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[Chris Butler-Minor] Well, hello everyone. 
Welcome to tonight's presentation. 

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I would like to ask all of our panelists 
and helpers to turn on their cameras. 

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Ok, wonderful. So, again, I want to welcome 
you and I want to run through a quick,  

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little slideshow as an introduction 
to tonight's speaker, and, of course,  

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introduce you to all these other lovely 
folks that are on the line with me. 

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And we'll give you some 
logistics and that sort of thing. 

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So, we have quite a few people that are still 
joining, so, we're probably going to give them  

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about another minute, and I'll set up my 
little presentation for 

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Gavin and I, which you might be able to 
figure who that is by his name on his box. 

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So, once again, hello and welcome. We're pleased 
to have you join on the Office of National Marine  

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Sanctuaries Webinar Series Platform for 
Coconut Palms, Seabirds, Coral Reefs,  

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and Sea Level Rise with Dr. Alex Wegmann.
This webinar series provides formal and  

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informal educators with educational 
and scientific expertise, resources,  

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and training to support ocean and climate 
literacy in the classroom and beyond. 

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I would like to start with an acknowledgement 
that we are broadcasting from the traditional  

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lands of the Lower Elwha Klallam
Tribe and near the site of their  

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historical village Tse-whit-zen.
The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe is a  

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sovereign federally recognized Indian Nation 
with its own constitution and government. 

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The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe resides in the 
Lower Elwha River Valley and adjacent bluffs on  

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the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula, 
just west of Port Angeles, Washington. 

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And as recognized by the United States 
in the 1855 Treaty of Point No Point,  

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the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe has lived 
in this time since time immemorial. 

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I'm sorry, lived in this 
area since time immemorial. 

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And their current line base is, was, initially 
acquired by the US in trust for the tribe in the  

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mid-thirties, and those lands, these lands, were 
proclaimed as the Lower Elwha Reservation in 1968. 

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And today tribal lands include about a thousand 
acres of land on and near the Elwha River,  

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where they continue to be active in stewardship 
that protects, enhances, and restores land, air,  

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and water resources. And, of course, 
they focus on environmental health for  

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generations to come. And I hope you'll join 
me in supporting their efforts and successes. 

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So, my name is Chris Butler-Minor, and I'm 
the Community Engagement Specialist for  

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Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, 
and I'll be facilitating today's webinar. 

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Also joining us is Gavin Truckenmiller.
He is the Education and Outreach  

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Assistant with Feiro Marine Life Center.
This event is co-hosted by Olympic Coast  

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National Marine Sanctuary and Feiro
Marine Life Center, and it's the  

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first in this year's series of Speaker Series.
And our speaker series brings you marine focused  

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topics of interest from subject matter experts.
I'd also like to introduce our AmeriCorps  

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service members, Stori Smith and 
Sarah Luigard, who will be helping  

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out this evening with questions, aka chats.
And they are both serving with Washington  

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Service Corps as Environmental Education and 
Stewardship Specialists at the sanctuary. 

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So now just a few little 
logistics. During the presentation,  

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all attendees will be in listen only mode.
You're welcome to type questions into the  

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question box in the bottom of the control 
panel on the right. Well, it's usually  

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on the right-hand side of your screen.
And just want to assure you that we'll  

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have time to answer questions at the end 
of the presentation, but you might want to  

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use that question box in case you think you might 
forget exactly how you wanted to ask the question. 

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We'll also use the question box to have you let 
us know if you're having any technical issues,  

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and we'll be monitoring those incoming 
questions and technical issues, and we'll  

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respond to them as quickly as we can.
I also wanted to let you know that we  

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are recording this session 
and will share the recording  

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with registered participants via an email,
and it will also be posted on the National Marine  

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Sanctuaries website along with closed captioning.
And you, of course, do not have to memorize  

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this website, but that is what's 
listed at the bottom of the slide 

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with Stori and Sarah's photos.
In addition, we greatly appreciate  

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any feedback that you may have for 
us that will help us improve these  

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experiences as we continue on into the year.
So, I would like to ask you to please,  

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take a few moments to complete a short 
evaluation following this presentation. 

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OK, so I'd like to give you a brief introduction 
to the National Marine Sanctuary System. 

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Over 50 years ago, the US ushered in 
a new era of ocean conservation by  

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creating the National Marine Sanctuary System.
And this system works with diverse partners  

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and stakeholders to promote responsible and 
sustainable ocean uses that ensure the health  

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of our most valuable ocean places.
A healthy ocean is the basis for  

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thriving recreation, tourism, and economic 
activities that drive coastal economies,  

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plus they are just amazing places to visit.
Just as a side note, the Office of National  

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Marine Sanctuaries also leads the National Marine 
Protected Areas Center, which is the nation's  

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hub for building innovative partnerships 
and tools to protect our special ocean. 

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So, as you can see from the map, sanctuaries are 
located around most US shorelines and coasts. 

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NOAA’s office of National Marine Sanctuaries 
serves as a trustee for a network of underwater  

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areas encompassing more than 620,000 square 
miles of marine and Great Lakes waters. 

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This network includes a system of 15 National 
Marine Sanctuaries plus Papahānaumokuākea and  

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Rose Atoll Marine National Monuments.
And the sanctuary that I work for,  

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which is Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, 
is located on the outer coast of Washington State.  

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And it's within the usual and accustomed fishing 
and hunting areas of the Hoh Tribe, Makah Tribe,  

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Quileute Tribe, and the Quinault Indian Nation.
So, in short, you can say that sanctuaries are  

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areas of the marine environment with 
special conservation, recreational,  

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ecological, historical, cultural, 
archeological, or aesthetic qualities. 

