Marine Conservation course short films

Posted on August 15, 2016 by juliagmason

This spring I was the teaching assistant for my advisor’s Marine Conservation course, one of the handful of courses offered to undergraduates who choose to spend a quarter at the marine station. Rather than a standard lecture format, the course consisted of a series of guest speakers who work in various aspects of marine conservation. Many were biologists, but we also heard from social scientists, geographers, lawyers, educators, and journalists. We also went on field trips to visit the elephant seals in Año Nuevo, go whale watching, tour the oceanographic vessels at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and go behind the scenes at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The fifteen students contributed to their own blog about their experiences with the course, which you can read here.

Their capstone final project was to make a short film about marine conservation or their personal connection to the ocean. Many of the students (and their teaching assistant) had never made films before, so we organized a few workshops with a local director and editor on the basics of cinematography, sound production, and editing. Armed with just a few hours of training and a pile of cobbled together equipment, they worked throughout the quarter on their three-minute films, which they showcased in a final film festival at the station. I was so impressed by the quality and creativity of their work–check out their films on the Humans of Planet Ocean website, another Stanford undergrad initiative to engage the Millennial generation with the oceans.

MARINE Guest blog post

Posted on April 8, 2016 by juliagmason

I wrote a short piece about my research as part of a science communication workshop through MARINE (Monterey Area Research Institutions’ Network for Education), a professional development program that links marine science campuses around the Monterey Bay. Check it out here, and also read about some of the other amazing research going on in the area!

DC “Boot Camp:” A week of science and policy

Posted on April 3, 2016 by juliagmason

I spent my spring break in Washington DC for a whirlwind introduction to how science affects policy. I was one of twenty Stanford graduate students and postdocs from different departments who had applied to Stanford’s Rising Environmental Leaders Program (RELP), and a few months of meetings and communications training culminated in this “DC Boot Camp” to see firsthand how policy is developed and how to make our research relevant to politicians and the public.

Our five-day trip was crammed full of meetings and panels—lobbyists, congressional staffers, reporters, federal agency scientists, policy advisors, think tank directors. We heard from recent PhD graduates in year-long government fellowships and senior executives who had been in Washington for decades. We sat in on congressional budget hearings (including a particularly contentious grilling of the EPA’s Gina McCarthy), practiced our research “elevator pitches” with communications experts, and flexed our networking abilities. Some highlights were a special trip to the White House Executive Offices to meet with some of Obama’s advising team, and a talk from Dr. John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology.

We were thrilled to visit the White House Executive Offices. The Obamas, unfortunately, were in Cuba.

It was, as everyone continually reminded us, a “fascinating/opportune/cataclysmic” time to be in DC, especially to hear the candid realities of jobs (or entire agencies) that evaporate after an election. It was also interesting to hear political science insights about how environmental politics have evolved at the national level—for example, it’s rare for major environmental legislation to pass while unemployment is high, and the polarization of climate change along party lines has occurred fairly recently, largely as a knee-jerk response to Obama’s policies. Unfortunately, this polarization has only solidified, and it might require a conservative but pro-environment president—a “Nixon in China” scenario—to get cohesive federal climate action. It was also fascinating and a trifle unsettling to hear political scientists and policy experts speculate about how social media and increasing economic disparity are radically changing our political process in ways they can’t understand or predict.

Our White House Executive Office panel took place in what is probably the grandest conference room I’ll ever enter. Photo courtesy of Stanford Woods Institute/Nathan Mitchell

On the whole, though, I emerged feeling hopeful. Many people emphasized that while gridlock in Congress means we won’t get national level change anytime soon, more nimble state legislatures, especially in California, are pioneering innovative and positive policies, and state and local level governments can have enormous influence. I was also inspired to see how many different ways science can make its way to policymakers—I’ve often deflected future career goal inquiries with hand wavy talk of the “science to policy interface,” and was excited to see the diversity of concrete career paths. I had felt frustrated that it seemed that you could only have an influence on real-world policy if you were a famous superstar senior professor. After this week, it’s clear that while it can certainly help to be a famous academic, policymakers rely far more on reputable non-profits and think tanks, federal science agencies like NOAA and USGS, and, very often, their staff. Unsurprisingly, congressmen aren’t delving into the primary literature–they don’t have journal access on the hill, much less the time and patience for dry scientific papers. Policy “windows” do open with majorities in the right places and a groundswell of public sentiment, and the best thing to do is be prepared with sound science and solid communications skills, and to jump at the opportunity.

Our media panel brought us to the fabulous National Geographic offices.

Our week concluded with a celebratory lunch and remarks, and we were set free to revel in peak bloom of the cherry blossoms. I’m so glad I had this opportunity to experience the realities of policy and the diversity of possible careers, and most of all to meet the wonderful and inspiring group of people that were my fellow RELPers.

