Osprey spring 2018

Osprey Student Run Magazine Spring 2018

Humboldt’s troubled waters How marine research could help commercial oyster farmers

Making it through The lives of two bus crash survivors

Cow to cone

Making strawberry ice cream at Arcata Scoop

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Letter from the Editor One of my earliest memories as a child revolves around ice cream. My grandmother first introduced me to a chocolate shake and that euphoric feeling sparked a lifelong passion for food. That first taste and excitement of discovery lead me to spend the semester learning about artisanal ice cream.

Arcata Scoop became an introduction to Arcata for me. In 2015, a close friend and I discovered lemon sorbet and strawberry ice cream, and couldn’t believe how the combination of flavors worked in synchronization. A single moment of awe forms a series of questions. How the ice cream was made became my primary focus and I had to uncover more information.

The Spring 2018 edition of The Osprey is a culmination of writers revealing what they explored over

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the past semester. Each story began with a singular “a-ha!”moment of interest. Reading this edition, I hope you experience the same sense of discovery.

I’d like to thank the entire staff for your dedication, perseverance, and tenacity. The Osprey wouldn’t have been possible without teamwork. To our readers, thank you for your support and enjoy this semester’s magazine!

Sincerely,

Bryan Donoghue

Cover Photo Todd Van Herpe, owner of the Humboldt Bay Oyster Company, at the Eureka Town Dock where he raises oysters. Photo | Giuliana Sarto

Staff

(Back left to right) Andrea Curiel, Vicky Sama, Curran C. Daly, Sally Gammie, Robert Brown, Sebastian Lindner, Vanessa Rodriguez, Iridian Casarez and Lauren Shea. (Front left to right) Belen Flores and Bryan Donoghue

Editor-in-Chief Bryan Donoghue Photo Editors Lauren Shea Belen Flores

Layout Editor Curran C. Daly

Adviser Prof. Vicky Sama

Copy Editors Iridian Casarez Sally Gammie

Contributors Robert Brown Andrea Curiel Sebastian Lindner Vanessa Rodriguez

editor@ospreymagazine.com Osprey Magazine c/0 Department of Journalism and Mass Communication 1 Harpst Street, Arcata, CA 95521

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Table of Contents

6 8 16 22 30 40 46 54 64 4 | Osprey

Picture Perfect Quinceañera: casos de niña a mujer The mettle behind the metal Making it through: The lives of two bus crash survivors 12 hours on the R/V Coral Sea Back to the wild Humboldt’s troubled waters Cow to cone: Making strawberry ice cream at Arcata Scoop Tapped into humboldt

16 30

46 8

22

40

6

54

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Picture Perfect

by Andrea Curiel

Karina Rivas is one of HSU’s biggest Instagram stars with over 64-thousand followers. Osprey magazine talked to the 22-year-old Economics major about her life as @scytherin.

Osprey: How did you become an Instagram star?

Karina Rivas: “When people ask me what I do they think I’m known for something, but no. It just sort of happened.”

Osprey: When did you start on Instagram?

KR: “I had Instagram when it first came out in high school. I remember I had like two thousand followers and that was a big deal back then.

Then after moving out and coming to HSU, I started posting more and I hit 10 thousand, but I didn’t do anything. I just gained followers.”

Osprey: Do you ever want to post a picture without your makeup on or hair done?

KR: “It’d be nice to just take a picture, not edit it, and just post it. It would be interesting to have an account that only people who know me can see.”

Osprey: You have some sponsorships now from companies like Coke Esports, Nissin Cup Noodles, Real California Milk and Burger King. How much are you making from them?

* Photos taken from Karina Rivas’ Instagram.

KR: “The payment varies per post. I change my haircolor all the time. They send me their product, like hair extensions or whatever, and I use the product and promote it. Then they pay me. One hair company paid me $5,000 over a whole year. I was like, I did not get paid that much! That was just one company though. I work for other companies that pay me too.

I just think of it all as extra money for video games or food. I do it when I want to do it.”

Osprey: What do your parents think about your social media persona?

KR: “My mom and dad don’t understand the internet. They don’t really know what Instagram or Facebook really is. My mom thinks Instagram is like Facebook.”

Osprey: Can you see yourself promoting companies in the future?

KR: “Not all the time. I think after I graduate I’m going to do it by the book. This will always be a side thing. I’m an Econ major, so I can’t imagine any finance or business-related job that would want to focus on social media.

Right now, I care more about school.”

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Karen Sicairos poses in an alley next to a mural in Old Town Eureka during her photoshoot before her mass.

Photo | Julián Martínez, Producción Sueño Latino.

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Quinceañera: Casos de Niña a Mujer

The tale of a girl becoming a woman.

By Vanessa “VRod” Rodriguez

aren Sicairos, dressed in a ruffled baby blue ball gown, rushes away from her party at Humboldt County Fairgrounds, minutes before her waltz.

Her seven chambelanes-- young male escorts-follow her to a room off the side of the saloon.

Sicairos is trying not to ruin her makeup as she dabs her tears with her fingertips.

“I’m just nervous. There are a lot of people, and I don’t want to mess up or fall in front of everybody,” Sicairos says. “I know everything is going to be fine, I’m just nervous.”

“Yeah Karen, everything is going to be okay. Don’t worry if you fall, just play it off,” says one of the chambelanes.

Her mother Ana is from Mexico City. Her father Guadalupe is from Sinaloa.

“My dad gave me the option of either going to Paris or having my 15, but I said my 15,” Sicairos says. “If I graduate high school he would give me my Paris trip.”

Sicairos has been looking forward to this day for a long time.

“I’m really excited and nervous,” she says.

Preparando el reventon From hair appointments, makeup, nails and dress fittings, her mom Ana is the main party planner.

Sicairos is celebrating her quinceañera, a coming of age party when a 15-year-old girl becomes a woman that is usually celebrated by people who identify as Latinx. Her birthday is Feb. 20, but her quinceañera took place on March 10. Her family has been planning the event since she was a toddler.

“My mom chose the songs we were going to dance and she taught us the moves,” Sicairos says.

“Llevamos un año, 12 meses planeando, bueno fijate que desde que estaba chiquita,” says Ana, Sicairos mom. “Que quería el color azul, después verde. Pero sí planeando la quince desde hace un año.”

“Si yo lo puedo hacer, pues aprendo como hacerlo mejor,” Ana says.

The party planner usually hires a choreographer to teach the dance steps for the ceremony, but Ana Sicairos decided to teach her daughter and the chambelanes.

A quinceañera has her court of honor, which can include both guys and girls. Sicairos decided to have eight chambelanes.

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Karen Sicairos and seven of her chambelanes look out over Humboldt Bay. Photo | Julián Martínez, Producción Sueño Latino

“I’m the quinceañera, so if I have all guys, I’ll be the Rehearsals run for an hour. Ana packs food for the only girl to get attention,” Sicairos says. boys and anyone who goes to practice. Two of Sicairos chambelanes are her cousins and one is her At the party, the court will waltz and perform the brother. The rest are good friends from middle surprise dance with the quinceañera and will be with school. her throughout the day, even escorting her to church.

“She’s like part of the guys,” says chambelan Luis Sicairos and her chambelanes have been rehearsing Romero. for the quinceañera for five months. Out of the eight chambelanes, Jesus Parra is Sicairos’ main chambe- It didn’t take long for Sicairos to find her dress. She lan. found it online at Promises Bridal Shop in Eureka.

Parra lifts Sicairos in the air during practice. Sicairos loses balance and tilts back a little, but manages to hold her own weight when she grabs onto telephone wires that are hanging low above her.

As the big day approaches, Sicairos goes to her last fitting. Her parents are excited when they see her dressed like a princess in a baby blue ball gown. Ana can’t stop smiling.

She lets go when her family friend Nayeli Gomez “Date vuelta,” Ana says as she’s trying to get a screams, “Karen! No!” 360-degree view of her daughter’s dress.

Parra grabs Sicairos by her thighs and lowers her Sicairos admires her dress in the mirror as she down. touches the embroidered beads on the upper torso.

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Guadalupe sits in awe. His eyes are glassy as if he’s about to shed a tear.

As the big day approaches, Sicairos and Ana start stressing out. Her dad is on a whole different page.

“My dad wanted to take me to Los Angeles to find a dress, but I came in here and saw the dress and ordered it,” Sicairos says.

“No yo no me estoy estresando, aqui todo tranquilo.

Ella es la que se estresa,” Guadalupe says about his wife. “Ella siempre me dice que yo no tomo nada en serio.” Guadalupe is calm.

Quinceañera dresses are not cheap, especially if you want to look like Cinderella going to the ball.

“El vestido los costo mil,” Ana says. The dress cost $1,000.

Ana feels pressure since she has been planning and coordinating everything.

“Hasta me duele la cabeza,” she says.

The party isn’t cheap either. Quinceañeras often have godparents who gift things like the cake, ring, shoes and the crown. Sicairos has godparents helping her out with her birthday bash that costs about $10,000.