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Few places on the planet can compete with the 
diversity of the National Marine Sanctuary System,  

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which protects America's most iconic natural and cultural marine  

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resources. And so, we invite you to celebrate, 
discover, explore, enjoy, and save spectacular  

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National Marine Sanctuaries. Now, I'd like to 
turn the presentation over to Gavin for a moment. 

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[Gavin Truckenmiller] Hello, as Chris mentioned, 
I'm Gavin from Feiro Marine Life Center. Feiro  

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Marine Life Center is an aquarium in downtown 
Port Angeles, Washington, founded in 1981 by  

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community leader and educator, Arthur D. Feiro.
We specialize in education and feature a range  

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of local intertidal creatures 
in interactive exhibits. 

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I'm glad you all could make it today, 
and I look forward to the presentation. 

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Back to you, Chris.
[Chris Butler-Minor] Thanks, Gavin. 

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OK, it is my pleasure to be able to introduce 
you to tonight's speaker, Dr. Alex Wegmann.  

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He’s the Island Resilience Scientist with the 
Nature Conservancy, and as Lead Scientist for  

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the Nature Conservancy in California, Dr. Wegmann 
works in thematic areas of land-sea connectivity, 

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invasive species, seabird restoration, natural 
climate solutions, coral reef resilience,  

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pelagic conservation, sustainable fisheries, 
and the application of biotechnology-based  

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solutions to conservation challenges.
And his responsibilities–apparently,  

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he has time for something else–include advancing 
cutting-edge science to inform investment and  

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actions at Palmyra Atoll, throughout the US 
Pacific region, and at global scales. 

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Alex also organizes and participates on 
multilateral teams to drive scientific  

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research agendas focused on the Nature 
Conservancy's priority conservation challenges. 

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So, we are pleased to have Dr. Alex Wegmann 
join us as he takes us to learn how a remote  

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island in the Pacific Ocean shares how 
connected we are to the rest of the world,  

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or it is to the rest of the world. So, without 
further ado, please welcome Dr. Alex Wegmann. 

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[Dr. Wegmann] Excellent. 

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[Dr. Wegmann] Thank you so much, Chris. And hello 
everyone. Thank you for joining this evening's  

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conversation, and just give me one second 
as I get the screen transferred over to me. 

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[Dr. Wegmann] OK, thank you,  

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so over the next 45-ish minutes, I will do my 
best to turn what looks like–with this title  

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here–what looks like the web browsing history of a 
marine science student desperate for a term paper,  

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into a coherent story about island 
ecosystems, some of the global and local  

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challenges they face, and why we should have hope.
But first, I'd like to share just a tiny bit about  

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myself, so you can understand my obsession 
with islands, and where this all came from. 

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So, I was born and raised in Port Angeles, 
Washington, which is arguably the best town in  

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the world, with ready access to skiing, surfing, 
marmots, whales, and everything in between. 

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And as Chris stated, Palmyra, or sorry, Port 
Angeles also happens to be where the Olympic Coast  

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National Marine Sanctuary is headquartered. And I 
did have a short cameo working for the sanctuary. 

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I think it was right after I left 
college, I volunteered there,  

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and I helped articulate a porpoise skeleton that 
is now hanging in the sanctuary office. So that's,  

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that's my point of pride with the 
Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary. 

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So, after, after, when I got to be college 
age, I left Port Angeles and studied  

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anthropology at Linfield College, and focused 
on culturally-aligned non-timber forest product  

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harvesting patterns on Washington's Olympic 
Peninsula. And towards the end of my degree,  

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I started to think that I'd rather focus on the 
nature part of the nature plus people equation. 

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So, I signed up with the Student Conservation 
Association, and was placed at the Cabeza  

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Prieta National Wildlife Refuge on the 
southern border of central Arizona. 

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Here, I help the refuge biologist 
assess the use of artificial wells  

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by endangered Sonoran Pronghorn Antelope.
And after my stint was over, the refuge,  

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the refuge biologist who had previously 
worked in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands,  

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asked if I'd like to go there next, and so 
I said, “Sure,” and then, “Where are the  

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Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and what are they?”
So, shortly, shortly afterwards, I shipped off to  

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the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. And 
the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands has  

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just an absolutely amazing geography. 
It's the uninhabited western end of  

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the Hawaiian archipelago, which is now known as 
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Here,  

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in this island and ocean wonderland,
I was introduced to and fell impossibly  

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in love with remote tropical island ecosystems. 
The dynamic interaction of land and sea, the mix  

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of birds, corals, sharks, plants, crabs, and how 
the scene never stops changing, just blew my mind. 

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So, I spent five years here on and 
around the islands in Papahānaumokuākea 

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as a US Fish and Wildlife 
Service biological technician 

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until I realized I should probably go back to 
school to convert my anthropology degree into  

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something more relevant to my new love 
of islands without any people on them. 

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So, this took me to Palmyra Atoll 
on the Northern Line Islands,  

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where I studied the intersection of invasive 
rodents, land crabs, and trees to earn a PhD  

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in Botany at the University of Hawaii.
While at Palmyra Atoll, I met a team from  

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the non-profit organization 
called Island Conservation,  

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whose mission is to protect island ecosystems by 
removing the primary threat of invasive species. 

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Stars aligned, and I joined Island Conservation’s 
team and spent about the next 10 years designing  

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and implementing conservation projects on US 
Pacific Islands and throughout Micronesia, 

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including the eradication of 
invasive rats from Palmyra Atoll,  

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which totally solidified my obsession with this 
particular place and with atolls in general. 

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In 2016, I joined the Nature Conservancy as 
the Director of their Palmyra program. And  

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I spent several years building an 
atoll focused conservation science  

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enterprise that we will discuss in a little bit.
I’ll discuss in more detail a little bit later. 