What is El Niño?

Posted on December 10, 2015 by juliagmason

I’m looking out at some much needed California rain, a sign of the season’s El Niño. You may have heard that this year’s is a “Godzilla” El Niño, already the strongest in recorded history (although we’ve only been keeping track since 1950), but what is El Niño, exactly?

The short version: it’s one phase of a cycle of wind and ocean circulation patterns that brings warmer waters to the west coast of the Americas, jumbling up weather across the globe. That means more rain for drought-stricken California and a warmer winter for the East Coast, but other places are drier than usual: Indonesia is seeing massive forest fires, and South Africa may face water shortages.

El Niño matters because these big weather changes can have big economic and social impacts: storm damage, floods, agricultural failures, fisheries crashes. We also need to understand El Niño because these large-scale climatic cycles and their interactions are crucial to our understanding of climate change, and conditions in El Niño can show us what’s to come in warmer years.

Okay, now the long version

There are many wonderful and interactive explanations of El Niño online, and I especially recommend clicking around on NOAA’s website.

Under normal conditions, the trade winds blow east to west across the Pacific Ocean (basically hot air rising at the equator and then getting left behind as the earth rotates). They push water up by Asia and Australia, creating a slope. Think about blowing on a hot cup of coffee—the air pushes the coffee up against opposite side of the mug. The trade winds take warm surface waters and pile them up near Indonesia. Meanwhile, on the west coast of the Americas, cold, deep ocean water is pulled up to replace the water getting pushed away. This creates a massive circulation with warm downwelling in the western Pacific and cold upwelling in the eastern Pacific.

Under normal conditions, the trade winds drive circulation in the Pacific Ocean by pushing warm water up toward Asia and Australia. The piled up mass of water sinks down, while on the other side of the ocean, cold deep water is pulled up.

During El Niño, the trade winds weaken, for reasons we still don’t know. Just like when you stop blowing on your coffee and it levels out, warm water from the western Pacific flows back down toward the Americas.

All that warm water sloshing toward California means lots of warm, moist air, a recipe for rain. The flow of water toward the Americas (called a Kelvin wave) also disrupts the upwelling of cold water at the eastern Pacific, with big consequences for fisheries.

This is this week’s NOAA report of sea surface temperature anomaly (departures from average, with red representing warmer than usual and blue, cooler than usual). The warm (red) tongue by Peru is indicative of El Niño.

In fact, Peruvian fishermen who for centuries noticed changes in currents and the disappearance of their fish around Christmastime are credited with the name El Niño, Spanish for “the boy,” referring to the birth of baby Jesus. In the US, we tend to see the biggest effects between December and March. El Niño is part of a cycle that we complete every 3-7 years, and we call the opposite phenomenon (stronger winds, stronger upwelling, colder water) “La Niña,” the girl. The standard way we measure El Niño events, and thus make claims about a strong El Niño or a strongest ever El Niño, is by how much warmer than usual the ocean surface is in a standard region of the central Pacific.

We use the Niño 3.4 region (center, above) to measure El Niño events. If the sea surface temperature is 0.5°C warmer than average, it’s officially an El Niño. This November, the temperature in the 3.4 region was 2.35°C warmer than average Novembers! This is on par with the last huge El Niño we had, in 1997-98, when the November departure was 2.33°C.

What does this mean for fisheries?

The cold water upwelling off the coast of California and Peru brings up the nutrients that fall to the ocean floor, so those waters can support a huge amount of marine life. That’s why Peru is the second biggest fish exporter after China—they have extremely productive waters. During El Niño, with warmer, less nutritious waters and less upwelling, there isn’t enough food and fish populations crash. Anchovies, Peru’s staple, do best in cold nutrient-rich water, and El Niño-induced anchovy crashes are brutal to Peru’s economy. Fish also move closer inshore during El Niño to find colder water (this is why we’ve seen anchovies and unusual pelagic red crabs in Monterey Bay). This can be great for the small-scale fishermen, the guys I was working with, but it can also mean that the big boats sneak further inshore, creating competition and conflict. Big storms and flooding also wash freshwater and debris to coastal waters, which can kill fish and damage nets. Every El Niño event is different, and they bring complex, interacting effects, so it’s tough to figure out how to manage fisheries in the face of all this variability. Studying fisheries now can give us tools to deal with the next big El Niño, and make sure that management promotes the resilience of both the fish and the fishermen.

For more on El Niño, check out:

The NOAA El Niño blog

Daniel Swain’s California Weather Blog

Also, in light of the COP21 Paris talks/living on this planet, please read these excellent New York Times articles about climate change!