Karen is feeling nervous and excited.

“En todo ya con lo que los padrinos dieron los está saliendo un estimado de 10 mil,” Ana says.

It’s Friday before her party and Sicairos is having her last practice at the fairgrounds where she’ll have her quinceañera. Her relatives from Santa Rosa and

“Most of the kids at my school were talking about it today,” Sicairos says. “I’m nervous. I just want everything to come out okay.”

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Los Angeles came to help decorate. Her godmother Edith Romero and Parra begin inflating balloons.

“Asi? O mas o menos?” Parra says looking over at Romero who is inflating a big balloon as well.

“No así mira como el mio, mas grande,” Romero says.

Guadalupe uses a ladder to hang the balloons in each corner of the room.

“Alli o mas alla?” Guadalupe asks.

“Si, alli esta bien,” everyone around him yells at once.

“

Wow, mommy she looks like a princess,”

A little girl walking by.

Ana rounds up the seven chambelanes to start practice.

“If anyone messes up today, we are starting over,” Sicairos says.

“Si y hoy no los quiero ver en el teléfono,” Ana says.

“Nada que hablando con la novia o en el Snapchat.”

No distractions.

Sicairos puts on a crinoline slip over her sweats to see how much space she’ll need while dancing with her chambelanes. They start practicing. Sicairos is nervous overall, but she just doesn’t want to be dropped when they pick her up in one of her dances.

“Otra vez,” Ana says as Sicairos is put back on the ground.

Sicairos looks worried and annoyed when her mom says to redo the lift.

“Ugh, I just don’t want to fall,” Sicairos says to her mom. “I’m nervous they’re going to drop me.”

The boys circle closer around her.

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Rehearsal goes on for two hours, but Sicairos has not practiced her father-daughter dance at all and Guadalupe insists they do it there.

“I thought we weren’t practicing the father-daughter dance right now,” Sicairos says to her mom.

Sicairos says she didn’t want anyone to see her father-daughter dance until the party, but Ana insists.

“Bueno, tu papa quiere practicarlo ahorita, so eso vamos a ser,” Ana says.

El Reventon de Karen

The big day is finally here. Sicairos wakes up at 6 a.m. in her suite at the Best Western next to the Bayshore Mall. Hairdresser Marie Gruetzmacher starts her hair around seven, braiding her hair into bun and pressing it to the side of her head with a floral silver diamond barrette. Her makeup artist Amy Casarez applies primer, concealer and foundation and then dabs silver glitter onto Sicairos’ eyelid.

“Okay, so try to be very careful right now,” Casarez says. “Try not to open your eyes at all.”

Sicairos goes into her room to get dressed. Her mom follows. Thirty minutes later, she squishes her way through the door because the ruffles from her dress are rubbing against the doorway. Ana follows fixing the back of the gown. Sicairos sits down on a chair where her brothers Kevin and Emir are getting ready. She picks at her dress.

“Mom, it’s too tight,” Sicairos says. “It’s starting to hurt me. Can you help me loosen it?”

Ana reminds Sicairos she wanted was a tight dress.

“Ay, Karen! Te dije que no muy socado pero como tu querias tight, y que tight, y que tight, allí está tu tight,” Ana says.

Ana helps loosen the dress so she can move around.

Sicairos and her court of honor take a white limousine to Humboldt Bay to take pictures.

“Wow, mommy she looks like a princess,” a little girl walking by tells her mom.

Sicairos smiles back at the little girl.

Sicairos and her chambelanes go to mass in Fortuna at Saint Joseph’s Parish. Sicairos makes her way to the entrance and the chambelanes walk behind her. Father Manuel Chavez makes his way down the aisle to greet Ana, Sicairos and her chambelanes.

“Ya listos?” Chavez asks.

Sicairos and the chambelanes nod.

They are ready.

Sicairos and her chambelanes practice walking down the aisle. They redo it three more times because Parra keeps insisting they do it all over again.

The church fills up. Sicairos, Ana and Guadalupe greet family and friends at the church entrance.

Mariachis play Las Mañanitas while one by one, the chambelanes walk down the aisle in pairs and form an arch of white roses. Sicairos walks down the aisle holding her white rose bouquet, walks through the white rose arch and sits down in front of the altar.

Chavez gives the sermon and then Sicairos goes up to the altar and leaves her natural flower bouquet to the Virgin Mary as a thank you gift for letting her make it to 15. Chavez asks her if she has anything to say to her guests and hands her the microphone.

“Quiero decirle a todos muchas gracias por haber venido y estar aquí conmigo,” Sicairos says as she dabs tears streaming down her face.

After her service is over, Sicairos greets guests at the entrance of the church and gives mini silver Eiffel Tower keychains.

At the Humboldt County Fairgrounds, DJ Pachanguero introduces Sicairos and her court of honor as they walk into the party.

“Y que pase la quinceañera Karen Sicairos y su corte de honor,” Pachanguero says.

Her family and guests applaud. Sicairos walks to each table handing out white towelling slippers to all the women.

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While the guests are eating plates with rice, beans, carnitas, spicy cactus strips and warm tortillas Sicairos and her chambelanes go outside to rehearse one last time. Then Ana walks over to Pachanguero to notify him that they are ready to start. He grabs the microphone.

“Buenas noches, ahorita los vamos a listar para el baile de Karen, si padres hacen el favor de agarrar a sus hijos y aclarar la pista,” Pachanguero says.

The chambelanes are lined up next to a wide curtain with a projector light shining from behind it. The music starts and reflected onto the white cloth is a silhouette of a father figure holding his baby. The baby turns into a little girl playing with her dad. Then the little girl turns into a pre-teen to an adolescent dancing with her dad in a princess-like dress. Then from behind the white cloth comes Sicairos twirling around in her dress. Parra escorts her to the center of the room and they begin the waltz. One of the chambelanes and Parra lift Sicairos in the air and lower her just like they did in rehearsal. They lower her down and she bends down and the chambelanes circle around her with their arms up in the air making a carousel shape.

“After the dances I was happy and excited that everything went well but at the same time sad because it was over,” Sicairos says. “Made a lot of memories.”

Next is the coronation. The chambelanes form a pathway to Sicairos. Parra stands behind her.

Cousin Naomy Gomez walks past them to Sicairos with a silver crown on a red cushion and positions the crown on Sicairos’ head.

“I was nervous when I put the crown on her because I didn’t want to mess up anything,” Gomez says. “I was also happy for her though because I was just remembering all the memories we’ve shared together.”

Another close friend kneels at Sicairos to change her baby blue Converse to low black heels. An-

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other cousin walks to Sicairos with a large teddy bear as her last gift as a young girl. Sicairos stands up. The crowd cheers.

Pachanguero announces the surprise dance is next.

“Listos para el baile de sorpresa?” Pachanguero asks.

Sicairos, now wearing a purple long flowy skirt and black shirt, walks to the middle of the dance floor to meet her brother Kevin who is in boots and a sombrero. They dance to “El Sol De La Negra,” a Mexican folk song, as she circles around waving her skirt back and forth. Then a siren sounds off and the music changes to “We Go Together” from the popular teen musical Grease. Sicairos whips off her purple

Karen Sicairos and her dad Guadalupe drop low while dancing La Bomba by Azul Azul during the father-daughter dance at her quinceañera party. Photo | Vanessa Rodriguez

skirt to reveal a black skirt underneath. She starts another dance, this time with Parra and a cousin.

Sicairos changes her outfit one more time into black shorts for six more dances.

and she and Guadalupe jump from left to right with their arms out pretending to crank something to the hip-hop beat. Sicairos and Guadalupe bust their moves until the song remixes back to a waltz.

“I was really excited about dancing with both of my brothers because they’re always there for me,” Sicairos says. “It was the day where we all got along, and I was excited they got to be a part of my 15.”

Sicairos tears up as the father-daughter dance ends, and they hug.

Sicairos goes behind the curtain to change back into her ruffled quinceañera gown for the father-daughter dance. Guadalupe takes her hand and they slowly waltz to the song “A Thousand Years.” Then the music changes rhythm to “Crank That” by Soulja Boy,

“I was excited and emotional,” Sicairos says. “I had mixed feelings because the dances showed how our relationship is, sometimes up, sometimes down. At the end of the dance I started crying because he was hugging and telling me, ‘I love you, you’re always going to be my little girl.’”

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The Mettle Behind

the Metal Story and Photos By Belen Flores

Clank! Clank! Clank! Joe Koches pounds

an iron rod on an anvil in his Ferndale workshop crowded with tools, antiques and a forge-- a large open hearth is burning coal at an intense heat. His weathered hand slams a hammer down onto the rod making sparks fly and shaking the tools hanging on every wall. Sweat drips down his face as he uses a torch to heat up the iron so that it bends like a slithering snake.

“This is the part where you get to be Superman,” Koches said. “You can bend steel with your bare hands.”