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So now, I am the lead scientist for the Nature 
Conservancy's Island Resilience Strategy. 

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Which is co-led by my colleague, dear friend, 
and conservation hero, Dr. Nick Holmes. 

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Together we work with island governments, NGOs, 
and communities to identify, understand, and solve  

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pressing conservation challenges for island 
ecosystems and the people depending on them. 

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As you can see, I'm a little bit obsessed 
with islands. And I think you should be,  

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too, because they play an outsize role in 
the biological integrity of our planet. 

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Islands only represent 5% of the Earth's land 
area, yet they hold a big slice of the global  

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biodiversity pie, and, unfortunately 
paired with this, they hold a huge  

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proportion of the known species extinctions.
A huge proportion of the known species extinctions  

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have occurred on islands. To me and many others, 
this means islands are really, really important. 

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The United States is not often thought of as an 
island nation, but we are with more than 19,000  

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islands within our jurisdiction. And now, you 
shouldn't be surprised to learn that nearly  

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half of all plants and animals protected 
under the Endangered Species Act and the  

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Migratory Bird Treaty Act are found on islands.
We obviously don't have time to explore all  

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19,000 US Islands. So, I'm going to play to my 
bias and drag us back to the tropical Pacific,  

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where we will spend a little bit 
of time learning about atolls. 

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This collection of US Islands is jointly managed 
by NOAA and the US Fish and Wildlife Service as  

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four Marine National Monuments. Again, we 
don't have time to go deep on all four, 

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so, I'm gonna focus us on Palmyra Atoll, which 
is one unit of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine  

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National Monument. But before we go there, I think 
we need to talk a little bit more about atolls. 

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I think I've, kind of, finally accepted that not 
everyone is as obsessed with islands as I am,  

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and not everyone knows what an atoll is.
So, I'm gonna focus on atolls for the rest  

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of this webinar. So, let's, let's learn 
some basics here, and that'll help us,  

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help us move forward through this story.
An atoll is a cluster of low coral islands  

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surrounding a shallow lagoon 
surrounded by steeply sloped, 

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steeply sloped coral reef, all of which 
sits on top of a submerged marine volcano. 

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Atolls are formed when marine volcanoes 
erupt and rise above the ocean surface– 

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for example, the main Hawaiian Islands, 
we’re very familiar with those–and then  

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sink back into the Earth's crust.
Coral grows around the perimeter  

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of the sinking volcano, and if coral growth 
keeps up with the volcano's rate of sinking, 

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the coral will create a limestone platform upon 
which sits the atoll’s reef, islands, and lagoons,  

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as we see in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
If you have heard about atolls recently,  

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there is a good chance it was in one of many 
popular news stories about island nations  

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readying to abandon drowning atolls because of global climate impacts–notably, sea level rise. 

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And, and sea level rise is being driven by 
the global warming trend due to increasing  

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atmospheric carbon.
There is truth in such  

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stories. The planet is warming.
And, yes, sea level rise is, is,  

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is happening. And, yes, human infrastructure 
on atolls–whether it's roads or runways or  

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buildings–are at risk of inundation. And this is 
an attention-worthy crisis for atoll communities,  

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which total about a million people globally.
Where the news stories may be a little bit  

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wrong is the projection of certain doom.
There is an emerging body of evidence  

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that atoll ecosystems have and will continue to 
exhibit resilience in the face of sea level rise,  

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if they are given the chance to do so.
It could be that the existential threat  

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to atoll islands is not rising sea levels, per se, 
but a loss in natural capacity for atolls to grow  

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and adjust to rising sea levels.
We'll get into more; we'll get  

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into this a little bit more later.
So, atoll islands grow and shift position  

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according to natural processes like coral growth 
and bioerosion that produce sediment. Then wave  

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action transports the sediment across the reef 
platform where it eventually accumulates on high  

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points and creates or adds to atoll islands. When 
everything is working as it should, atoll islands, 

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and the surrounding reefs providing the sediment, 
can grow at a rate that will keep up with the  

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median projections for sea level rise.
Unfortunately, atoll ecosystems face many  

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of the same challenges faced by coastal 
habitats around the globe. Overfishing,  

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maladaptive coastal armoring–like, like, 
misplaced seawalls– wastewater release,  

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and invasive species and habitat modification 
that all work against an atoll's ability to  

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respond dynamically to sea level rise.
So, yes, atoll islands and the communities  

00:19:46.280 --> 00:19:50.920
on them are at risk from our changing 
climate, but the situation is not  

00:19:50.920 --> 00:19:58.000
hopeless, and we think there are a few key 
conservation interventions that could help. 

00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:01.760
This is where I'll jump us back to 
the Pacific Remote Islands Marine  

00:20:01.760 --> 00:20:07.000
National Monument and Palmyra Atoll.
Palmyra Atoll is at the north end of  

00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:10.840
the Northern Line Island archipelago.
It's about a thousand miles south and a  

00:20:10.840 --> 00:20:16.920
little bit west of Hawaii, it’s six degrees 
north of the equator, and it’s just this  

00:20:16.920 --> 00:20:23.520
fantastic ecosystem that sits right in the 
center of the Intertropical Convergence Zone,  

00:20:23.520 --> 00:20:30.960
which is this very wet band of weather that 
hovers mostly just north of the equator. 

00:20:30.960 --> 00:20:38.880
Palmyra has 580 acres of land that's dispersed 
across 39 islands, and it's surrounded by  

00:20:38.880 --> 00:20:44.320
6,500 acres of coral reef.
Palmyra has been discovered  

00:20:44.320 --> 00:20:49.160
several times over past millennia.
There is no proof that Polynesian voyagers  

00:20:49.160 --> 00:20:55.720
stopped at Palmyra while traveling between the 
Southern Hemisphere and Hawaii, but they may have.  