Short answers to hard questions

What you can do

Kayaking and Conservation in Monterey Bay

Posted on October 28, 2015 by juliagmason

Over the weekend, I taught a course while kayaking in Monterey Bay. Stanford’s core undergrad Biology course allows grad students and postdocs to teach one-day elective “Explorations” courses on any biosciences subject we want, providing students exposure to specialized topics. When the call for teachers came out, I knew I wanted to teach one–students don’t often get a chance to see Hopkins Marine Station (where I work, Stanford’s marine biology outpost in Monterey, 90 miles down the coast from the main campus) without committing to spending a full quarter here, and student reviews indicated that these Explorations courses had inspired a lot of interest in marine biology and motivated several students to study at the station.

I loved the idea of designing a course and am always eager for opportunities to indoctrinate young minds with love of the oceans and interest in conservation, but I was hesitant—I don’t study the local Monterey Bay system, and it hardly made sense to drag undergrads down the coast to spout off barely-formed ideas about Peruvian fisheries. I’m enthusiastic about communication and outreach but have been feeling that I have nothing to communicate: I don’t have a thesis topic and don’t feel like an expert in anything yet. But I’m realizing that my perception of “expert” is skewed by my dazzling peers and professors, and I shouldn’t pass up opportunities to share.

I’m interested in the power of storytelling in conservation, and liked the way Hopkins professor Steve Palumbi and Carolyn Sotka told the ecological and social history of Monterey Bay through the stories of its people in their 2011 book The Death and Life of Monterey Bay. The bay is famous for its swaying kelp forests, fantastic whale watching, and world-class aquarium, so it’s hard to imagine that just a few decades ago it was a smelly industrial dump. Monterey in the early and mid-20^th century, Steinbeck’s Monterey, was a remarkably different place. Demand for oil had brought down the once-abundant whales. Sea otters had been declared extinct, heavily hunted for their luxurious fur. Sea urchin and abalone had boomed in the absence of the voracious sea otters, and completely eaten the kelp, before being heavily fished themselves. Without protective kelp cover, the diverse fish communities fled the bay, and with them their predators, harbor seals and sea lions. The entire bay was devoted to fishing and canning sardines, and fish offal and oil choked the water, the beaches, and the air. By the 1960s, the sardine fishery crashed under the combined influences of overfishing and broader climatic cycles, the decaying canneries and barren waters a testament to human greed.

But as much as the history of Monterey Bay is a cautionary tale of how human wastefulness ripples through the ecosystem, it’s also an inspiring message of how human actions foster recovery. I love the story of the indomitable Dr. Julia Platt, one of my new heroes. One of the first women to receive a PhD in zoology (in Germany, since turn of the century America wouldn’t award doctorates to women), she was repeatedly turned down for a faculty position at Hopkins, and settled for becoming the mayor of Pacific Grove. Julia was committed to saving the bay from the destruction she saw around her, and established a marine reserve in 1932 that now encompasses the Hopkins reserve that we dive in today. When the remnant population of sea otters that had been hiding in Big Sur ventured up the coast in the 1960s, they found abundant food in the reserve that supported their re-entry into the bay, and within years they brought the urchins under control and re-established the kelp forest ecosystem. Fish, seals, and whales came back, and public conservation spirit spurred by Rachel Carson and legislation like the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act helped them thrive in the bay.

The stories beautifully illustrate classic ecological concepts, and how human actions at the local and global level can both harm and help the environment. I thought they would be the perfect way to apply my ecology and conservation biology knowledge and my work with the link between humans and the environment to the Monterey ecosystem. My main goal was to bring students down to Monterey for a fun and interactive experience with the marine environment, and hopefully spark some interest in oceans conservation or research at Hopkins. And if I made it into a kayaking trip I would definitely have the coolest Explorations course, which was maybe actually my main goal.

Freya shows off a hermit crab

The kayaks were an awesome venue for telling these stories. While we stopped to watch a sea otter vigorously grooming itself (sea otters stay warm by trapping air bubbles in their thick fur, and also by eating up to 30% of their body weight each day—hence their dramatic food web impacts), I explained that otters are keystone species—they maintain and regulate the ecosystem and promote biodiversity, and when we remove them, there are major consequences all the way down the food web, called cascading trophic effects. As we drifted past the ruins of sardine canneries, I discussed how broad climatic cycles affect fisheries, perfectly punctuated by the school of anchovies that flashed beneath us, a signal of the coming El Niño. As we passed through the marine reserve on the way to a Hopkins beach for lunch, I talked about how individuals can make a difference through the marine reserve, with some anecdotes about the fiery Dr. Platt. I was very grateful that Freya Sommer, our dive safety officer, came along with me, not just to have help in case of any emergency, but also because she’s incredibly knowledgeable about the wildlife and ecology of the area. She came to the rescue for all the species identifications I didn’t know, and led a tidepooling expedition during lunch, a definite highlight.