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Joe Koches slams an iron rod from the top while the anvil hits it from the bottom at The Blacksmith shop in Ferndale, California. Photo | Belen Flores

K

oches is an 80-year-old blacksmith who has owned The Blacksmith Shop for 39 years. He makes artistic sculptures, barbeque tools and knives. He controls the amount of air that goes into the forge because that determines the intensity of the fire and how malleable the metal will become.

“I change the shape of it, and that’s what it’s all about,” Koches said. “When I get the hammer and hit the metal, that’s rearranging the molecules.”

If the forge gets too hot, the metal could vaporize.

The size of the hammer determines how the metal can be shaped. Think of the hammers as paint

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brushes: different size, different stroke. Koches only keeps the best of his work.

“If it’s not worthy of putting your name on it, just throw it in the trash,” Koches said.

A few customers arrive at his shop and ogle the knives, swords and sculptures that Koches and other blacksmiths have made. Store manager April Sandoval greets the folks and talks to them about the iron works. Sandoval graduated from HSU as an Art major and feels a personal connection to the job.

“Blacksmithing has a primitive aspect to it,” Sandoval said. “It’s a craft that has been around for as

Joe Koches heats up iron in his forge adding coal and blowing wind into it to control the fire at The Blacksmith Shop in Ferndale, California. Photo | Belen Flores

long as people have been making stuff. There is an ancient aspect to it. Maybe that’s why people are so drawn to it.”

A few doors down from the shop, Koches also owns a gallery where he shows off more of his work and the work of other blacksmiths. One of the pieces in the gallery is a twisted black iron sculpture about fivefeet high called “Twirly Girl.” Created by E.A. Chase, the piece is a spinning woman with four faces that express anger, bewilderment, embarrassment and satisfaction.

“The brilliance of this sculpture is that it represents what was going on in the ‘70s,” Koches said. “E.A.

captured the feelings that women had in one sculpture. Go this way, go that way, put your bra on, take your bra off, and I think it’s cool that a male sculptor was able to put everything in one piece.”

Koches makes his iron works using traditional methods with a hammer and anvil. He heats the iron rods and bangs them repeatedly into a piece of art. Once in a while, he will put on a demonstration for groups.

“I could give a damn if you buy anything,” Koches said. “April and I just try to educate people when they walk through the door.”

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Koches uses a forge to bend his iron into an object, but a Bay Area swordsmith has a different technique.

In a small factory studio in San Rafael, Benjamin Bowles is grinding the tip of a blade on a belt grinder and then places the blade in the chop saw foil. He uses a hammer and torch to flatten the point so it can be used in a fencing bout. He creates weapons such as French foils, Italian foils and épée, which has a stiffer blade, a triangular cross-section and a bell guard.

a damn about what he is doing,” said Abraham Moshekh, Fencing Club president. “The weapons look good and they perform well. I’ve never heard of a Bowles weapon breaking.”

Bowles makes grips out of leather, ray skin or shark skin that he purchases from other sellers. Bowles is trying to acquire Dogfish skin.

“I made the creepiest posting on Craigslist trying to get this shark,” Bowles said. “I would tell them I’d make the trip down to the docks and pay them cash money for the shark skin.”

I made the creepiest posting on Craigslist trying to get this shark. I would tell them I’d make the trip down to the docks and pay them cash money for the shark skin.

“No one else is producing these products,” Bowles said. “There is a lack in the market.”

Bowles likes to differentiate himself from traditional blacksmithing and can make a sword without the typical blacksmith tools.

“I can do that with a propane tank and raw iron,” Bowles said.

After he graduated from HSU in 2009, Bowles tinkered around making weapons in Arcata. He gave some of his first weapons to the HSU Fencing Club because they didn’t have equipment at the time.

“There was a lot of trial and error, but I knew I had the patience to figure it out,” Bowles said.

Each spring, the Fencing Club holds its annual tournament Redwood Coast Assault of Arms in the Arcata Veterans Hall. The event was created by Bowles and has been running for 10 years. Some of the classic foil and historical weapons used at the event are Bowles’ craftsmanship.

“Ben’s work reflects the fact he really does give

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Moshekh says Bowles’ grips provide a lot more traction and tactile feedback than any other weapon with tape or thin leather. Bowles used to offer customizable weapons.

“His custom work is really something else,” Moshekh said. ”It just didn’t make economic sense in terms of the amount of work put.”

Bowles sees a difference between the first weapons he made to those he makes now.

“I can make French foils in my sleep,” Bowles said.

Bowles says that Italian foils demonstrate his skills as a researcher, craftsman and sword maker.

“Designing their every component and constructing them correctly exemplifies me as a sword maker, not tinker or hobbyist,” Bowles said. “When I completed that first production model after nearly five years I could hold a 19th-century original Italian foil in one hand and my faithful reproduction in the other, knowing I have honored the masters and craftsmen of the past with my work.”

Back at the Ferndale workshop, Joe Koches is still slamming hammers the old-fashioned way.

“Out of controlling violence,” Koches said. “You can make something really beautiful.”

Ben Bowles uses a torch to heat up his blade while flattening it with a hammer in his studio in San Rafael, California.

Photo | Belen Flores

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Making it through: The lives of two bus crash survivors

By Curran C. Daly

J

*Warning: This story contains graphic content that depicts traumatic situations.

ayda Kosar is sitting next to the window on the passenger side of a charter bus heading north on the I-5 near Redding. She’s been on the bus for 11 hours wearing headphones, listening to the Arctic Monkeys on Pandora on the prepaid phone her mom just bought her. She feels the bus shake, looks up and sees a FedEx truck veering toward the bus.

back. Kosar sees a fireball coming toward her. She is knocked to the ground by the force of the impact.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Kosar says to herself.

“I headed toward the back, but people were walking the opposite way,” Kosar said. “I found a broken window to get out, but someone was sitting in it. I pushed him out and jumped out on top of him.”

The FedEx truck crosses from the opposite side of the interstate and slams head-on into the bus.

The bus driver is ejected from her seat toward the

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The mangled bus and FedEx truck are on the side of the road engulfed in flames. A billowing column of black smoke reaches hundreds of feet into the air.

Kosar looks for the phone her mom told her not to lose, but it’s gone. She scrambles to exit.

Bus crash survivor Jayda Kosa talks about the accident on April 12, 2018.

Photo | Lauren Shea Osprey | 23

A

pril 10 marked the four-year anniversary of the bus crash in Orland. Kosar was on a bus with 41 other high school seniors from the Los Angeles area heading to visit Humboldt State University when the FedEx two-trailer big rig struck the Silverado Stages Charter Bus. Ten people died including both drivers, three chaperones and five students. Thirtyeight students survived the accident. Four months later, 22 of them started school at Humboldt State.

Today, 15 survivors still attend HSU and in May, according to the dean of students, at least two of them will graduate.

“I don’t know when I will be graduating,” Kosar said.

Hospital After fleeing the fiery wreck, Kosar crosses to the opposite side of the interstate and sits watching the chaos unfold. A medic places a red tag, reserved for life threatening injuries, around her neck. First responders pour water on Kosar to cool her down and relieve pain from second degree burns that run up her back and right arm to her ear. Kosar is airlifted to Shasta Regional Medical Center in Redding. A doctor asks to cut off her wet clothes.

She agrees. She doesn’t know it, but she’s about to go into lung failure.

“Being rolled in was the first moment I started to cry,” Kosar said. “I just remember being cold and them leaving me there naked and cold. They told me, if you have trouble breathing let us know. I started to feel my throat closing.”

Down the same hospital wing, bus crash survivor Melvin Harris has a gash in his head and burns on his right leg and ear.

Harris was dozing off in the fourth row of the bus when he heard screams. He says he passed out for

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a few seconds and came to in the bus filled with smoke. Jennifer Bonilla, a classmate from Dorsey High School in Los Angeles, was sitting next to him.

He told her to follow him to get off the bus, but never saw her again.

“I looked back and told her to follow me,” Harris said. “I thought she was behind me.”

After escaping from the bus, Harris called his mom Lisa Sutton.

On April 10, 2014, a Fedex truck crashed into a charter bus filled with students heading to Humboldt State for Spring Preview.

Photo | Jeremy Lockett

“I was on the metro after work and I got three backto-back phone calls from a number I didn’t know,” Sutton said. “I answered and all I heard was Melvin crying.”

Sutton attempted to calm her son down, but the phone cut out. She called back.

“Mom I’m ok. I’m sorry I was just scared,” Harris said.

Harris’ father, grandpa and aunt drove through the night from Los Angeles to Shasta Regional to take him home.

“When Melvin got home he collapsed in my arms,” Sutton said. “It took his father, aunt and I to get him upstairs” Harris went home the day after the crash, but Kosar spent six days in the hospital. She was unconscious when she went into lung failure. When she wakes

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Bus crash survivor Melvin Harris talks about the accident on April 5, 2018.

Photo | Lauren Shea 26 | Osprey

up, she is weak, nauseated and can’t speak with an intubation tube down her throat. She tries to alert hospital staff but is too weak to lift her hand and hit the call button. She throws up.