00:20:55.720 --> 00:21:01.120
And we kind of think they may have because 
there is a specific variety of coconut palm 

00:21:01.120 --> 00:21:08.160
found at Palmyra that experts–coconut palm 
experts–believe is associated with the early  

00:21:08.160 --> 00:21:14.680
migration of people across the Pacific.
So, we have that as an indicator that it’s  

00:21:14.680 --> 00:21:19.360
possible early voyagers, early Polynesian 
voyagers, could have stopped at Palmyra.  

00:21:19.360 --> 00:21:25.360
The first written account of Palmyra came 
from a British sea captain, Captain Fanning, 

00:21:25.360 --> 00:21:31.440
when he almost grounded his boat on the atoll 
during the morning. It’s a fantastic story  

00:21:31.440 --> 00:21:37.000
where he had these horrible nightmarish dreams 
that woke him up in the middle of the night,  

00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:43.080
and he ran up on deck and noticed that 
the ship's watch wasn't paying attention, 

00:21:43.080 --> 00:21:48.440
and the ship was just about to run aground 
on a reef. And he directs the ship away and  

00:21:48.440 --> 00:21:52.880
saves the ship. That reef was Palmyra.
He mapped it, put it on the chart,  

00:21:52.880 --> 00:21:57.200
and sailed away. That was the first 
written description of Palmyra. 

00:21:57.200 --> 00:22:00.000
Shortly after this, the Kingdom 
of Hawaii claimed Palmyra,  

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:05.160
thinking it may be a good place to mine phosphate.
Well, it turned out not to be a good place to mine  

00:22:05.160 --> 00:22:11.720
phosphate because it's too wet. There's too much 
rain, and we'll get into phosphate and guano in a  

00:22:11.720 --> 00:22:18.520
little bit here, and you'll understand that.
So, shortly after the Kingdom of Hawaii  

00:22:18.520 --> 00:22:24.320
claimed Palmyra, the atoll was sold to 
a Honolulu based family that initiated  

00:22:24.320 --> 00:22:30.080
a copra plantation across the atoll’s islands.
What this means is that much of Palmyra’s native  

00:22:30.080 --> 00:22:35.640
rainforest was replaced with coconut palms 
to produce copra, or dried coconut meat,  

00:22:35.640 --> 00:22:42.080
that is squeezed to produce coconut oil.
Then, World War II happened. 

00:22:42.080 --> 00:22:47.760
And the US Government became interested in 
Palmyra as a logistics hub for the war effort. 

00:22:47.760 --> 00:22:53.760
The government annexed Palmyra from the private 
owners and significantly changed the atoll by  

00:22:53.760 --> 00:23:00.560
dredging the lagoons, connecting all of the then 
52 little islands. They connected them all  

00:23:00.560 --> 00:23:07.640
with roads and causeways. And at this time, 
invasive rats were also introduced to Palmyra. 

00:23:07.640 --> 00:23:14.960
And the cumulative impact of this very brief 
period on the atoll's ecosystem was significant. 

00:23:14.960 --> 00:23:19.280
But after World War II ended, 
Palmyra was mostly left alone, 

00:23:19.280 --> 00:23:25.320
and the atoll ecosystem did what ecosystems 
do best when they are left alone: it healed. 

00:23:25.320 --> 00:23:30.640
In the year 2000, the family that eventually 
regained their ownership of Palmyra following  

00:23:30.640 --> 00:23:36.800
World War II put the atoll on the market, 
and the Nature Conservancy and the US Fish  

00:23:36.800 --> 00:23:43.040
and Wildlife Service collaboratively purchased 
Palmyra, setting it on a conservation trajectory. 

00:23:43.040 --> 00:23:49.360
Today, Palmyra is a nature preserve managed by 
the Nature Conservancy within a national wildlife  

00:23:49.360 --> 00:23:55.200
refuge managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service
within a Marine National Monument co-managed  

00:23:55.200 --> 00:24:02.000
by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA.
Palmyra is arguably one of the best protected  

00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:07.800
island ecosystems in the world, so it’s a scenario 
we affectionately refer to as the turducken of  

00:24:07.800 --> 00:24:13.840
conservation, given all those layers.
And Palmyra’s intact island and reef  

00:24:13.840 --> 00:24:18.280
habitats are home to some of the 
healthiest coral reef ever studied. 

00:24:18.280 --> 00:24:24.240
Palmyra has a robust community of seabirds, 
a diverse community of land crabs–including  

00:24:24.240 --> 00:24:29.200
the world's largest terrestrial 
invertebrate, the coconut crab– 

00:24:29.200 --> 00:24:34.160
and a recovering yet dynamic lagoon 
ecosystem that was, as I mentioned before,  

00:24:34.160 --> 00:24:39.480
heavily impacted during that World War II period.
Palmyra’s seabird community is of particular  

00:24:39.480 --> 00:24:46.240
interest. Well at least it is to me and my 
conservation colleagues. At present 11 seabird  

00:24:46.240 --> 00:24:52.280
species breed and roost in Palmyra, including the 
world's second largest red-footed booby colony. We  

00:24:52.280 --> 00:24:58.880
think eight additional species, eight additional 
seabird species, used to call Palmyra home but  

00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:05.040
were likely extirpated during the World War II 
era, habitat disturbance, and really, probably,  

00:25:05.040 --> 00:25:09.880
the introduction of predatory rats. All eight 
species that we think are missing would have  

00:25:09.880 --> 00:25:15.880
been very susceptible to rat predation.
Palmyra is a great place to see a thriving  

00:25:15.880 --> 00:25:20.440
atoll ecosystem, but it's kind of 
even a better place to study one. 

