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Page 2 deep trouble AUGUST 2019
SHINING LIGHT ON THE DEEP TROUBLE STAFF [ EDITORIAL ]
DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN
ANDREW PARDIAC
Rollie Atkinson
HEATHER BAILEY
SONOMA WEST PUBLISHERS
KATHERINE MINKIEWICZ LAURA HAGAR RUSH ZOË STRICKLAND FRANK ROBERTSON GREG CLEMENTI [ PRODUCTION ] JIM SCHAEFER ROBBY MCCLELLAN MACI MARTELL [ SALES ] BRAD SCHMALTZ TERESA ELWARD ALLIE SESSER CAROL RANDS [ CIRCULATION ] CHERIE KELSAY [ BOOKKEEPING ] JAN TODD [ PUBLISHER ] ROLLIE ATKINSON SARAH BRADBURY
Once upon a time, perhaps less than a generation ago, we thought of our oceans as being so vast that they would be invulnerable to any of man’s influences from over-fishing, climate change or ceaseless pollution. With 70% of our planet covered by oceans, some as deep as our Grand Canyon, we thought even the most crass abuse of these endless waters would be absorbed by natural cycles of recovery and resiliency. What were we thinking? Emerging scientific findings reported here in this special newspaper report and elsewhere are proving the opposite to be true. Instead of being less susceptible to man-made environmental degradation and pollution, it turns out our oceans have been taking the full brunt of climate change, new biochemical imbalances and mounting chains of ecological catastrophes and chain sequences of stressors. There is a global crisis with the warming, acidification and pollution of all of our oceans. Much worse, there is also a very local, accelerating catastrophe taking place with our own oceanic waters — our Sonoma, Mendocino and Marin coast. We had plenty of warning signs, but they have failed to reveal the more complete story. The
closing of our sport fishing abalone season, the sudden disappearance of sea stars from our rocky shores, increased toxic algae blooms and weatherman notes about about El Niños and “warm blobs,” — none of that has been enough to wake us up to what we are now calling our “Deep Trouble.” Local marine biologists at the Bodega Marine Laboratory and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) have a different name for this ecological crisis. To them, our local ocean has been hit with a “perfect storm.” A set of large-scale ecological impacts has almost totally destroyed the undersea ecosystem previously anchored by vast kelp forests. In less than a decade the once-teeming and lush habitat is 93% gone, replaced by barren zones, overtaken by unwanted predator species, and resembling an underwater moonscape. Imagine if our Northern California coastal redwood forests were to die off or disappear in less than a decade. This dead zone would mean a loss for nearly all companion plants and dependent forest creatures such as deer, squirrels, birds and small mammals. This nightmarish scene would confront us on our daily commute and travels. We’d be compelled to action, as we have mounted in the wake of our wildfires. The stark difference with our collapsing ocean is it lies deep under water where only few have ventured to see it. Our reach of the Pacific Ocean has always gone through natural cycles of temperature and current
flow changes, emerging or re-balancing of fisheries, invertebrate populations and predator activity. El Niños and toxic algae blooms are part of a natural cycle. But this time many of these “stressors” have occurred at the same time and many scientists are now worried that our ocean may not be able to heal itself this time. The warm water shocks of both 2014 and 2015 pushed our coastal water temperatures to record high levels. All ocean species are very sensitive to temperature changes and warmer water holds low amounts of the nutrients the kelp plants and forest habitat species require. Already this collapse has led to socioeconomic impacts to our local sport and commercial fisheries, not the least of which is the total loss of the annual sport abalone season. CDFW monitors and volunteers are in the early stages of spreading warnings and conducting public education and awareness programs. Early experiments with replanting the bull kelp plants and eradicating the voracious purple urchin predator are just beginning. Scientists fear our ocean may be facing an extended period of uncertain recovery — and one that cannot be successful without human intervention. In other words, our “deep troubles” may only be beginning. We urge everyone to become more informed and not allow this ecological crisis to remain invisible. — Rollie Atkinson
THE PERFECT STORM:
BEHIND THE PROJECT Thank you for picking up our special section on the collapsing ecosystem of the Sonoma Coast. We tapped our many local resources to gather the latest information and talked to many active locals to ensure we were covering as much of our ocean’s health as we could fit into eight pages. We talked to scientists, volunteers and those who make their livelihood on the ocean to get the full perspective. What we found was that every level of life in the ocean has been affected, including our own. From the titanic whale to the smallest of fish, life has struggled to adjust to an ocean changing more rapidly than it has in recorded history. It is sad to see the corpses of animals bloated by plastic or look across a barren underwater rock scape and know it was once a forest of kelp. But only by learning about this disaster can we learn how to reverse it. If this problem continues, we not only will lose species that we do know, we will lose the opportunity to learn more about the natural state of our ocean. We know so little about our depths that new species and habits are discovered all the time. If the ocean wastes further, we may never have another chance to learn about these novel and important ecological interactions. We would like to thank the Russian Riverkeeper for its support in this project. We’d also like to thank everyone — there are too many to name here — who helped us understand and gather this information. It is our hope that through this work, we can all become more informed and motivated to do more to help our ocean.