“I threw up when I had the tube in,” Kosar said.

“The doctors said it was stomach acid. I don’t really remember well though.”

When Kosar’s dad and sister arrive at the hospital, she is still intubated. Her sister sits next to the bed asking her questions, and Kosar scribbles responses on a piece of paper.

“My sister was my rock,” Kosar said. “I had to get really painful shots in my stomach that prevented blood clots, and she would sit with me as I got them.

She would hold my hand, and when it was really painful, I would squeeze her hand.”

Coming to Humboldt After Kosar’s release from the hospital, she was hesitant to attend Humboldt State, let alone do anything.

“I didn’t wanna live,” Kosar said. “Why would I want to go to Humboldt?”

Her mom told her she had the chance that others on the bus would not. Kosar says her mom’s wisdom changed her attitude.

“I didn’t almost die not to go to school,” Kosar said.

“I needed to get my education for those who can’t.”

classes. Over the summer, Kosar and Harris visited HSU after university administrators offered crash survivors and their families the opportunity to fly up to see the campus. Adrienne Colegrove-Raymond, HSU’s former coordinator for student outreach activities, showed them around.

“We started a series of bringing up families,” Colegrove-Raymond said. “They say it made a difference-- that human touch. I was able to talk to them on a very personal level.”

Colegrove-Raymond took Harris to Pachanga Mexicana in Eureka.

“I wanted to visit the school and get to experience it without all the negatives attached to it,” Harris said. “The first restaurant she took us too is still my favorite in Humboldt.”

Harris decided to attend Humboldt State in fall 2014 and study Wildlife.

Battling Monsters It is February 2018, Harris is sitting on his bed playing the video game Monster Hunter: World on his Playstation 4. A dinosaur roars and lunges towards an animated avatar, which dives for cover and barely escapes unharmed.

“You have to observe the animals and how they act to figure out how to fight them,” Harris said.

Harris says he had to come to Humboldt State after his friend Jennifer Bonilla died.

As Harris destroys the dinosaur on his screen he fights his own internal monsters. He is tight lipped about the accident, specifically, he won’t talk about his friend Jennifer Bonilla who died in the crash.

“Since she wasn’t able to go, I went for her,” Harris said.

“I lost my friend and blamed myself because of it,” Harris said.

The charter bus was the third bus scheduled that day to arrive at Humboldt State. The buses were part of a program that gives low-income students from the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas the opportunity to visit campus before they start

Harris has hardly washed the shirt he wore to the candlelight vigil held in Bonilla’s honor the week after the crash. He gave a mumbled speech at the vigil; he isn’t sure anyone understood him. Harris has struggled academically, failing his biology and

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geospatial classes. He blames that on random harsh feelings he gets about himself.

“It comes kind of out of the blue when I’m doing bad,” Harris said. “I beat myself up, doubted myself, put myself down. I didn’t feel focused on school work.”

dependent,” Kosar said. “It was hard to be by myself, alone. I found myself at home alone, crying for hours, and all my friends stopped showing up.”

Kosar resigned from her post of three years working for on-campus sexual awareness group Checkit, which she says served as a support group for a majority of her time at HSU.

We’ve been here for four years and some will be here for longer. We’re struggling but we’re making it through.

HSU Psychology Lecturer Jennifer Petullo says a traumatic event like the bus crash can cause someone like Harris to have negative thoughts about himself.

“People will start to, in general, feel more negativity about the world or themselves,” Petullo said.

Harris started smoking weed during his freshman year. He says he is more aware of his subtle mood swings and recently took a break from smoking to see how he’d feel.

“I stopped because it was giving me bad anxiety,” Harris said. “Not smoking helped me calm down and let the anxiety go away.”

Harris sits on his bed, picks up the controller he set down earlier and unpauses his game. He’s back battling monsters.

Fighting Demons Since the crash four years ago, Kosar has battled depression, anxiety, PTSD, asthma and pain where her burn scars are. She says one of her worst periods was last fall while her boyfriend was studying abroad in Chile.

“I’ve been alone a lot, but I’m also needy and

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“On campus you find your people, and checkit people are my people,” Kosar said. “But, Checkit changed from being a wonderful community and support system to being a job. I was burnt out and didn’t wanna work.”

Her last night working for Check-it was its four year anniversary party in February. She ran around organizing the karaoke. She says nobody knew that it was going to be her last event.

“When I feel a certain way I push people away,” Kosar said. “I could have done things in the moment to make things better, but I didn’t. I just got angry.”

During another low-point two years ago, Kosar felt that the drugs she was prescribed for anxiety and depression were altering her behavior.

“I’m a very caring and nice person in general,” Kosar said. “But when I was on the medicine all I can say is, I just didn’t give a fuck.”

Kosar stopped taking the medication, quitting cold turkey, and went through symptoms of withdrawal.

“The pills created more problems than I originally had,” Kosar said. “They made me have more thoughts of suicide.”

According to Psychology Lecturer Petullo, medicine can cause suicidal thoughts.

“The effects of medication are so complex,” Petullo

said. “Medications impact everyone differently.

Some medications will treat a person’s depression and low feelings, as the person gains energy, if the person still feels anger it is possible to have thoughts of suicide.”

Since the crash, Kosar has searched for therapy to help deal with the trauma. She went to the campus Counseling and Psychological Services.

“It’s widely known counseling services fucking suck,” Kosar said. “Other times they’re nice when you’re having a hard time.”

Kosar stopped seeking therapeutic help at Humboldt State.

“I didn’t feel like the help I was getting here was helping,” Kosar said. “I’m going to wait until I move back to Los Angeles, where there are people of color, and find a black female therapist who specializes in traumatic events and PTSD.” Kosar has participated in group therapy with other survivors, including Melvin Harris, and talks openly about her struggles with mental health issues.

“I think it’s important for people to know we’re here, we’re doing it,” Kosar said. “We’ve been here for four years and some will be here for longer. We’re struggling but we’re making it through.”

The group therapy with the survivors once had seven members but dropped to two: Kosar and Harris. Kosar says no one else was showing up.

“We are just trying to move on with our lives,” Kosar said. “We all really have gone our separate ways.

There are so much less of us now.”

“We had more outreach in the beginning,” said Randi Darnall-Burke, Dean of Students. “We were seeing in them that it was time to ease back.”

The university did not host an event this year to commemorate the tragedy.

“Every year at this time I get anxiety and stressed out,” Kosar said. “It gets harder for me to focus in general in life.”

Harris says he has at least one more years at HSU. Kosar hopes to graduate in December and wants to go to Ecuador this summer.

“Studying abroad would be a way for me to experience the world and get school credit,” she said.

Kosar goes through periods where loud noises and cars trigger flashbacks. Travelling elicits stress, anxiety and fear. She flew to Las Vegas in March with her sister to attend a Demi Lovato and D.J. Khaled concert for her birthday, but it was hard.

“Any type of travel is terrifying for me, ‘cause I don’t wanna die.” Kosar said.

In memory of those that lost their lives on April 10, 2014 Ismael Jimenez

Mattison Maywood

Denise Gomez

Michael Myvett

Jennifer Bonilla

Arthur Arzola

Marisa Serrato

Tim Evans

Adrian Castro

Talalelei Lealao-Taiao

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The RV Coral Sea docked at the Woodley Island Marina in Eureka.

Photo | Lauren Shea

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12 hours on the R/V Coral Sea

By Sally Gammie

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I

t’s a rare March afternoon when the sun is shining. The Humboldt Bay is calm but my stomach is in knots. I’m walking anxiously towards the Eureka Town dock, about to spend the next 12 hours on a large research vessel out in the open ocean. At the very end of the dock, Humboldt State University’s RV Coral Sea is being prepped for its monthly voyage to collect data on ocean water conditions. The 10 person crew of mostly HSU oceanography students come aboard.

I’m the only one who hasn’t been on a long cruise like this before, so I watch as they assemble the giant nets used for capturing plankton. Jack Hawley, a junior at HSU has done this cruise a dozen times.

He asks if I’d like to help with the plankton tow.

“You’re lucky, usually we’re stuck with rain and choppy seas,” Hawley said. “Today is gonna be great.

You’ll get spoiled.”

Before setting out to sea, Captain Scott Martin huddles us together for a quick rundown of the cruise.

“Looks like pretty much like everyone has done this before,” Martin said.

He gives me a look.

“With more people things actually tend to run less smoothly,” Martin said. “Everyone thinks someone else is doing the job already, so to make sure things get done efficiently make sure you’re all doing your job and this should be one of the better trips.”

2:30 PM - LAUNCHING OFF TO SEA We’re on our way out of the harbor and heading out to sea. It’s about three hours to our first site, most of the crew takes this time to nap, read and do homework. I explore the ship, walking around to the front of the ship. The ocean spray glistens in the sun. We pass a group of sea lions lounging lazily on a large buoy. I head to the back of the ship, where I run into oceanography student Victoria Sheldon.