00:25:20.440 --> 00:25:25.200
When TNC and the US Fish and 
Wildlife Service purchased Palmyra, 

00:25:25.200 --> 00:25:29.800
they did so with the intent of supporting 
science and conservation actions,  

00:25:29.800 --> 00:25:37.680
feeding back into the management and protection of 
Palmyra, and island and reef ecosystems elsewhere. 

00:25:37.680 --> 00:25:42.960
The studies shown here – led by University 
of California, Santa Barbara professor,

00:25:42.960 --> 00:25:52.120
Doug McCauley–described a positively correlated 
interaction chain whereby native forest habitat  

00:25:52.120 --> 00:25:57.320
is associated with seabird abundance,
and seabird abundance is associated with  

00:25:58.120 --> 00:26:03.500
beneficial nutrients–notably nitrogen and 
phosphorus– that are deposited by the sea  

00:26:03.500 --> 00:26:10.040
birds as guano. The guano fertilizes 
the plants and runs into the marine  

00:26:10.040 --> 00:26:16.880
environment with Palmyra’s copious rainfall.
In the ocean, the added nitrogen and phosphorus  

00:26:16.880 --> 00:26:23.120
fertilizes the phytoplankton, which are 
fed on by planktivores like manta rays. 

00:26:23.120 --> 00:26:29.680
So, what the study found, which is so cool, 
is that native trees equal more seabirds,  

00:26:29.680 --> 00:26:34.760
and more seabirds equals more guano, and 
more guano equals more phytoplankton,  

00:26:34.760 --> 00:26:39.600
and more phytoplankton equals happy fish.
What a cool story. 

00:26:39.600 --> 00:26:44.520
Another ambitious study by, again, 
University of California, Santa Barbara,  

00:26:44.520 --> 00:26:51.200
Professor Hillary Young, found that seabirds 
really do not like to nest in coconut palms. 

00:26:51.200 --> 00:26:57.000
And because of this, coconut palms exclude 
the benefits associated with seabird guano. 

00:26:57.000 --> 00:27:03.480
And this exclusion has cascading effects on 
soil nutrient loading, terrestrial biodiversity,  

00:27:03.480 --> 00:27:09.520
and overall biomass of native species.
So, replacing native atoll forests  

00:27:09.520 --> 00:27:13.800
with coconut palms seems like a bad 
thing from the atoll’s perspective. 

00:27:13.800 --> 00:27:18.920
OK, so, remember how earlier I said I 
led the eradication of invasive rats  

00:27:18.920 --> 00:27:24.360
from Palmyra while working for the non-profit 
organization Island Conservation? Well, yeah,  

00:27:24.360 --> 00:27:30.000
we did that, and it was successful. It was a 
fantastic project. Palmyra has no more rats,  

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:36.400
and most of the ecosystem responses to this have 
been amazing. Palmyra's huge crab population  

00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:44.600
is off the charts now. However, there was one 
response that didn't really make us very happy. 

00:27:44.600 --> 00:27:49.600
Rats were the only impactful 
coconut palm predator at Palmyra,  

00:27:49.600 --> 00:27:56.800
where 98% of all coconuts that dispersed 
from the palm crowns to the forest floor were  

00:27:56.800 --> 00:28:03.400
killed and eaten by rats when rats were present.
A study led by Island Conservation scientist Coral  

00:28:03.400 --> 00:28:11.400
Wolf showed that with rats gone, coconut palms had 
no limits, and they started to rapidly outcompete  

00:28:11.960 --> 00:28:17.280
the native trees for available habitat.
And, kind of along a similar thread,  

00:28:17.280 --> 00:28:23.680
a recent study led by TNC’s scientist 
Kate Longley-Wood showed that coconut  

00:28:23.680 --> 00:28:31.560
palm-dominated forest sequesters significantly 
less carbon and released more dissolved organic  

00:28:31.560 --> 00:28:36.600
carbon into the nearshore marine environment 
with the latter, the dissolved organic carbon,  

00:28:36.600 --> 00:28:43.680
having direct health impacts to corals.
So, this picture of rats, coconut palms,  

00:28:43.680 --> 00:28:48.680
not being great things for island or for atoll 
ecosystems was starting to come into focus. 

00:28:48.680 --> 00:28:54.800
So meanwhile, over in the Indian Ocean, in 
the Chagos Archipelago, a United Kingdom  

00:28:54.800 --> 00:29:00.760
based research team started to connect the dots.
They took advantage of a scenario where some atoll  

00:29:00.760 --> 00:29:07.000
islands in the archipelago had rats, and coconut 
palms, and few seabirds; and some islands had  

00:29:07.000 --> 00:29:15.120
no rats, few coconut palms and lots of seabirds.
This research team found that coral reef adjacent  

00:29:15.120 --> 00:29:21.160
to islands with lots of seabirds grew faster 
and showed greater tolerance to thermal stress,  

00:29:21.160 --> 00:29:27.320
like ocean warming, than coral reef growing 
adjacent to islands with fewer seabirds. 

00:29:28.360 --> 00:29:33.040
So, with this, we have strong evidence that 
points to the seabird-derived nutrients  

00:29:33.040 --> 00:29:39.640
subsidy as a key driver for coral 
reef health in this kind of scenario,  

00:29:39.640 --> 00:29:45.760
for coral reef health in this kind of scenario.
With the pile of evidence for beneficial land-sea  

00:29:45.760 --> 00:29:51.520
linkages in front of us, we, at The Nature 
Conservancy, recognized our approach to  

00:29:51.520 --> 00:29:59.720
conservation science at Palmyra was, maybe 
lacking some things. So, we reorganized. 