— Andrew Pardiac, Managing Editor
a special supplement to the cloverdale reveille, the healdsburg tribune, the windsor times and sonoma west times & news
Graphic California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Heather Bailey and Katherine Minkiewicz SONOMA WEST PUBLISHERS
Continued from page 1 “At the warm edges of the marine species' ranges, the study found, more than half had disappeared from historical territory as a result of warming. The rate for these local extinctions is twice that seen on land.” Even just a degree or half-degree boost, the study found, can lead to trouble finding food, reproducing and other devastating effects. While some species will be able to migrate to new territory, others — coral and sea anemones, for example — can't move and will simply go extinct. According to a study from OEHHA, during the 2014-15 marine heat wave, a variety of marine animals including fish, sea turtles and red crabs were found in waters farther north than their usual distribution. Mass strandings of some marine mammals and sea birds also occurred. Locally, some temperature change can be normally expected, according to Andre Boustany, principal fisheries investigator at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but recent years have seen wild swings in normally more predictable patterns. “(The) El Niño (weather event) is fairly frequent but there are some indicators that those are becoming more frequent likely due to climate change,” Boustany said. He noted that the El Niño event, which is a warming of waters in the Pacific, in 2014 and 2015 were particularly strong. Another likely cause of increased water temperatures locally, according to Boustany, is the “warm blob” phenomenon. Warm water temperatures are usually in the tropical regions, but this was unusually warm water way up north near Washington state. “It propagated down to Northern California and was here before the
last big El Niño. That is something that we are not used to seeing. This warm blob was really something new,” he said. According to the U.S. National Park Service, the blob is thought to have been caused by warmer air temperatures, changes in wind speed, duration and direction and a persistent mass of warmer water near the equator. He added that global impacts in temperatures could also cause changes to the California coastal waters. The resulting effect is a chain reaction that starts with little things like zooplankton and goes all the way to the top of the food chain. “All of these things are related,” Boustany said.
Ocean acidification
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “The ocean has become more acidic over the past few decades because of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which dissolves in the water. Higher acidity affects the balance of minerals in the water, which can make it more difficult for certain marine animals to build their protective skeletons or shells.” According to the OEHHA, “ocean acidification adds to the already naturally high levels of CO2 in the waters off California. Here, a winddriven process called “upwelling” brings deeper, CO2-rich waters to the surface. As a result, California’s coastal waters may reach acidic conditions before other areas of the world, allowing for the early examination of the impacts of ocean acidification. These impacts include shell dissolution and inhibited shell or skeletal formation in some species; impaired physiology and behavior in fish which are sensitive to even small changes in water chemistry and could result in altered pH in fish blood and impair hearing or the ability of fish to navigate effectively; disrupted marine ecology; increased impacts of other stressors on coastal ecosystems; and potential losses to
the seafood industry as it could impact many economically important species and California’s commercial and recreational seafood industries are critical to its coastal economies. “When you have effects of upwelling and more (carbon dioxide), that can cause a low pH,” Boustany explained, “it can affect zooplankton and even commercially important animals like oysters. Low pH dissolves their shells.” In California, the OEHHA monitors pH levels from a sensor array near Santa Barbara. They measure carbon levels and pH both near the shore and 140 miles out to sea. While both areas show increases, the change is more dramatic closer to shore. However, data for California has only been collected since 2010, and is not considered a large enough data set to create conclusions from. A similar monitoring station set up in the Hawaiian islands has been operational since 1988 and represents the longest-running measurement of ocean acidity in the Pacific. The data collected there shows the CO2 levels have increased steadily at the rate of 1.92 microatmospheres per year (μatm/year), and the pH has decreased at the rate of 0.002 μatm/year per year from 1988 to 2015. With warmer water and a lower pH, there can also be a change in oxygen levels in the water. “There has been an increase in the frequency of marine dead zones, low oxygen areas. It’s associated with things like red tide and algae blooms,” Boustany said. According to the Smithsonian, a particularly bad algal bloom will not only smell nasty enough to repel beachgoers, it can also cause illness to swimmers. Beach closures become necessary and can cause significant losses for the tourism industry. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates toxic algal blooms account for the annual loss of roughly $82 million in sales for restaurants, hotels and other
tourism industries within the United States. Shellfish, and all the things that eat them, naturally accumulate the toxins as they filter algae from the water for food. Consumption of tainted shellfish can lead to a serious illness that includes digestion issues, tingling sensations, a rapid heartbeat, coordination problems or even death when medical treatment is not quickly sought after. The recent Domoic acid event that sickened and killed hundreds of local marine mammals (and a few people) and delayed and damaged the local Dungeness crab season is an example of the type of algal bloom event that can have devastating impacts across the board.
Rising sea levels
According to the OEHHA, heatdriven expansion of ocean water accounts for about half of the global sea level rise in the past century. The other major contributor to sea level rise is water from melting ice caps, polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers. Sea levels have generally risen along the California coast, consistent with global observations. Since, according to the OEHHA, more than 70% of California’s residents live and work in coastal counties, where almost 86% of the state’s total gross domestic product is generated, managing these impacts is crucial for humans and wildlife alike. The OEHHA uses three tide gages — in Crescent City, La Jolla and San Francisco — to measure sea rise. According to their research, sea level has risen by about seven inches since the year 1900 in San Francisco and by about six inches since 1924 at La Jolla. Sea levels generally peak during years when El Niño conditions are present, and levels at all three locations on the graph rose in relation to both El Niño conditions and the warm blob. Sea level rise can have significant impacts on human populations, but it can also affect things like availability of breeding and pupping grounds for seal and sea lion species and damage fragile estuaries and river flows that fish, birds and invertebrates count on for breeding, feeding and raising young.