I knew that the students were much more excited about kayaking than they were about discussing trophic cascades, and it was also more difficult than I anticipated to get everyone to raft together when I wanted to discuss something, so the course wasn’t as content-heavy as it could have been. But I think the students were thrilled to be out on the water on a beautiful day spotting sea otters and harbor seals—I certainly was—so I feel I achieved what I set out to do. I definitely think I achieved my coolest teacher goal—we were limited by van space to six students, and apparently the course filled within 5 seconds. I’m already looking forward to teaching it again next year!

Final days in Peru

Posted on July 30, 2015 by juliagmason

I’m wrapping up my time in Peru, and looking forward to returning to the states in a few days. I have a ton to think about and a couple potential projects percolating: all in all it was a hugely useful and successful field session.

Unfortunately, Shellcatch, the sustainability certification company I’m hoping to collaborate with, rescheduled their visit for next month, but I went ahead with my pre-assessment surveys. I spent all of last week in San José interviewing fishermen and their families. Of course, it’s difficult to predict what the right questions will be before a project has started, but I thought it would be a good idea to get a sense of current rates of bycatch, flows of fish and money, and people’s attitudes toward their community, environment, and economic situation now, and track any changes as the certification project progresses.

Brightly-colored “chalanas” bring fishers out to their bigger boats anchored offshore: one of many components of the fishing economy in San José.

I also asked questions about the role of women in the fishery and in the community, because I was interested, because women, as an integral part of the community and economy, also stand to be impacted by the Shellcatch project, and also because ProDelphinus is waiting to hear back from a grant to fund a women’s education and empowerment program. In order to run an effective program, it would first be helpful to better understand how the women are acting in the community, and what their needs are. I’m hopeful that the grant goes through, since educating women is arguably the most powerful environmental (and economic, and social, you name it) intervention possible.

I thought I’d get a chance to interview maybe 20 or 30 people at most, but after a whirlwind week I returned to Lima with 58 completed surveys! I had the incredible good fortune of working with David Sarmiento, a government official who collects fisheries landings data. He was born and raised in San José and can not only greet every single person in the town by name, but also instantly recall everything about their fishing habits, down to the scientific species names. He’s a beloved and respected figure throughout the town, and just being associated with him meant that people were happy to talk to me. Minutes after his introduction, people I hadn’t even met before welcomed me into their homes, plied me with food and gifts, and chatted candidly about their bycatch, fish prices, and difficulties with the powers that be. I’m going to be completely spoiled for all future survey work.

David (in the hat) was irreplaceable in his help in introducing me to interviewees and explaining some of their responses if they spoke too quickly!

My results are a basis waiting for future comparison, but I did learn a ton. For example, I had expected that women would primarily participate in the fishery and therefore economy by processing and selling their husbands’ fish. And, yes, most of them do. But I was surprised to learn that in addition, almost every woman that grows up in San José also learns several types of artwork—painting, cross stitch, embroidery, crochet. I was further surprised that during lean fishing times (which are common in Peru, because El Niño creates so much variability), rather than the men seeking other jobs, it’s the women that step up and sell their artwork, or sell their cooking. In studies of community resilience (the ability to withstand shocks or disruptions, like a big El Niño event), women are generally depicted as vulnerable victims, a marginalized group that loses out when shifts occur in the community. Not so here: the women seem to be a source of resilience! They are the ones that sustain their families in whatever way they can while their husbands, fathers, and sons wait for work, at the mercy of an unpredictable environment and a declining resource.

This woman showed me some of her beautifully detailed crochet work.

As always, the situation is complex, with intricate economic and social relationships within the community as well as with the government, broader market structure, and industrial fishery–I have a lot of information to take home with me and process over the next weeks and months. Many of the fishermen expressed eagerness to learn about how to improve their fishing methods, and how to avoid entangling turtles and mammals, primarily because they pose a threat to their expensive fishing gear (and, in the case of whales, their boats and lives), but some also expressed affection and a sense of stewardship for the “animalitos.” As for the women, they’re eager to find a way to export their artwork to broader markets, and expressed interest in education in nutrition, talking to their daughters about sex (it’s not uncommon to see girls pregnant at 14), and household accounting.

Interviews on the fly: tables and chairs weren’t always an option–I interviewed this fisherman in his “mototaxi.”

I’m overwhelmed with gratitude at the generosity and kindness of everyone I worked with, and am eager to return. When I asked one older fisher if he had any additional comments or questions, he looked at me and said, “I want for you to finish your studies. And I want for you to then come back, and to help us.” That’s exactly what I plan to do.

People welcomed me into their homes and into their families! I spent my evenings goofing off with this bunch and teaching them some English.

Mil gracias also to David, and everyone at ProDelphinus, especially Joanna and Jeff, and my wonderful field assistants Sergio, Astrid, and Diego. Nos vemos pronto!