00:29:59.720 --> 00:30:05.760
And we created the Climate Adaptation and 
Resilience Laboratory, which is a science  

00:30:05.760 --> 00:30:11.200
enterprise focused on understanding and 
then leveraging linkages between islands,  

00:30:11.200 --> 00:30:18.440
reef, and the surrounding open ocean habitat 
to better protect atoll ecosystems at large. 

00:30:18.440 --> 00:30:24.520
One of the flagship projects launched 
with the Climate Adaptation Resilience  

00:30:24.520 --> 00:30:31.120
Lab was the Palmyra Atoll Rainforest and 
Reef Resilience Project, which is way  

00:30:31.120 --> 00:30:37.440
too long of a title. So, we just call it PARP.
With PARP, we hope to demonstrate that relatively  

00:30:37.440 --> 00:30:43.720
simple interventions, like removing seabird 
predators and re-establishing seabird habitat  

00:30:43.720 --> 00:30:51.480
on Atoll Islands, will result in an increased 
seabird-derived nutrient benefit for the reef,  

00:30:51.480 --> 00:30:57.320
making the reef happier and more productive,
so, the whole atoll island sediment accretion  

00:30:57.320 --> 00:31:01.520
process remains intact despite 
global climate impacts like  

00:31:01.520 --> 00:31:08.480
sea level rise and ocean acidification.
When we started PARP in 2019, Palmyra had a  

00:31:08.480 --> 00:31:15.120
good amount of suitable seabird habitat, which is 
identified here as light green and yellow patches. 

00:31:15.120 --> 00:31:21.640
However, Palmyra also had lots of coconut 
palm forest remnant from the abandoned copra  

00:31:21.640 --> 00:31:27.160
plantation. And this really did nothing for the 
seabirds and thus did nothing for the atoll. 

00:31:27.800 --> 00:31:31.440
So, in collaboration with our 
US Fish and Wildlife Service and  

00:31:31.440 --> 00:31:37.560
Island Conservation partners, we got to it.
And more than one million coconut palms have  

00:31:37.560 --> 00:31:42.520
been removed so far, which puts us just 
about halfway done with the coconut palm  

00:31:42.520 --> 00:31:47.360
management piece of this project.
This is what Palmyra’s coconut palm  

00:31:47.360 --> 00:31:51.840
forests looked like when we started.
It was mostly palms with a few seabirds  

00:31:51.840 --> 00:31:58.840
nesting in the native trees around the edges.
This is what we are building: a native forest  

00:31:58.840 --> 00:32:04.480
emerging for the first time in 80 years.
It doesn't have very many seabirds in it  

00:32:04.480 --> 00:32:10.040
yet, but we are confident from early 
observations that in very short order,  

00:32:10.040 --> 00:32:15.200
Palmyra’s seabirds are going to be taking 
advantage of this newly available real estate. 

00:32:15.200 --> 00:32:21.120
So, as we learned before, seabird guano 
is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus. 

00:32:21.120 --> 00:32:25.080
And there is strong evidence that nitrogen 
and phosphorus are important to coral reef  

00:32:25.080 --> 00:32:30.080
resilience in the face of climate impacts, 
and more nitrogen and phosphorus conveyed  

00:32:30.080 --> 00:32:36.280
to Palmyra’s reef habitat is exactly 
what we are trying to achieve with PARP. 

00:32:36.280 --> 00:32:43.120
So, at this point, I realized I should probably 
put an underwater photo in the slideshow because,  

00:32:43.120 --> 00:32:49.200
you know, this is a Marine National Monument, 
this is a Marine National Monument webinar. So,  

00:32:49.200 --> 00:32:53.400
I threw this in to show that I care 
about something other than seabirds. 

00:32:53.400 --> 00:32:58.160
Sharks, like seabirds, are also important 
transporters of nutrients to coral reef  

00:32:58.160 --> 00:33:07.520
ecosystems, and every encouragement I give towards 
protecting seabirds applies to sharks as well. 

00:33:07.520 --> 00:33:13.680
OK, back to seabirds and PARP. With 
the PARP management action underway,  

00:33:13.680 --> 00:33:19.320
we needed to measure how seabirds responded 
to the shift from coconut palm-dominated 

00:33:19.320 --> 00:33:24.280
forest to native tree-dominated forest.
To do this, we implemented three different  

00:33:24.280 --> 00:33:29.560
measures of Palmyra’s seabird community.
We sent observers across the atoll to  

00:33:29.560 --> 00:33:34.600
count birds in designated plots,
we established acoustic recording  

00:33:34.600 --> 00:33:40.680
stations to measure the relative abundance 
of seabirds by their relative noisiness, and  

00:33:40.680 --> 00:33:48.200
we took aerial imagery of all the islands so we 
can count seabirds or seabird pixels from above. 

00:33:48.200 --> 00:33:53.200
Ultimately, we hope to use the 
drone-captured aerial imagery,  

00:33:53.200 --> 00:33:59.720
coupled with artificial intelligence, to simplify 
the assessment of Palmyra’s seabird community. 

