Month: September 2023

Remote Seminar – Star Track: Sea star wasting disease, sunflower sea star recovery, and potential consequences for kelp forest health

Sarah Johnson
Dr. Sarah Gravem, Oregon State University
Presenting: "Star Track: Sea star wasting disease, sunflower sea star recovery, and potential consequences for kelp forest health"

MLML Seminar | September 28th, 2023 at 4pm

Watch the Live Stream here or here

Bio:

I am a marine ecologist that works at the intersection of community and behavioral ecology. I focus on rocky intertidal and kelp forest ecosystems and am interested in how species interactions and communities are affected by climate change, environmental variation, and marine diseases. I study how predators affect prey populations and prey behavior, and am particularly interested in the resulting consequences of these key interactions for the rest of the players in the ecosystem.

As a leading member of the Pycnopodia Recovery Working Group, I was a lead author on the listing of the sunflower sea star as an endangered species through the IUCN Red List after its severe declines from wasting disease. I am actively working to understand and restore this species. This large predator has over 20 arms and can grow to the size of an extra large pizza. It is also a top predator, and its decline was followed by a rapid increase in its herbivorous sea urchin prey and a decline in kelp forests. I am working to understand basic demographic information on this star, and to understand whether it truly can support healthy kelp forests.

As a science advisor to the Oregon Kelp Alliance (https://www.oregonkelp.com/), I am working to actively restore Oregon's once lush kelp forests by working with a diverse group of researchers, commercial divers, aquaculture specialists, marine tourism businesses, restaurants, local tribes, and more. We are testing and implementing several tools to reduce sea urchin densities and support kelp recovery.

Remote Seminar – Using field work and otolith analysis to train a diverse workforce in Fisheries Ecology – September 21, 2023

Sarah Johnson
Dr. Jose Marin Jarrin, Cal Poly Humboldt
Presenting: "Using field work and otolith analysis to train a diverse workforce in Fisheries Ecology"

MLML Seminar | September 21st, 2023 at 4pm

Watch the Live Stream here or here

Abstract:

Cal Poly Humboldt has a culturally diverse student body that has led its faculty and staff to pursue the creation of a culturally sustaining environment. In order to achieve this goal, Humboldt first partnered with ESCALA, a professional development organization, to transform our instructional culture to benefit Latinx and Hispanic students, and then, developed an internal program called Creando Conciencia (Create Awareness, in Spanish) to continue this effort. Besides these university-wide efforts, in our lab we have partnered with tribal nations, and city, state and federal institutions in order to provide our diverse students with the best learning environment possible. In this presentation, I will discuss two projects describing the status of Night Smelt and Redtail Surfperch in sandy beach surf zones in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, that our students are currently carrying out. These two fish species are of cultural, commercial and ecological importance, who despite inhabiting the same habitat appear to be experiencing opposite population trends. Finally, I will briefly introduce a new program funded by a University of California Office of the President California Climate Action Seed grant that will allow us to expand our collaborations to five coastal tribal nations and will provide capacity building and priority species research in marine and estuarine habitats.

Bio:

I am originally from Guayaquil, Ecuador where I obtained a B.Sc. in Biology at the University of Guayaquil. Thanks to a Fulbright Scholarship, I moved to Charleston, Oregon to pursue a M.Sc. in Marine Biology at the University of Oregon’s Oregon Institute of Marine Biology. I then moved two hours north, to Newport Oregon, where I obtained a Ph.D. in Fisheries Science from Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center. After finishing my Ph.D., my family and I moved to Mount Pleasant Michigan, where I was a postdoctoral fellow at Central Michigan University, and Guayaquil, Ecuador, where I was a research and teaching fellow at Escuela Superior Politecnica del Litoral. Before joining Cal Poly Humboldt, I worked at the Charles Darwin Research Station (CDRS) in Galapagos, Ecuador, as a Senior Fisheries Ecologist. During that time, I was also the interim science coordinator for CDRS for nine months, and participated in the sharks, seabirds, seamounts and climate change programs. These experiences have led me to pursue research geared towards high-use and/or low-information/data-limited fisheries species, and towards the provision and analysis of vital early and adult life history data of fishes and crustaceans, especially with respect to impacts from local fishery pressures and climate change. In order to achieve this goal, I use a combination of field, laboratory analysis and numerical modeling approaches.

Remote seminar – Are they worth the woes? Evaluating fluorescence-based sensors for a rapid alert of sewage contamination in the Tijuana River Estuary – September 14

Taylor Azizeh
Dr. Natalie Mladenov, San Diego State University
Presenting: "Are they worth the woes? Evaluating fluorescence-based sensors for a rapid alert of sewage contamination in the Tijuana River Estuary"

MLML Seminar | September 14th, 2023 at 4pm

Watch the Live Stream here or here

Abstract:

Due to the public health risks of wastewater contamination of coastal waters worldwide, there is a need for rapid tracking of sewage-laden flows. Fluorescence-based submersible sensors have been used for monitoring organic contaminants in natural waters; however, their potential to serve as a real-time warning of high bacteria concentrations and wastewater pollution under estuarine conditions with tidal influence remains to be evaluated. The Tijuana River Estuary has been plagued by decades of cross-border sewage flow that poses major public health risks for beach goers, Navy Seals, and border patrol agents, and has resulted in long-term beach closures on both sides of the US-Mexico border. This study assessed the use of submersible, in-situ tryptophan-like (TRP) and humic-like (CDOM) fluorescence sensors for tracking fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) concentrations in real-time in the Tijuana River Estuary during three conditions: 1) dry weather without cross-border sewage flow, 2) dry weather with cross-border flow, and 3) wet weather with cross-border flow. FIB concentrations of samples collected during scenario #2, dry weather with cross-border flow, were most significantly correlated with submersible TRP and CDOM sensor fluorescence. TRP and CDOM fluorescence were also measured using a benchtop, scanning fluorometer with instrument corrections, which yielded significant correlation (p < 0.001) with FIB concentrations under all hydrologic conditions, reflecting the superior performance of the benchtop instrument. Regular maintenance conducted weekly or fortnightly was required to minimize sensor fouling. Also, the presence of high strength wastewater resulted in an inner filter effect, which requires post-processing corrections or data flagging as part of quality control efforts. Overall, we conclude that TRP and CDOM sensors are currently able to provide real-time warning of sewage contamination. However, quantifying the magnitude of contamination is not yet possible in real-time, and efforts are underway in our research groups to achieve this goal.