Peru’s Shark Fishery

Posted on July 15, 2015 by juliagmason

I was surprised to learn upon arriving in Peru that a major target of the small-scale fishery is shark. Shark fishing has gained some notoriety in recent years from the incredibly wasteful practice of shark finning, in which fishers (often illegally, often in developing countries) catch sharks by the hundreds, discard their carcasses, and sell the fins for premium prices to Asian markets, where they’re used in prestigious shark fin soup.

But the surprising part is that the Peruvian shark fishery isn’t about shark fins at all, it’s primarily for the direct human consumption of meat. Shark is consumed all across Peru in popular seafood dishes like ceviche, although it’s caught and sold under the name “tollo” or “toyo,” and most Peruvians have no idea they’re eating “tiburón.” Peruvian fishers do sometimes sell the fins and enjoy a nice financial bonus, and by the sheer size of the fishery Peru is a major supplier of shark fins, but it’s almost an afterthought. Most of the sharks that I saw in the markets still had all their fins intact. The fishers I talked to were scandalized that Americans don’t eat shark meat. “But you have a lot of sharks in California, no? And you don’t eat any of them?”

“Tollo” sold at the fish market in Santa Rosa. The fins are nearly always intact but often not the heads, which can make the sharks difficult to identify.

Why was this surprising to me? It’s not that I was balking at an unfamiliar food—having long ago crossed the cuy threshold and braved Palau’s fruit bat soup, I’m fairly culinarily unflappable. It’s that sharks are so widely recognized as crucial to marine ecosystems, and are in such heavy decline, that you rarely hear about shark fishing outside the high-risk high-reward finning industry, or as accidental catch (although a quick FAO search reveals that shark consumption is far more common than I realized). As I struggled to put into Spanish for the group of fishers two weeks ago, sharks are usually apex predators in marine ecosystems, meaning that they keep all the subsequent levels of the food chain in balance. It’s counterintuitive, but more sharks mean more fish: by preying on a large variety of fish, they prevent any one group from getting out of hand and unbalancing the system. Think of wolves, a terrestrial parallel. As we belatedly learned in Yellowstone National Park, rather than threatening elk populations, wolves keep them healthy by preying on old and sick elk, and thus prevent elk populations from overwhelming their food source. Sharks do the same thing in the oceans, thus actually promoting the abundance of commercially important species. An oft-cited example is that the decline of sharks along America’s mid-Atlantic coast released predatory pressure on cownose rays, which boomed and gobbled up all the shellfish, much to the chagrin of scallop fishers.

Unfortunately, sharks are slow-growing and slow-reproducing, and can’t keep up with the estimated 100 million that we’re taking each year. Sharks are increasingly coming under international protection in the face of steep population declines.

The scalloped hammerhead (S. zygaena) was listed under CITES in 2013.

The scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna zygaena) was listed under CITES in 2013.

Here’s the twist in the Peruvian shark fishery: it was in part introduced by the government and conservation NGOs in the late 1980s as a sustainability initiative. Sharks had long been targeted with gillnets (nets that hang vertically in the water), but these nets were also catching and killing a lot of dolphins. The Peruvian Ministry of Fisheries and a cetacean conservation agency workshopped shark longlining (as the name suggests, a long line with dozens to hundreds of suspended hooks) with fishermen, in an effort to save the dolphins and relieve pressure on dwindling fish stocks.

An image of a 1987 longline seminar in Pucusana (from a 1993 IUCN report by Julio Reyes)

Longlines are also notorious for their high rates of bycatch, so as a conservation biologist with “sharks = unsustainable; longlines= unsustainable” firmly etched into my brain, I was floored when I read this. I’m trying to get a better idea of how directly this initiative affected fishers and sharks–longlining has increased markedly here over the last few decades, but shark catches haven’t, likely due to fewer sharks combined with broader ecological or climatic influences. A thread I find particularly interesting is that in ProDelphinus interviews, fishers report first encountering and accidentally capturing critically endangered* leatherback sea turtles when they began fishing in the high seas, also in the late 80s. Was it the shift to longlining that brought artisanal fishers out to the high seas, or a broader decline in fished species closer to shore? Likely both. A definite unintended consequence of this policy, though, one dripping with irony, is that a popular type of bait for these shark longlines is dolphin meat.

I think this story is absolutely crazy. I have no idea how to feel about it. I certainly felt conflicted when I was presented with a plate of tollo ceviche my first day in San José! I definitely prefer the practice of using the whole shark as a protein source rather than slicing off just the fins, and many of our accepted seafood traditions are ecologically problematic—tuna, swordfish, and grouper are also important predators, for example. I attended an informational government meeting with fishermen about the shark fishery, and it’s clear that there’s a widespread lack of education about international endangered species laws and national size and catch restrictions at the fisher level, lack of awareness at the consumer level, and, the scourge of sustainable seafood initiatives everywhere, lack of traceability at every level of the supply chain. The use of dolphin meat for bait is truly unfortunate. A google search of “Peruvian shark fishery” yields incendiary accounts of The Cove-style butchery that, like many such fishery narratives, demonize fishermen as callous and greedy and put none of the accountability on the consumers and policies that impel the fishers’ choices. Restrictions or all-out bans are almost certainly in the future for Peruvian shark fisheries, but the consequences will be borne by these small-scale fishers who have nowhere else to turn.