00:33:59.720 --> 00:34:05.800
Palmyra is a remote, expensive place to work.
So, the more we can do with the fewer people on  

00:34:05.800 --> 00:34:12.960
the ground, the better. And Palmyra's rain 
forest, some of the trees there are over  

00:34:12.960 --> 00:34:16.400
100 feet tall. When you're standing 
in it trying to count the seabirds, 

00:34:16.400 --> 00:34:22.880
you can only see about 20 or 30 feet up, so we 
know that just by counting on the ground, we're  

00:34:22.880 --> 00:34:27.800
probably missing quite a few of the birds there.
To this end, we partnered with an image analysis  

00:34:27.800 --> 00:34:34.520
company called Synthetaic to leverage their rapid 
automated image categorization technology and  

00:34:34.520 --> 00:34:41.280
create a bespoke machine learning model that not 
only detects and counts seabirds in our imagery,  

00:34:41.280 --> 00:34:44.520
but tells whether the seabird is 
breeding or not, whether it's sitting  

00:34:44.520 --> 00:34:48.920
on a nest or it’s just roosting.
It tells what kind of tree that  

00:34:48.920 --> 00:34:55.160
the seabird is sitting in as well.
And so, once we get the kinks worked  

00:34:55.160 --> 00:35:00.840
out of the system at Palmyra, we really hope to 
share this process to aid seabird conservation in  

00:35:00.840 --> 00:35:07.320
other atoll ecosystems. Because if we don't have 
good data, we're not going to have good management  

00:35:07.320 --> 00:35:13.080
solutions for seabirds and for atolls.
So, remember how I said we think 8  

00:35:13.080 --> 00:35:17.760
of Palmyra’s original 19 sea birds 
were extirpated during World War II? 

00:35:17.760 --> 00:35:21.440
Well, in addition to creating 
more seabird habitat through PARP,  

00:35:21.440 --> 00:35:27.040
we are trying to bring the missing species back 
home through a seabird social attraction project. 

00:35:27.040 --> 00:35:31.880
Seabird social attraction is a proven 
technique to establish or reestablish  

00:35:31.880 --> 00:35:36.200
seabirds in suitable habitat.
With our project at Palmyra,  

00:35:36.200 --> 00:35:42.440
we are using decoys set up in pretend 
colonies and sound systems blasting what  

00:35:42.440 --> 00:35:48.480
we hope are enticing seabird calls for the 
species that we want to restore to Palmyra. 

00:35:48.480 --> 00:35:53.680
This project has the dual benefit of providing 
the seabird species with a safe home–no rats  

00:35:53.680 --> 00:36:00.160
at Palmyra anymore–and increasing the 
total biomass of seabirds at Palmyra. 

00:36:00.160 --> 00:36:06.920
Remember, more seabirds equals more guano, which 
equals happy corals, which equals a happy atoll. 

00:36:06.920 --> 00:36:11.480
And as a side note, at about 
this time, well a little bit,  

00:36:12.480 --> 00:36:15.800
I think it was about April, May, of last year, 

00:36:15.800 --> 00:36:20.760
we actually had our first success with 
our seabird social attraction project. 

00:36:20.760 --> 00:36:26.280
Grey-backed Terns, the decoys pictured here on 
the screen–up on the top, the top two of the  

00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:34.640
decoys–attracted back its real-life species.
So, we had Grey-backed Terns breeding for the  

00:36:34.640 --> 00:36:42.480
first time ever recorded–so we think since World 
War II–at Palmyra last spring. Super exciting,  

00:36:42.480 --> 00:36:46.280
and we can't wait for the rest 
of the missing eight to return. 

00:36:46.280 --> 00:36:52.320
There are several other scientific investigations 
tied to PARP, but we really don't have time to get  

00:36:52.320 --> 00:36:58.160
into all of them. But just rest assured, we really 
are poking in all corners to learn as much as we  

00:36:58.160 --> 00:37:04.080
can about how atoll ecosystems function and how 
we can best protect them as we move into uncharted  

00:37:04.080 --> 00:37:11.960
waters with projected climate change scenarios.
So, stepping back from Palmyra, we quickly see  

00:37:11.960 --> 00:37:16.880
that what we're doing at Palmyra, and what our 
conservation colleagues are studying in other  

00:37:16.880 --> 00:37:23.720
atoll ecosystems, really has Pacific-wide,
if not global, relevance. There are around  

00:37:23.720 --> 00:37:29.880
270 atolls in the Pacific and 
over 400 atolls worldwide. 

00:37:29.880 --> 00:37:36.520
Not only are atolls important points of marine 
biodiversity and cultural diversity, but they are  

00:37:36.520 --> 00:37:44.320
also connection points for people and non-human 
organisms traversing these great ocean expanses. 

00:37:44.320 --> 00:37:51.560
Our goal is to scale our learnings from 
Palmyra to as many atoll ecosystems as possible 

00:37:51.560 --> 00:37:57.840
to help as many atolls and atoll communities 
as possible thrive into the future. 

00:37:57.840 --> 00:38:07.280
And now we're back where we started with four 
standalone topics. Four standalone topics woven  

00:38:07.280 --> 00:38:13.920
into a lesson of hope for atoll ecosystems 
and the communities that depend on them. 

00:38:13.920 --> 00:38:21.520
Thank you so much for joining me on this 
journey of my obsession, my love affair,  

00:38:21.520 --> 00:38:26.520
with remote islands and atoll ecosystems. 
And I really, really appreciate that. 

00:38:27.720 --> 00:38:35.280
And I'd love to hear any questions that you may 
have about any of the topics or anything related  

00:38:35.280 --> 00:38:40.120
that came to your mind through this conversation.
[Chris Butler-Minor] Well, thank you, Alex, this is  

00:38:40.120 --> 00:38:46.560
wonderful. We do have a couple of questions 
in the chat and we encourage all of you that  

00:38:46.560 --> 00:38:50.600
are in the audience and have questions - 
we don't have a raise hand function - 

00:38:50.600 --> 00:38:57.760
so, if you want to ask a question, go ahead, and 
put it into the chat or question box. Anything  

00:38:57.760 --> 00:39:04.320
that we can't get to, we're going to send 
those unanswered questions to Dr. Wegmann,  

00:39:04.320 --> 00:39:07.920
and he’ll give us responses and 
we'll share those back as well. 