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Life saver on board the RV Coral Sea just after departing from the harbor.

Photo | Sally Gammie

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Jack Hawley and Nick Schieferecke deploy cylinders to measure conductivity, temperature and depth aboard the Coral Sea. Photo | Sally Gammie

“Have you taken your Dramamine yet?” Sheldon asks.

Inside the cabin, lead scientist Roxanne Robertson is already taking data on water quality.

I assured her I’m immune to getting sea sick.

“Recently we’ve been recording high levels of Domoic acid in the Humboldt Bay,” Robertson said.

“It’s strange, because there’s been no sign of it in the shell fish yet.”

“Yeah, but have you been on a ship on the open ocean for 12 hours before?” she said, warning me. ”Trust me, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

She ushers me into the cabin and grabs Dramamine from her bag before I have a chance to reply.

“One time we were doing a cruise and half the crew ended up on the side of the ship,” Sheldon said. ”We barely got any work done because of it.”

I graciously take the Dramamine, just in case.

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According to Robertson, Domoic acid is caused by algal blooms and is toxic for human consumption.

This happens when there is a build up of the plankton in the shell fish we eat.

“Temperature is a likely factor. At certain levels it can be toxic. We think it has something to do with the warm blob” Robertson said. “There was a period of time where the temperature up here was

Thomas Adams scoops up krill from the plankton tow aboard the Coral Sea. Photo | Sally Gammie

unusually warm, this led the the right conditions for these algal blooms to start popping up.”

She goes to a machine on the wall where she inserts a data sheet.

“In other words, it’s related to climate change,” Robertson said.

5:00 PM - SITE ONE We’ve reached our first site. Hawley, and two other students are working with the large rosette of cylinders used to collect data on water temperature, quality, pH and salt content. Their job is to send the cylinders into the water and collect samples at different depths. Robertson yells from inside the

cabin to Martin whose manning the cylinder rig.

“200 meters! Hold it! Lower it! 300 meters!”

Robertson said.

Doyle Coyne and Thomas Adams are manning the plankton tows. Their job is to lower two large black nets on the side of the ship and capture zooplankton.

Their haul this time looks to be mostly krill and tiny crustaceans.

“We’ve been seeing a decrease in the krill population so to get some in this quantity and at this size is really exciting,” Robertson said.

Sheldon is getting water samples off the side of the boat and from a sink right outside the cabin that

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Sunset from the front of the Coral Sea right before arriving at the third research site.

Photo | Sally Gammie

supplies free-flowing ocean water. This will be my job next time around.

6:40 PM - SITE TWO Dusk approaches as we arrive at our second site.

We’ve traveled far out into the Pacific, and there’s only blue skies and ocean as far as the eye can see.

The cylinders and nets are lowered into the water.

I’m on water collection duty. I go to the side of the boat and lower a bucket to collect seawater. Then I go over to the sink and get a sample of free flowing water there as well. It’s a repetitive process. Inside the cabin, Robertson works on her computers as Sheldon and Mahallelah Shauer are running the lab work.

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7:35 PM - SITE THREE By the time we get to our third site, the sun is setting.

We’re about an hour out and still surrounded by nothing but ocean. The horizon is lined with darkening grey clouds and an illuminating orange glow. The ocean that was once bright blue and glistening in the sun has turned a bluish black. HSU Oceanography student Nick Schieferecke asks me if I’d like to help with deploying the cylinders. “”It’s really not that hard, we’ll show you the ropes,” Schieferecke said.

With Schieferecke, Hawley and Freya Mitchell guiding me, I deploy and collect the cylinders. It

Thomas Adams holds a giant moon jelly he caught with his net aboard the Coral Sea. Photo | Sally Gammie

is supposed to be relatively simple to unlock the cylinders, rinse the bottles, fill the bottles and repeat.

It was all very fast paced. I struggled to collect my first sample, fumbling over unlocking the cylinder, turning knobs and unleashing the free flowing water everywhere. Hawley, Mitchell, and Schieferecke take at least three samples by the time I collect one.

9:00 PM - SITE FOUR At the fourth site, night has fallen. We were now working with the bright ship lights. Everything else around us is a pitch black abyss.The ship lights illuminate a large patch of water where I can see floating sea creatures. Ghost-like moon jellies and bioluminescing invertebrates slowly drift by.

HSU graduate Thomas Adam yells from the other side of the boat.

“Guys come check out this Ctenophore!” he says.

“It’s glowing bright blue!”

We scurry over. He snags one of the ghost white creatures drifting in the water with his net and instantly it turns a bright blue. Hawley, Mitchell and I were impressed.

Throughout the rest of the night, we have more close encounters with these nocturnal sea creatures.

Adams catches a giant moon jelly. The jelly looks graceful and wispy in the water, but as soon as Adams scoops it up with his net, it looks more like a glob of mucus.

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11:00 PM - THE FINAL SITE After eight and a half hours at sea, we arrive to our final site. By this time, the crew is tired. I get up from the little resting nook I made in the cabin to complete one last round of water collecting. The ocean air is frigid while I scoop my bucket full of seawater on the side of the boat. Cold water splashes out of the bucket onto me, jolting me back to a full state of wakefulness. Mitchell and I are deploying the cylinders.

Jack Hawley holds up a ctenophore aboard the Coral Sea. Photo | Sally Gammie.

“Right on, girl power,” Mitchell says.

Mitchell and I steady the rosette of cylinders as it gets lowered into the ocean. Hawley grabs my life vest, presumably to make sure I don’t accidently fall overboard.

“So are you thinking about switching to oceanography?” Hawley asks. “We have plenty of job opportunities like this. You could be doing stuff like this all the time.”

I assured him I was content with sticking to the Marine Biology route.

It’s midnight and I rest my head on a stack of life vests when I overhear Mitchell and Hawley doing their homework.

“What did you get for the density dependent variable for problem seven?” Mitchell asks him.

“I haven’t gotten that far... Did you get number five yet?” Asked Hawley.

How they manage to do oceanography homework right now is beyond me. I fall asleep.

1:30 AM- RETURNING TO THE DOCK The lights flicker on and Captain Martin comes through the cabin, telling us it’s time to clean up the ship. Everyone is groggy. Some people are on the floor, others fell asleep in chairs. We get up, clean

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and put away the lab equipment. The cylinders and the plankton tows have to be washed and towed.

Out on the boat deck, I can see the white glow of the Eureka city lights, they’re still a faint glimmer in the distance against the vast expanse of dark ocean.

2:30 AM We reach the harbor. The crew is gathered in the cabin, everyone is silent except for the occasional stifled yawn. Robertson tells me that all the data

we’ve collected will take up to two weeks to be processed and up to a year to be analyzed.

“Thank you guys for sacrificing your Tuesday night to come help out, now if everyone can just get home safely please that would be great and I hope to see everyone again next month,” Robertson said.

Adams and Sheldon give me a ride back to Arcata.

Adams is playing his celtic music CD, the sounds of the violin and the flutes are soothing and melodic as I crawl up in the backseat. I’m so exhausted, it feels

like a dream as we drive down Samoa Boulevard.

I’m looking out the back seat window staring at the stars, something about staying on the open ocean for 12 hours has left me with a feeling of contentment.

It’s 3 a.m. when I arrive back home and crawl in bed.

I can still feel the gentle rocking back forth from the waves, with my stomach no longer in knots I’m able to drift into a deep sleep to dream of giant moon jellies and glowing ctenophores.

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Ruth Mock and Stephanie Owens feed an American robin antibiotics at the Humboldt Wildlife Care Center.

Photo | Lauren Shea

Back to the wild

By Lauren Shea

A

northern spotted owl is perched on a large branch at the Humboldt Wildlife Center aviary, staring at Lucie Adamson. She places a bucket filled with grass, rocks and sticks to hide two live mice and their food inside. Adamson cleans the floor where the previous mice were hunted. She focuses on cleaning up and getting out as fast as she can. The owl remains still, only turning its head to look at Adamson. She places the mice inside the hunting area and walks out.

gives the bird antibiotics and painkillers. After a week, the coot is ready for release. Adamson puts the American coot in a blue cardboard box-- the size that a small dog could fit in-- and carries it to the Arcata Marsh. She releases the bird on the ground by a pond, and it waddles to the water and then flies away.

“He’s been eating and hunting really well lately,” Adamson said. “We are going to leave him alone for a couple of days and let the mice run free around the enclosure to test his hunting skills. It’ll be the final test before his release exam.”

In February, the center received a hoary bat. A woman called to say she found the bat near a tree in downtown Eureka.

Adamson is the assistant wildlife rehabilitation manager at the Humboldt Wildlife Care Center in Bayside, which cares for more than 1,200 injured and orphaned animals each year. The center is a project of Bird Ally X, a non-profit working to help injured and orphaned wildlife. The majority of the shelter’s patients are small mammals and birds.

In January, an American coot was brought in that was weak and couldn’t fly. Adamson noticed that the black bird with a white beak had a gunshot wound on its abdomen and right leg.