*The IUCN classifies leatherbacks as vulnerable, and the East Pacific subpopulation as critically endangered.

Field Notes: Peru

Posted on July 6, 2015 by juliagmason

I’m now two weeks into a six-week scoping trip in Peru, traveling around, chatting to people, and trying to make sense of the small scale fisheries here. The idea behind this trip is that no matter how much you read about a place or system, it’s difficult to know what’s truly going on and what the relevant questions are without being there to see it, poke around, and talk to people. Also, just as with the fishermen in my survey, the fishers here know way more about this ecosystem and fishery than I do, and my main goal for this trip is to build those incredibly important trust relationships by getting to know some fishers here and listening to what they have to say.

I’ve been reading extensively about Peruvian fisheries and have some ideas of what I’m looking for, but I’m mostly keeping my eyes, ears, and mind open. The importance of these “kicking the tires” expeditions is widely acknowledged, but I’m still very lucky to have an advisor who is so supportive of such an endeavor!

Lima’s cliffed coastline

I’m also lucky to have the help and support of people that know the area and the fishermen. I’m working with Pro Delphinus, a Lima based non-profit that works with fishermen to reduce bycatch (accidental catch) of turtles, mammals, and birds. Co-coordinators Joanna Alfaro and Jeff Mangel have both worked closely with my advisor, so he was tickled when I came to him with their papers and outlined my plans for a Peru trip.

They’ve done wonderful and extensive work with small scale fishermen all over Peru, teaching them how to identify and free animals that get tangled in their nets, and providing them with deterrents like lights and sound-emitting pingers. The fishers are eager to participate because bycatch is a huge problem for them: a net lost to a whale entanglement costs over a thousand dollars to replace, money they don’t have.

I spent my first week in the Pro Delphinus office in Lima learning about the different projects they’re working on and the types of data they have. I’m extremely excited by what they’re working on. Peru’s fisheries are a big deal: it’s the world’s second largest producer of fish behind China, but the focus has been on the industrial anchovy fishery, nearly all of which is exported as fish meal and fish oil. The artisanal fisheries, largely neglected in the literature (except by Joanna and Jeff), are a major source of employment, and the fish is eaten here, representing over a quarter of Peru’s animal protein consumption. But Peru’s extraordinary productivity also means it’s a hotspot for other species, including endangered and/or charismatic ones like sea turtles and whales. Small scale fisheries in Peru are a huge source of mortality for these animals, comparable to industrial scale fisheries. What’s particularly impressive is that Pro Delphinus works with fishermen rather than against them, providing them with experimental solutions and soliciting and incorporating the fishers’ feedback.

Pro Delphinus also works with Tasa, one of the largest industrial fishing companies in Peru. We joined Tasa fishers and administrators in an annual philanthropy event, planting trees at a local school.

My original thoughts were to come here and get a better idea of the communities in which Pro Delphinus works. There’s scant literature on the social aspects of the artisanal fishery–who are these fishers? Have they always lived here or, as is increasingly common, are they migrants resorting to fishing following agricultural failures? What are the women doing? Peru is also dominated by El Niño (periodic El Niño-induced crashes in the Peruvian industrial anchovy fishery are the textbook example used to illustrate El Niño’s ecological impacts), and I’m interested in how this plays out ecologically and socially in the small scale fishery. How do both the ecosystem and the fishers adapt? It’s an El Niño year, so I thought this would be particularly relevant.

Unsurprisingly, from the moment I got here everything has been in flux, and I’m constantly learning new things and reevaluating my ideas. I couldn’t be happier to have this opportunity be flexible and open minded, and that I didn’t spend months preparing something specific but misguided. I think I’m even going to renege on my vow not to collect any data (“DON’T!” wailed an anthropologist I consulted before the trip. “Don’t even go in with a set list of questions! This should be like dating–just have a conversation!”). It turns out that Pro Delphinus has an upcoming project with Shellcatch, a San Francisco company, to give a sustainability certification (like the MSC certification I hope you look for in your seafood products; it’s similar to fair trade, but for being environmentally friendly) to some of their fishers in San José, a village in the north. Over the past few months I’ve become increasingly interested in certification programs like these, and what it means to eat sustainably in our global society (lengthy musings I’ll save for a future post).

