedive, you know, back in 1999, you know, and to see whats happened to it is, yeahits really its really hard to look at. Catton its a really communitybuilding kind of event, and its really fabulou to see so many people energized and engaged with helping to restore the kelp forest. Man 3 because this isur playground. We love this. This iswhen youre talking about environmentalism, youre talking of people who come out there and we play, we love this place. We dont want to see it hurt. We want to have something thats renewable and sustainable. 70 of all the abalone now in mendocino are dead because theyve starved to death. Worse, 95 of all the abalone in Sonoma County are dead. We will never dive there again. Man 4 its. Its beyond words just how bad its gotten. [water bubbling] aquilino so heres an abalone. Its gotyou know, it just looks like a garden snail in these respiratory waters here. This is number 037. Abalone are basically just like a big suction cup with an adorable face. We are now in the white abalone captive breeding lab. This is a really exciting place where we try to make the babies, the baby white abalone that will be the animals that go out in the wild and help save the species. So these guys in these troughs were just booted out of the nursery over there behind you because thats where were going to send all the new animals that we produce this year, and these are all the ones that we produced in 2018, in allthis whole rack. And i can pull up a really tiny one and put it on my finger. Swezey and these guys are all the same age, right . Aquilino theyre all the same age, so its really amazing the size variation that we see in these animals. Theres a lot of genetic variation in abalone, and thats good news in some ways, when we think about Climate Change because there might be a lot of genetic adaptations that they have that Natural Selection can act on. Were helicopter parents to every one. Swezey yeah, every white abalone is sacred in this lab. So our research has been focused on basic impacts on abalone, but beyond that, what drives variation in that response . Because in our experiments, weve seen some pretty negative impacts, but then weve seen some abalone that dont seem as affected, that grow more or less normally. So what is it about those individuals . When you see these big impacts in other guys, what is it about the guys that are making it . What in their genetics is allowing them to do that . And then could we harness that information that were discovering to basically build resilience into conserving and growing the species in the future . Aquilino our first year of getting this program here at uc davis bodega marine laboratory, we only had about 30 total animals in captivity. Our first spawning season, we created about 20 more. That wasnt going to save the species, but the next year, we created about 120, the year after that, a few thousand, and in this room, we have about 30,000 white abalone, well over what is left in the wild. We want as many as possible to survive in order to ensure the future of this species. Hill Kristin Aquilino is the lead scientist who has been charged with trying to bring the endangered white abalone back from the brink of extinction. The project has been remarkably successful, but an interesting thing to think about is that we know that abalone who are set free out into the ocean today are actually going to experience a different ocean in their lifetime than perhaps the abalone of 50 or a hundred years ago. And so part of what kristin is thinking about is, what does the future hold for those white abalone in the ocean . And part of that future is Ocean Acidification. Ocean acidification is a particularly interesting scientific problem because its fundamentally the changing chemistry of the ocean due to Rising Carbon Dioxide concentration in the atmosphere because of human activities. When we talk about Global Warming, were usually talking about changes in the average temperature across the earths surface, associated with that Rising Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. The cause of Global Warming is the same cause of Ocean Acidification, so Rising Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere also causes the ocean to fundamentally change in chemistry. In 2007, our Research Group formed, and there are a group of faculty who Work Together to try to understand the impacts of Ocean Acidification, and the reason why is that we know the ocean is a tremendous sponge for carbon. It just soaks it up, so about 20 to 30 of what we emit to the atmosphere through our activities ends up in the ocean, and that fundamentally changes the chemistry of the ocean water. It reduces the ph of the water, making it more acidic, shifting it enough that organisms absolutely notice and are impacted. We are asking really fundamental things about how animals in the sea work, how th make shells, how they live, and how these chemic changes might affect all of those things. Im using a probe right now to measure the temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and ph of the seawater out here in the cove. We do things like this routinely both here, but all up and down the california coast to try to understand how processes like Ocean Acidification and Climate Change are happening along this coast. Swezey so what were doing is were measuring the ph of seawater using this device thats called a spectrophotometer. Basically how it works is we add a little bit of dye to seawater, this dye thats called cresol purple, and it actually complexes with hydrogen ion in the seawater, so it basically changes color in proportion to the phf that seawater, and it usually kind of goes from a purple to a red. We then put it in this machine and we shine light through that seawater, and depending on the color, the machine is able to calculate the exact ph of that seawater. The average ph of the ocean is about 8. 