“When a hunter uses those type of pellets, they spread out in a spray of bullets,” Adamson said.

“Those are terrible because if those hit a wing, it completely shatters a bone. It’s uncommon that we treat one. It doesn’t usually work out. In this case, it passed by the bird and skimmed its skin.”

Adamson cleans and glues the wound together. She

“He looked pretty good during his exit exam,” Adamson said. “I’m glad the little guy healed.”

“We were called to pick up the bat,” said Stephanie Owens, wildlife rehabilitator. “When we got there, the woman placed it inside a box.”

The bat needed to stay in the exam room overnight.

The next day, Owens checked on it and saw the bat was dead. She examined the bat and discovered it had an internal injury but she doesn’t know what caused it. She placed the bat in the freezer with the other animals that died. One of the center’s longterm patients, the northern spotted owl, fell out of its nest near Willow Creek last June when it was only a baby.

“The break in its bone in the wing is unique,” Owens said.

According to the California Fish and Wildlife Commission the northern spotted owl is listed as a threatened species under the California Endangered Species Act and needed more care for its injury than the center could provide. The owl was sent to a wildlife rehabilitation center in Morro Bay to

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have surgery. After one successful procedure, the owl broke another part of its wing. It went in for a second surgery and is recovering.

“The owl has been constantly eating the mice which is a really good sign,” Owens said. “His weight is up.

He probably will learn to hunt soon with live mice.”

The Humboldt Wildlife Center opened in 1979 and is permitted and regulated by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association Code of Ethics.

After 30 minutes, she examines the bird, blowing the feathers to see if there is any damage underneath. She feels around the body and turns it over to see its chest pushed out. The lungs had collapsed.

This causes air to escape to other parts of the body.

Owens takes a needle to deflate the air. Then she gives it medicine for pain and possible infection.

“He’s doing better,” Owens said. “He had a bloody mouth and was gargling really bad.”

The robin survived, but other animals are not always that lucky.

Before, the place wasn’t open all day.

People just left animals on the porch and then someone would come in at the end of the day and try to take care of them.

“About 50 percent of the animals that come through don’t make it to release,” Adamson said. “Most of the time, it’s because of an injury that is not fixable here because we are limited in our resources and don’t have a vet technician on staff.”

Sometimes the larger animals that come into the center are used to humans.

“We got in a raccoon who was habituated,” said Monte Merrick, director of Bird Ally X. “We nicknamed him Plus One. He spent four months in a living room. He was a little bigger and seemed like a bodyguard for the other raccoons. By the end, he was exhibiting stronger defensive skills than the others.”

In late February, someone brought in an American robin and told Owens that it was chased by other robins and flew into a window. Owens places the robin in an incubator, giving it some time to relax.

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“Ending suffering is a big part of what we do,” Merrick said.

“Let’s say if a robin is totally jacked up and isn’t going to survive and would sit there on the road by cars for five days starving to death and in pain, we are actually providing treatment for that robin. Euthanasia in that case is treatment. The death in fact is the release.”

A couple days later, another robin was brought in the center. It was hit by a truck at the Indianola Cutoff. The woman who brought the robin in was conducting roadkill surveys when she saw it happen.

“She previously worked in a rehabilitation center for animals, so she was pretty experienced and knew to bring the robin here,” Adamson said.

During the exam, the second robin got loose and fluttered nervously around the room. Adamson grabbed the net to catch it.

“He hit me in the face with its wing,” Adamson said.

“I’m going to give this guy a break to let him rest and calm down. We don’t want to stress him out anymore.”

Adamson wrapped the robin in a towel and gave it Metacam, a non-steroid pain medicine. She put the bird back into the incubator to rest.

The Northern spotted owl inside its enclosure at the Humboldt Wildlife Center.

Photo | Lauren Shea

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A western gull, like the one treated at the center, swims at the Arcata Marsh.

Photo | Lauren Shea

“We’re going to put a white band on his leg so we can tell him apart from the other guy and put him with the first robin in room two,” Adamson said.

“Robins are pretty social birds, so they’ll feel comfortable together.”

Before it’s time to leave for the day, Mock and Owens give the robin some medicine to treat his infection.

Mock places a pillowcase over the bird and gently takes him out of his cage. She cradles the bird by her chest as Owens pulls back the pillowcase, opens the robin’s mouth to put a syringe in past its beak.

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“He’s looking much better today then he was the other day,” said Ruth Mock, volunteer coordinator for the center. “Poor guy was gurgling a lot.”

Adamson grabs a 20-foot-long net and walks toward a western gull, which is resting by a small pond in the aviary.

“The gull is off of his antibiotics and pain meds now and is able to fly but still has a hard time standing and walking, but he’s better than when he came in a week ago,” Adamson said. “We’ll need to take his

“When we took over the center, we brought in a degree of professionalism from our backgrounds,” Merrick said. “Before, the place wasn’t open all day.

People just left animals on the porch and then someone would come in at the end of the day and try to take care of them.”

It’s late afternoon at the Wildlife Care Center-- time to feed the birds. Owens grabs a mouse from the freezer and places it in a bowl of warm water to defrost. The mouse will be the next meal for the northern spotted owl.

“His next task is to find live guys and hunt,” Adamson said. “The owl now is up to two live mice. He looks like he’s been eating them.”

The live mice are kept in a laundry room that the staff refer to as “Mousetopia.” Adamson takes one of the empty gallon buckets and walks outside to find leaves, rocks and sticks for the mice to hide in.

“After he learns that the mice are in the bucket, the next step is to let the mice run free and let the owl hunt for them,” Adamson said.

After three weeks of hunting mice and flying around the outer sanctum, it is time for an exit evaluation.

“The northern spotted owl finally got approved for release,” Adamson said.

weight and some blood samples to make sure he’s healing well.”

Courtney Watson, Wildlife major at HSU and intern, follows Adamson with a towel. Adamson places the net over the gull as Watson lifts the net and covers the gull in the towel. They take the bird into the examination room to weigh it and record the information on a whiteboard above the scale. Watson holds the bird on the exam table while Adamson feeds it antibiotics with a syringe.

The owl spent a month and a half at the center after its surgeries in Morro Bay. In this time, the owl has learned to hunt mice and is ready for release. The owl is transported in a dog carrier to a forest near Willow Creek. Inside the carrier, there’s a branch to prevent the owl from bending its tail feathers. Adamson, Merrick and a few others from the center walk to the release spot, and Adamson places the carrier on the ground and opens the door. The owl busts out of the cage flying in an arch up to a tree.

“He looked around trying to get his bearings on the place he was in,” Adamson said. “It was the first time he flew in a forest. It was great to see him back in the wild again.”

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Sunset outside the Humboldt State Trinidad Marine Lab. Photo | Sally Gammie

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Humboldt’s troubled waters

By Sally Gammie

“I don’t think we’ve done enough, soon enough, to reverse what’s going on. We’re past a tipping point in terms of what the future is going to look like with an acidified ocean” - Paul Bordeau

Ocean acidification: When excess carbon from the atmosphere produced by fossil fuels gets dissolved into the ocean. This leads to a lower pH, making the water more acidic.

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Above: Tayler Tharaldson measuring pH and oxygen levels in her surf grass experiment at the Trinidad Marine Lab. Photo | Giuliana Sarto Below: Copper rockfish in Corianna Flannery’s holding tank at the Trinidad Marine Lab. Photo | Sally Gammie

B

uckets filled with surf grass and red algae scour the floor of the Humboldt State University Marine lab in Trinidad.

Corianna Flannery is examining the effects having a more acidic ocean is going to have on rockfish. She has tanks blacked out with tape lining the wall, and a large glass holding tank with her rockfish. Across the room, Tayler Tharaldson is setting up her experiment with the surf grass and red algae.

Together their setups cover nearly a quarter of the marine lab.

“The pH we’re experiencing up here is what we’re predicted to see worldwide 50 to 100 years from now,” Tharaldson said. “I want to see how ocean acidification is affecting surf grass, how it can buffer the surrounding community and whether the community could even survive without it.”

Buffering: When plants photosynthesize they take carbon dioxide out of the water and produce oxygen, this changes the chemistry of the surrounding environment, raising the pH and making the ocean less acidic.

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With the ocean already being more acidic here than it is in the rest of the world, graduate students like Tharaldson and Flannery are given the perfect opportunity for ocean acidification related experiments. From the growth rate of oysters to the brain chemistry of rockfish, we’re seeing how this changing ocean condition is having an impact on nearly everything in our ecosystem.

“We’re looking into the ways that extremely low pH combined with low levels of dissolved oxygen is affecting the brain development of juvenile rockfish living in offshore kelp beds,” Flannery said. “Other studies have shown that lower pH and dissolved oxygen levels have been having a detrimental effect on their brain function and neurological development.”

Flannery is looking into a water cooler that’s being used as a makeshift tank. There are four juvenile copper rockfish swimming in small glass containers, all interconnected by wires.