I think it would be awesome to follow this project over the next few years and see what happens in the environment and in the community. I have an opportunity now, on this trip, to do a baseline assessment before anything has started, so I can have a basis for future comparison. I’ve written up a little survey that I hope to trot out in the upcoming weeks, and reached out people from Shellcatch, who have expressed interest in working with me, and possibly meeting if they make it down while I’m here. I’m trying not to let myself get too excited (COULD THIS BE MY THESIS?!) before I talk to Shellcatch, but this could be really fun and interesting if it pans out!

San José

I’m not, however, giving up my commitment to “people first, science second.” I spent the last week in San José chatting with the fishers and their families. It’s been so much to take in (compounded by my slowly returning high school Spanish skills), but I’ve had the wonderful and very patient help of Sergio and Astrid, of Pro Delphinus’s northern office. They first had a meeting with the fishers to distribute pingers and show videos of how to resuscitate tangled turtles, and I had the opportunity to give an introductory presentation about myself and my work, followed by a spirited question and answer session. I wasn’t expecting to cover such topics as the mechanical intricacies of the California purse seine fishery equipment usage or why sharks are important to ecosystems, but I think I did a passable job (the latter is more my area of expertise; I responded to the former with a lot of “yo no sé”).

During the meeting with fishermen, Sergio gave a presentation on the biology and ecology of sea turtles, and techniques for freeing them from fishing nets.

Over the next few days Sergio and Astrid took me around to fish markets, various government offices, and the fishers’ homes, where I got to informally ask them about their fishing and their environment, play with their children, and chat with their wives. Invariably the women would bring out some cake or plates of ceviche or a delicious fish dinner, and hours would go by as I mostly laughed vaguely at long fishing epics I only partially understood (so have I spent the majority of this week, alternating with furiously scribbling notes during jolting taxi rides). I’m blown away by the tremendous generosity of these families. They have running water and electricity for only a few hours each day, and yet wouldn’t hear of us ever eating in a restaurant. I’m grateful also that they’re already accustomed to talking with and trusting scientists–Pro Delphinus has done the hardest part for me through their years of wonderful and diligent work with these fishers.

We also visited two other northern ports, Constante and Parachiques, but only for a few hours.

We also briefly visited two other northern ports, Constante and Parachiques, and talked to people selling fish on the beach.

Once again, much is quite different–and much more complicated–than I expected. I have so much to think about: stories I see taking shape; inklings of ideas I’m excited to explore over the next month.

Santa Rosa fish market: “In Peru, the women work much harder than the men!”

I’m also taking a bit of time to wander along the Lima coastline, visit museums and galleries, eat unfamiliar fruits from sprawling markets, and partake in free outdoor salsa-Zumba. July isn’t Lima’s most photogenic month (it’s gray and clouded with sea mists every day, not unlike the California coast’s June gloom), but check out the photography page for some more pictures of my trip!

Ocean Priorities Survey: Preliminary Results

Posted on June 18, 2015 by juliagmason

I’m still working on the data analysis for my survey project, but I wanted to share some initial results. A brief recap of the project: I’m comparing the research priorities of marine managers and fishermen to those from a previously published survey of scientists (for more details, see my previous post). I sent 25 big questions in ocean research and management to hundreds of marine and coastal decisionmakers and stakeholders in the US, and had them complete a ranking exercise to prioritize the questions. By comparing their priorities to scientists’ priorities of those same questions, I can look for areas in which scientists might need to do a better job in communicating the importance of their work, or refocus toward an issue that managers and fishermen particularly care about.

The following is adapted from a report I sent out to survey participants, and I hope to have more formal, published results soon (although scientific time, I’m learning, tends toward geologic).

Who took the survey?

417 people completed the survey, and an additional 846 viewed or partially completed it. I limited my scope to managers and stakeholders in the United States, so three international respondents were removed for analysis.

I also had an astonishingly difficult time preventing scientists from taking the survey! The first page of the survey asked anyone employed as a research scientist to opt out, and yet I still had 63 respondents that put “scientist” or some form of “-ologist” in their primary job title. This is no doubt partially attributable to scientists’ difficulty in following directions, but it’s also harder to draw the line between scientist and stakeholder for those working outside academia. Even though many of these “sneaky scientists” may identify more as managers, I decided to omit them from my analysis since government scientists were included in the original survey, and I found that they did rank the questions significantly differently than the rest of the group. The following is based on my remaining sample of 351.

Region

Respondents hailed from 30 states and territories, including Washington, DC. The numbers of respondents from the five states with highest participation are included below:

nosci_map

gender

Gender

127 women and 217 men took the survey. 7 identified as “other” or declined to state.

text

Sector

Most respondents were employed in state government, likely due to the highest availability of state government email addresses online. sector

Top five priorities of scientists and stakeholders

I compared my results to only the North American subset of the original scientists (736 respondents), and their rankings of only the 25 questions I used in my survey. Many of the top questions are shared among groups, including among groups of stakeholders, below. I find this encouraging! Some of the key differences are that managers are more concerned with questions about bycatch (the accidental catch of non-target species, including endangered species like sea turtles or whales) and effectively restoring habitat–issues that they likely confront on a daily basis. Commercial fishermen and people employed in the seafood industry highly prioritize the inclusion of their local ecological knowledge in scientific understanding, while scientists ranked this #20 out of 25.