1. Were expecting it to decline about another. 2 to. 3 units, possibly more. You may not think that that is an incredibly important detail, but it actually turns out that animals in the ocean have evolved in a pretty stable ph, that the magnitude of change were expecting is much greater than theyve seen in any recent evolutionary period of time. Aquilino all of the caldera instruments come back tomorrow. Swezey oh. Hill so this place will be hummin starting this weekend. Swezey ok. Hill we were particularly interested in species along the west coast of the u. S. That people would really identify as sort of classic westcoast species. And so we began thinking about Ocean Acidification impacting abalone and other species that many people on the west coast, if youre walking along a shore, theyre the species that you think of as being sort of characteristically what you would find on this shore. When an abalone or a clam is making its shell, it is essentially pulling components out of the water. Its pulling Building Blocks out of the water and making a hard part. And what Ocean Acidification does is it makes it harder for them to find those Building Blocks, so they expend more energy just trying to make a shell to protect themselves from a predator or a crashing wave or whatever the ocean is bringing. Swezey were realizing that animals that build shells and hard parts take calcium and carbonate out of the water and build skeletons with it. The Calcium Carbonate is very sensitive to the ph of seawater, that its less stable as seawater becomes more acidic, and weve begun to realize that its much harder for animals to build their bodies in the first place and kind of maintain what they already have, and that theres a bunch of sensitivities when theyre very little. When theyre kind of first growing, theyre actually very dependent on a stable ph of the ocean. Aquilino white abalone are an ideal species to be looking at some of these questions about Ocean Acidification because theyre a deepwater species. Theyre often in water that is naturally more acidic than some of the surrounding water, and so if we can figure out how they deal with this problem, we might be able to apply that to other abalone species that are also facing peril. [surf crashing] swezey i met doug bush, who is the general manager of the cultured abalone farm, when he came up here to give a seminar. The White Abalone Breeding Program here has really been informed by a lot of the stuff hes done with his commercial business in Santa Barbara on the kind of technique for raising the larvae, how you grow them out, how you raise a lot in a very small space. Thats all information thats incredibly important to abalone conservation. Bush theres a really Strong Demand domestically. Almost all of ourroduct is sold in california or just on the west coast. We do everything inhouse. Were a completely integrated farm. We have adult abalone, wch well take into the hatchery, and you get a tiny little fertilized abalone embryo. We get them by the millions. 24 hours lat, they hatch, and feed, feed, feed, repeat, and harvest at about 100 grams, about a 3 1 2inch shell length. And thats the market size, and we crank those out 52 weeks a year. Aquilino much of what we do here in this program has been inspired by what abalone farmers do, people like doug bush and dan swezey at the cultured abalone farm have really helped us figure out how to maximize production in this lab. So we take their best methods and then we tweak them for white abalone, so it really helps sustainable aquaculture in this country and the restoration of a species. Bush ive been banging this drum for a while, to really sort of draw attention to abalone. Its just a perfect, banner species. Aquaculture and marine science has a tendency to sort of do a real cutandpaste style of research, and so it didnt seem to me to be a great way to necessarily advance the body of knowledge on how you can effect change and keep that learning trajectory moving forward. When we have a sort of rey supply of something, where you can, like, generate the numbers you need for replicatable research, and you can kind of foster that commercial and research partnership, dan really jumped on that. You know, he and i met, and he took up that cause enthusiastically. Swezey and ultimately, to restore white abalone in the wild, were going to need the scale that we see at commercial abalone farms because were going to have to put them out by the hundreds of thousands to the millions if we ever want to see that population kind of restored to itsits kind of preimpact population in southern california. Hill they are interested