“On one hand, it’s really cool we’re able to run these types of experiments, but it’s also like the more we know the scarier things seem to get,” Flannery said.

The research efforts at the marine lab are not only contributing to our understanding of what is happening to the chemistry of our ocean, but also what it Todd Van Herpe holding oyster larvae from his Flupsy. Photo | Giuliana Sarto could mean for our local commercial fishing industry. Johnny Roche is working with different species “The pH is critically important for oyster larvae deof oysters in the Humboldt Bay. The purpose of his veloping a shell,” Herpe said. “If the pH is too low, research is to see if eelgrass can buffer the impact the oysters can’t lay down their shell.” ocean acidification is having on oyster growth.

He hooks up another section of the Flupsy to be “There’s a big concern because Humboldt Bay alone raised out of the water and rinsed. After an hour is a multi million dollar per year fishery just for oys- or so of thoroughly rinsing a couple different secters. Obviously it’s really popular around here, but in tions of the Flupsy, two more fisherman come and terms of overall oyster production Humboldt Bay is join him to help out. Once these young oysters have second only to Washington on the West Coast, may- successfully grown their shell and reached a certain be even the United States,” Roche said. “So that’s size, they are taken back to the farm to continue one obvious reason why this study is so important.” growing and eventually be harvested.

On an overcast Friday morning at the Eureka Old Town dock, Todd Van Herpe is harvesting his oyster larvae. Hidden in between the large fishing boats is his Flupsy, where there are rows of square containers sunken into the dock, each container is full of oyster larvae. Herpe is the owner of Humboldt Bay Oyster Co. and is well aware of the effects of ocean acidification along the North Coast.

“For now, our oysters are still happy here in the bay.

I do worry about that changing in the future,” Herpe said.

The bottom of each container is coated with a layer of millions of oysters, they’re separated by different sizes. He scoops up a handful from the bottom of one of the large containers.

“To be an oyster farmer, you have to be an ecologist, and a biologist on some level, otherwise you’re really not qualified to do it,” Herpe said.

He takes out another section of the Flupsy for rinsing, he’s doing this to ensure that the oysters don’t combine into one massive clump of shell.

“It can really wreak havoc on things, not just oysters, but other animals that need the pH to stay more balanced,” he said. “I’ve seen hatcheries dealing with this in different ways, buffering and what not.”

This is where the eelgrass comes in. Herpe knows of an oyster farmer in Oregon who is using eelgrass beds to help rear his oysters.

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Mussels on the beach in Trinidad, California.

Photo | Tharadet Mann

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“The pH up where he is has gotten to be too much for his oysters, without the eelgrass there to buffer the environment they can’t lay down their shell at all,” Herpe said.

to bins full of empty mussel shells at the marine lab.

He’s plugging in a series of numbers representing the years of data he’s collected into his computer.

His hope is to understand more of the nuance behind how ocean acidification is affecting different species of mussels. In particular, why certain populations are actually doing better in a more acidic environment.

So there is good news and bad news to my experiment. Certain populations of mussels in these exposed sites are doing fine, we’re just not sure exactly why or how.

Just like with Tharaldson’s surfgrass, eelgrass acts as a buffer against ocean acidification and helps make it possible for oysters and other organisms sensitive to changes in pH to stay alive. HSU Botany professor Frank Shaughnessy is the local expert on eelgrass and explains it like this.

“Across species and different environments, they’re going to be affected differently,” Mann said. “So there is good news and bad news to my experiment. Certain populations of mussels in these exposed sites are doing fine, we’re just not sure yet exactly why or how.”

Mann grabs one of the bins full of empty mussel shells sitting on the desk.

“Plants pull carbon dioxide out of the water during photosynthesis thereby making the water less acidic, and favorable for shell building,” Shaughnessy said. “That being said, oysters might not benefit from eelgrass if sea surface temperatures continue to increase, because they are increasing. That is an indisputable fact.”

“We’ve already collected most of the data on these mussels,” Mann said. “We just need to measure their shell strength, which we do by seeing how much force it takes to crush them. After that, I’ll finish analyzing all the data and hopefully we’ll begin to see some kind of trend in how the mussels are handling this changing environment.”

Higher temperatures mean that respiring organisms put more carbon dioxide back in the water, making it acidic again. Without the eelgrass, the ecosystems dependant on it here would collapse, and organisms like the oysters could risk extinction.

Mann’s experiment is building off of ongoing research that Paul Bourdeau has been overseeing for years now. Bourdeau is an HSU Marine Biology professor who’s been advising most of the ocean acidification research at the marine lab.

“We’ve already pumped out so much carbon dioxide that even if we completely stopped carbon emissions altogether, we’re still going to be watching our ocean continue to absorb and cycle through that carbon dioxide for years to come,” Shaughnessy said.

“I don’t think we’ve done enough, soon enough, to reverse what’s going on,” Bordeau said. “We’re past a tipping point in terms of what the future is going to look like with an acidified ocean. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be trying to reduce our carbon emissions more and more so that this doesn’t continue to get worse and worse.”

In an unexpected turn of events, another graduate student working at the marine lab is finding that some species predicted to do poorly in the more acidic environment are actually adapting to thrive in it. Tharadet Mann is sitting at his workstation, next

It’s after hours at the marine lab as Tharaldson is doing the final run on her surf grass experiment.

Rows of plastic buckets filled with seawater, surf

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grass, red algae, and Black Turban snails are now all lined up and connected to tanks controlling the pH. For each bucket she measures and writes down the pH and oxygen level. She’s the last student left still working in the lab, and plans on staying here well into the night. Once Tharaldson completes the final run of her experiment, she’ll take everything down to make room for Roche’s oysters and eelgrass.

“I’ve put so much blood, sweat and tears into this thing but honestly, I can’t wait to be done with it,” Tharaldson said.

She decides to take a break to walk along the beach.

Outside the lab the sun is setting, an impressive display of orange and pink wispy clouds line the light blue sky.

“Getting to see these sunsets has made the late nights here worth it,” Tharaldson said. “I’m actually really going to miss it.”

Roche and his team are trudging in the mud to get to a meadow of eelgrass. Dressed in wetsuits and waders, getting to the eelgrass is a slow and grueling process of sinking knee deep in the thick mud while dragging behind them buckets and water coolers on the top of boogie boards. Roche needs at least 60 stalks today. Then he’ll take them up to the marine lab to be rinsed and prepped for his experiment.

“This project includes so many factors that reflect on things important to me, important to my field, and really, I feel should be important to humanity in general. That’s what’s making it worthwhile. You can’t do something like this if your heart isn’t in it,” Roche said.

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Johnny Roche collects eelgrass in the Humboldt Bay. Photo | Sally Gammie

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Cow to cone

Making strawberry ice cream at Arcata Scoop

By Bryan Donoghue

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G

arrett Nada reaches his hand into a bag of loose lavender buds and sprinkles the calyces onto a shallow bucket lid the size of a frisbee. Each plump, bulbous bud emanates a calming smell. Nada’s shoulders drop, relaxed, as he begins interpreting the scent and ties on his red Caroline Walker apron with a dairy cow decal on the front. He adjusts himself on the stool at his preparation table and focuses on the tiny buds, meticulously removing unneeded stems and flowers. Nada’s preparation requires excellence, his attention to detail will be the factor that defines the quality of his ice cream.

“When people ask me how long it takes to make a batch of ice cream, it’s a loaded question,” Nada said. “Because the real answer is that it takes over 24 hours.”

Nada is the owner of Arcata Scoop, an ice cream shop that churns locally sourced ingredients into a creamy frozen dessert. Nada says the best ingredients are on organic farms throughout Humboldt.

He gets his ice cream base from Straus Family Creamery.

At 10 a.m. on a Friday, he sets a timer for eight minutes and places it on top of his 24-quart Emery Thompson ice cream machine. Nada pours the flavoring, such as the lavender buds, honey and a dollop of vanilla extract, and the ice cream base into a copper laced cylinder, which funnels into the machine. Nada turns the machine on, and the internal blades mix everything together while the coolants keep the mixture at a low temperature.

“That cylinder is very, very, very well insulated, so the cold directly goes in there,” Nada said. “It creates a freezing environment in there, and the dasher, the blades that are inside the machine, they spin around incorporating the air.”

When the timer rings, Nada pours the liquid ice cream out of the cylinder and into a two and a half

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gallon bucket. He puts the buckets in a flash freezer so that the ice cream can harden for another nine hours at a temperature below zero degrees. Nada does this to prevent any melting. When he takes it out of that freezer, the ice cream is too hard to scoop, so he puts it in another freezer set at a higher temperature to let it slowly soften to scooping temperature.

Garrett Nada stands inside his kitchen at Arcata Scoop. Photo | Bryan Donoghue

Nada makes dozens of ice cream flavors that vary daily such as coconut, mint chip, lemon poppyseed, orange cardamom, grasshopper and jasmine green tea. Strawberry is especially popular and almost always on the menu.