Top five priorities of stakeholders, by sector

top_5_stake_groups These results aren’t too surprising for anyone who has engaged in more applied or social science oriented work, but it’s exciting to have some numbers behind them. It looks like everyone is more or less on board about the big issues, but scientists could do a better job of focusing on policy-relevant issues related to fishing and habitat, and, most importantly, pay greater attention to what people who live and work with the oceans know through experience and observation. Once again, this requires a commitment to building trust and forming relationships, and it won’t happen overnight. After all the difficulty I had in getting fishermen to take the survey, I was amused to receive an email from a fisherman (in response to the report of results) expressing his disappointment that fishers were so underrepresented relative to government employees! I’m looking forward to continuing this analysis and improving my ability to engage stakeholders in relevant and useful research.

Trust is hard to earn in the real ocean: lessons from a foray into survey research

Posted on May 31, 2015 by juliagmason

I’m wrapping up the data collection from my first research project this year, and really my first research project—this is the first time I’ve collected quantitative data for my own work.

The project is an online survey that I sent to US marine and coastal managers and stakeholders to ask them which ocean research questions they think are the most important. Dr. Murray Rudd, a scientist at University of York, did this with marine scientists (check it out here, if you’re interested), and I want to compare the priorities of scientists with those of the people who manage, live, and work with the oceans.

Rudd essentially assigned each question a numerical “importance score” based on how the scientists had ranked it, and produced an ordered list of research priorities. I thought this would be a great opportunity to quantitatively demonstrate the “science-policy gap:” the disconnect in communication and understanding between scientists and decision makers. I think about this gap all the time and plan to write a separate post on it soon—essentially, scientists tend to do a terrible job of communicating their work, and policymakers tend not to use science in their decisions.

I sent a shortened version of Rudd’s survey to hundreds of marine managers and stakeholders, and will compare their rankings to those of the scientists. I hope to use the results of this project to identify areas of disagreement between scientists and managers, and call on scientists to focus on research applications that people on the ground (or, as it were, in the water) most want and need. I’m particularly interested in the perspectives of fishermen, since they depend on the oceans for their livelihoods and also tend to know the oceans much better than scientists do. Although some scientists have been advocating for including fishers’ perspectives and familiarity with their environment (in scientist jargonese we call this “local ecological knowledge”) in our scientific understanding of marine systems for decades, the perspectives of resource users are still rarely included in academic literature.

I’m going to put up some results soon, but the most interesting takeaway so far is how much distrust and criticism I’m getting from respondents, especially fishermen. Below are some comments I’ve received through the survey, or in phone or email conversations I’ve had while trying to distribute the survey (all original wording and spelling intact; bolding is my own):

“Is this legit or some ploy by someone we do not want to deal with”

“I’m a fisherman all my income comes from fishing and feel that over regulation has effected my life…the science is always two years behind what is happening at sea I think their out to put small boat fishermen out like the small farmers”

“…the survey pigeonholes you to positions…that have not been agreed to or accepted by fishermen…a tremendous amount [of] hubris or assumptions that preconceived positions are universally accepted by all.”

“The questions are too academically worded. I won’t have this coming out of my office. I just can’t see sending this out [to the fleet]. I think it would do more harm than good.”

“Very few scientists are honest. Trust is hard to earn in the real ocean.”

Here I thought I was doing a great thing by reaching out and listening to fishermen, so this feedback was distressing! Even though I hadn’t even written the questions (I needed to keep everything consistent with Rudd’s original survey to be able to rigorously compare results), I felt oddly ashamed. From these few conversations, I get the impression that these fishers’ interactions with scientists, even ostensibly pro-fisher scientists, inevitably result in restrictions and regulations that threaten their (the fishers’) income and employment, so they’re fearful and resistant about putting in more time and effort to help scientists only to get screwed over again. Had I spent a few years getting to know these fishermen, listening to them and demonstrating that I was trustworthy, I might have gotten away with fielding this survey, but as a stranger sending cold emails I was just another dishonest scientist.

I’m grateful to have learned the importance of building relationships and trust so early on: a powerful lesson I’ll keep with me for future work with fishers and decisionmakers. Next month, I’m heading to Peru to work with small-scale fishing communities, and my trip will be explicitly devoted to groundwork in building trust—going in with open ears and an open mind, and getting to know people as people rather than survey respondents.

A Drop in the Ocean

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