in sort ofif we look toward the future of the farming of abalone,hat can we do to make sure that those abalone are healthy and resilient to future ocean conditions . But they are also looking at whether particular genetic strains might be more resilient to these future conditions. Bush when theyre this size, theyre relatively burly. Theyre capable of withstanding challenges, especially shortterm ones. Where we are, on the coast, thethe big acidification events, the big ph drops, theyre associated with upwelling events, and they dont last forever. They canthese guysan deal with those, but the larvae, the eggs, the future of these guysthose guys get hit by those events, and it just hammers them. Its gotten challenging. Its not a turnkey, pushbutton operation to just put them in the bucket and make a million babies, you know . And it should be, but its getting hard and harder and harder every year. Swezey doug really takes it a step further in that hes willing to work withcientists and groups that are interested in conserving the species on a more personal level because he understands the value in conserving the abalone and having a healthy abalone population both for his business, but also for kind of the historical legacy of the state. He really wants to see abalone continue in the future, and thats what we all want. Hill you know, wow, what opportunity we have, an Ocean Acidification Research Group here at the marine lab. We have an expert on bringing an endangered white abalone species back from the brink, and we have an expert on farming red abalone in the context of Ocean Acidification, and so, of course, our 3 groups Work Together because were interested in trying to understand the future of all of these specs, both for conservation of the specieshow do we protect the species in the future . But also for sustainable farming. Bush the academic world moves at its own pace. In the commercial world, wereit moves at its own pace, but there are moments and there are projects that bring everyone into the fold and let the ideas kind of flow. Its very organic. Its the way that thinking works, the way that problemsolving works, the way that you approach a problem from a different perspective sometimes, take a stepack. When youre working on a project, you develop the community that helps you move forward. Swezey now we are at this point where the knowledge thats been accumulated here on abalone farms like this is actually a valuable resource,nd its a critical step in conserving the species in many ways, not only from a technical standpoint, but also from what was achieved, starting the farm in the first place and getting these animals to persist, and so, in that sense, it is a valuable resource from the years and years of effort to build this place. Russo i think that the time for divers to be passive and to let regulations happen and to let things like that happen and believe that nobodys going to shut your fishery down, i think thats over. I think we should i think everybody should be involved. Lackey people would come up with no experience, and wed be able to take them out in the water, and most of them were pretty successful. I mean, they thought it was the greatest thing in the world, they were super impressed with how many abs there were. But unfortunately, the niche hasnt been filled. The abalone is with that gone, theres a missing business component for sure. Im hopeful that those oasises are going to be fine, theyre going to help the spawn come bacin the abalone population, and hopefully we just get back on track. [surf crashing] swezey and that the ocean has been this, you know, incredible resource and source of nourishment for me; you know, recreation, wonderment, stimulating my interest in the natural world, and kind of driving what i do, so theres no going somewhere else or eating whats left. This is our shared legacy, our shared resource, and so thats what i bring to what i do. Hill many of us have some sort of relationship with the ocean. Maybe its through things that we like to eat or places that we like to visit, or even longstanding cultural traditions or values that we have around a healthy ocean and a healthy beach that we want to go visit. And so there isnt actu ly a, you know, a magic message from the past to tell us whats going to happen because this great human experiment that we have embarked upon is a much larger problem than the geologic record can tell us about. Announcer earth focus is made possible in part by a grant from anne ray foundation, a margaret a. Cargill philanthropy; the Orange County community foundation; and the farvue foundation. Woman we really try to focus in on deep traditions. Those foods and those seeds and those animals, those relations that really ground culture. Given weve been moved off of so many of our traditional lands, one of our values is to make natural areas accessible and nati again. Man we have certain native ways of taking care of the land and we want to exhibit those practices here so people will come here and theyll see this lush parade. Woman we have a tendency in the west to commodify something, to view it as a thing. Even seeds. What the native people know is that its not just a thing, and what native ppl
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