“It’s made with love and affection,” said employee Garrett Goodnight. “But realistically, it’s made from

fresh strawberries from a local farm, so I feel like that excites people.”

Picking the Strawberries Nada gets his strawberries from DeepSeeded Community Farm, about a mile from his ice cream shop.

The farm sits off Alliance Road on an open pasture

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Scott Clore waters seedlings inside a greenhouse on DeepSeeded Community Farms.

Photo | Bryan Donoghue

with rows of vegetables such as kale, romanesco, and lettuce.

Scott Clore has been a farmhand for over 20 years.

He paces the greenhouses by the farm’s front gate while watering seedlings and plowing dirt with his feet to make room for another season of cherry tomatoes. Clore adjusts the brim of his cap.

“You’ve got to take into account what people want and don’t want,” Clore said. “There are certain things we grow because we can only grow them certain times of the year.”

Eddie Tanner is DeepSeeded’s head farmer and

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owner. He grows strawberries in a plastic tunnel on top of the soil that protects the berries from rain.

“You get a lot of rotten berries after a rainy day,” Tanner said.

Tanner says there’s a long window for strawberry season. The berries first ripen at the end of April and can be picked until sometime in October.

“I’ve had that ‘aha’ moment that’s just blowing my mind with the flavor of a fully ripe fruit,” Tanner said. “They really reach their full flavor when you let them get ripe on the plant, but in a lot of situations, it’s a rare commodity because ripe on the

plant strawberries don’t ship or store well at all.”

Tanner pauses to think about how he and Nada first started trading. He doesn’t remember when, but they cultivated a lasting relationship.

“During strawberry season, I’d give him some fresh berries to buy, whenever he wants,” Tanner said.

“When we have surplus, an extra large berry harvest, I end up freezing some and giving him some frozen berries over the winter months.”

Back at Arcata Scoop, Nada stands between three freezers. The one on the left holds ice cream that’s hardening. In the right one are dozens of gallons of

ice cream base. Nada opens the freezer in the middle with bags of frozen strawberries neatly arranged on the bottom shelf. These are for when strawberry season ends or before it begins. Frozen or ripe, Nada prepares all strawberries the same.

“I got to take all the green parts off, and then I put them in a tub with some sugar, and then put them in the fridge overnight,” Nada said. “Just like how sugar decays your teeth, it decays strawberries too. So you put the sugar in the strawberries, and the next day they’ll be kind of broken down and like syrupy liquid that’s only from the strawberries.”

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It takes Nada a full day to make the ice cream and allow the syrup to form. Nada says he must plan two days ahead for every batch.

“I don’t add water, so the next day, they will be syrupy and ready to go entirely,” Nada said. “If I get a batch of strawberries, that’s not going to be scoopable for two days.”

Buying the Cream Nada does what he can to reduce his carbon footprint. Simultaneously, he wants to buy organic ingredients.

“I think dairy is something important to eat organically,” Nada said. “It’s something I personally believe in.”

Straus Family Creamery satisfies both factors. Nada receives a weekly delivery from the creamery distribution center in Petaluma to buy gallons of organic ice cream base: a mixture of cream, milk, sugar, egg yolk, and sweet cream buttermilk.

“On your own you’d have to be authorized as a dairy plant to put all these ingredients together, pasteurize it, and create your own base,” said Albert Straus, CEO and founder of Straus Family Creamery. “Our base allows chefs and ice cream makers to apply their artistry to create inventive flavors.”

Straus says his creamery runs entirely on renewable energy and practices sustainable farming methods.

“Really we’re the first farm to have a 20-year carbon farm plan in California if not the country,” Straus said. “First dairy to have one.”

A jersey cow with a tag on its ear reading the name “Willow” sashays against the edge of a fence at the creamery headquarters in Marshall, a 20-mile drive west of Petaluma.

According to Straus, the small brown cows produce milk with more fat, and we all know that fat is where the flavor is. Behind Willow, there’s an open pasture

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Willow, a jersey cow, eats blades of grass out of the reporter’s hand at Straus Family Creamery in Marshall, California.

Photo | Belen Flores

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A waffle bowl of strawberry ice cream on the counter at Arcata Scoop.

Photo | Belen Flores

covered in ankle-high blades of emerald green grass.

The enclosure seemingly goes on for miles on the 500-acre creamery. Willow lays down and eats the grass by her feet.

“I feel like taking care of the land, taking care of the animals, taking care of the environment,” Straus said. “We’re organic, and if it didn’t taste good, people wouldn’t want to buy it.”

Straus won’t take all the credit for the Nada’s quality ice cream.

“There’s an artisanal part of it that Arcata Scoop does, also by the flavors they do, the formulation of ways they freeze the ice cream that creates the fluffiness, the amount of air in it, and the quality around it,” Straus said.

The Final Scoop Nada grabs a gallon of the ice cream base and flips it completely upside down into the ice cream machine.

He uses his hands to crush some Newman-O’s that are waiting to be made into his cookies ‘n cream ice cream and uses a spatula to swirl them into the ice cream.

“I got to make ice cream ahead of time.” Nada said.

“So I make batches, trying to predict what’s going to be empty ahead of time.”

Nada is a family man with a wife and two children.

As a father, he notices the reactions of other parents who come in to Arcata Scoop with their kids.

“Kids like the ice cream, so whatever,” Nada said.

“But when the parents come in, they’re always like, ‘sweet.’ They’re stoked that they’re giving their kids something they can get behind. It’s quality food.”

Nada is proud of Arcata Scoop ice cream. Sourcing produce from local farms and buying organic cream sets his ice cream apart from others.

“Shitty ice cream is good, you know?” Nada said.

“But when you get good ice cream, it’s like ‘holy cow!’”

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Tapped Into

Humboldt J

acob Pressey is outside of his McKinleyville brewery in the cold rain trying to make his English porter by boiling his brew over a small canister of butane. He’s having a hard time keeping the flame going. Steam comes out from the kettle giving off an aroma of hops, chocolate and oatmeal. Pressey is cooking a recipe on his new brew system, which he has been building for over a year for his brewery Humboldt Regeneration. He grows his own barley and hops that he uses in his beers.

By Sebastian Lindner “During school, I started to get more focused on sustainable agriculture, and I knew I wanted to do something associated with that in some way,” Pressey said.

“Having a brewery tied to agriculture in America is fairly uncommon,” Pressey said.

Pressey is his own boss, farmer and innovator. His goal is to have an estate brewery. He says his new brew system allows him to make more beer than before. His old brew, one barrel system, made about 30 gallons of beer, or 250 pints. The new two barrel system can produce about 40 gallons or 320 pints.

“You’re drawing people in with some good craft beer, which happens to be grown from the person who makes the beer,” Pressey said.

Pressey’s vision is to have an estate brewery tied to sustainable agriculture.

Matthew Kruskamp is the brewery’s general manager.

“Having a brew farm along the pristine Humboldt coastline with fields of barley and towering hop vines and providing a thirst-quenching farmraised pint is where I would like to see Humboldt Regeneration be some day,” Pressey said.

“The plan for the future of Humboldt Regeneration is to diversify the future farm to where it’s not just about beer but also about teaching people the different types of soil that are beneficial for sustainable growth,” Kruskamp said.

Pressy has been working on his new beer-making system for more than a year now.

Pressey uses spent grain and mash-- the broken down starch and sugar goop that settles at the bottom of the kettle-- and turns it into what he comically calls “beerkashi.” The technical name for the composting process is correctly called bokashi.

He started making beer after he graduated with an Environmental Science degree from Humboldt State University in 2010.

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Jacob Pressey sifts the hops in his brew, an English porter, at Haumboldt Regeneration in McKinleyville, California.

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“Bokashi composting is an anaerobic process that relies on inoculated bran to ferment kitchen waste, including meat and dairy, into a safe soil builder and nutrient-rich tea for your plants,” Pressey said.

Beerkashi compost sits in an open container at Presseys farm during a class on the bokashi method.

Photo | Sebastian Lindner

Pressey teaches the bokashi method in classes on his farm. Summer Daugherty attended the soil class.

“I think it provides an educational opportunity. It’s a way to get people to move forward on growing their own products,” Daugherty said. “You can walk away today with maybe some of the cover crop and the fertilizers and composting and apply it in your own backyard.”

Erin Taylor is a soil conservationist who also attended the class.

“This is a unique workshop, and I’m hoping that it’s one of many more to come,” Taylor said.

Since Humboldt Regeneration opened its doors in 2012, two businesses now serve Pressey’s brews.

Scott McNeil is the owner of Papa Wheelies, he helped Pressey out when he first started Humboldt Regeneration.

“I would help him out on the farm and we would go out there with scythe’s and tend the field,” McNeil said. “I also helped him build a pedal-powered thresher. So everything in this do-it-yourself movement was awesome to me.”

Humbrews in Arcata carries Pressy’s brew on tap.

“I think it’s awesome that someone could produce all their own ingredients for a beer,” said Andy Ardell, the owner of Humbrews. “If all the big breweries could do that, that would be ideal.”

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