00:39:07.920 --> 00:39:15.640
So, if you have a question, type it out, and 
we're gonna take some turns here with the  

00:39:15.640 --> 00:39:21.280
folks that I introduced you to at the beginning,
Gavin and Sarah and Stori, and we're just going to  

00:39:21.280 --> 00:39:28.186
take turns reading questions to you, Alex, for the 
next few minutes, as long as that's OK with you. 

00:39:28.186 --> 00:39:32.720
[Dr. Wegmann] That sounds fantastic.
[Dr. Wegmann] Let's go. [Chris Butler-Minor] OK.  

00:39:32.720 --> 00:39:41.040
So, one of the questions we have is: How is the 
condition of the coral around Palmyra Atoll? Is  

00:39:41.040 --> 00:39:46.400
it healthy? Is it bleached? Is it in-between?
[Dr. Wegmann] That's a wonderful question. 

00:39:46.400 --> 00:39:52.720
So, right now Palmyra's Coral 
is bleaching, along with lots  

00:39:52.720 --> 00:40:00.960
of other coral reefs throughout the tropical 
Pacific. With the current El Niño scenario,  

00:40:00.960 --> 00:40:06.920
ocean temperatures are way higher than normal, 
which stresses the corals and forces the corals  

00:40:06.920 --> 00:40:14.600
to kick out their zooxanthellae symbionts, 
which results in that bleaching phenomenon. 

00:40:16.840 --> 00:40:21.840
We're not freaking out yet 
because we've seen this before. 

00:40:21.840 --> 00:40:31.560
In 2015 and 2016 during the last significant 
El Niño cycle, Palmyra’s corals experienced  

00:40:32.360 --> 00:40:37.320
significant bleaching then as well, very 
similar to what's happening right now. 

00:40:37.320 --> 00:40:43.520
And I just pointed to a little bit of 
the science that's been happening at  

00:40:43.520 --> 00:40:49.560
Palmyra. There is a ton of science over 
the last 24 years that has been conducted  

00:40:49.560 --> 00:40:59.200
at Palmyra that's focused on the coral reef.
And when that 2015 - 2016 El Niño cycle happened,  

00:40:59.200 --> 00:41:05.880
the baseline data was in place to allow 
the coral scientists to then monitor  

00:41:05.880 --> 00:41:13.520
specific patches of reef at Palmyra, 
and watch those patches of reef bleach, 

00:41:13.520 --> 00:41:17.560
and, you know, some small 
portions of the coral died, 

00:41:17.560 --> 00:41:25.560
and then over a year long period watch the dead 
coral be re-colonized by new coral coming back in  

00:41:25.560 --> 00:41:35.100
after the El Niño thermal stress period had ended.
And so, what we saw at Palmyra during the last El  

00:41:35.100 --> 00:41:43.760
Niño was bleaching, some mortality–I think it was 
about 7 or 8% mortality was estimated across the  

00:41:43.760 --> 00:41:51.000
reef platform–but then within a year, there 
was no net loss in coral coverage at Palmyra. 

00:41:51.000 --> 00:41:57.280
And this is while other places–Hawaii, 
Great Barrier Reef off of Australia– 

00:41:57.280 --> 00:42:03.680
during that 2015 - 2016 El Niño 
cycle experienced similar bleaching,  

00:42:03.680 --> 00:42:12.680
much larger and greater mortality, which resulted 
in net loss in coral cover in those habitats. 

00:42:12.680 --> 00:42:19.200
And so that got us pretty excited about 
this notion that Palmyra as sort of this  

00:42:19.200 --> 00:42:28.840
living laboratory, living atoll laboratory, that 
Palmyra represents a baseline atoll ecosystem,  

00:42:28.840 --> 00:42:38.440
which is healthy, intact, functioning, and able 
to withstand, you know, severe disturbances like  

00:42:38.440 --> 00:42:44.760
El Niño cycles, which gives us hope for Palmyra 
and other healthy atoll ecosystems moving forward  

00:42:44.760 --> 00:42:46.520
in the face of climate change.
[Gavin Truckenmiller] So we've  

00:42:46.520 --> 00:42:51.080
got another interesting question 
from the audience here. Is Palmyra  

00:42:51.080 --> 00:42:58.400
affected by marine debris, especially plastics?
[Dr. Wegmann] Another fantastic question, and  

00:42:58.400 --> 00:43:05.600
you’re reminding me I have a paper that I need to 
finish writing and publish that’s focused on that. 

00:43:07.000 --> 00:43:14.720
Yes, all, the entire ocean is affected 
by marine debris and marine plastics, 

00:43:14.720 --> 00:43:20.520
way more so than we think, because a lot 
of it is plastics that are microplastics  

00:43:20.520 --> 00:43:29.560
and nanoplastics that we can't readily see.
But that said, Palmyra, in terms of where it is in  

00:43:29.560 --> 00:43:36.320
the ocean, Palmyra’s in an incredibly, relatively 
clean patch of ocean within the Pacific. 

00:43:36.320 --> 00:43:43.480
It's about as far as you can get from the Southern 
Pacific Gyre and the North Pacific Gyre, which are  

00:43:45.160 --> 00:43:52.840
the current systems in the Pacific that aggregate 
a lot of the floating debris and plastic. And so,  

00:43:52.840 --> 00:43:58.320
Palmyra sits just north of the equator, so 
it's pretty far away from both of those. 

00:43:58.320 --> 00:44:03.000
So, no. Palmyra doesn't have the 
same marine debris challenges that  

00:44:03.000 --> 00:44:08.960
say the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands 
or the Papahānaumokuākea coastlines do. 

00:44:08.960 --> 00:44:15.400
The marine debris up there, as I witnessed when 
I worked up there, is unbelievable because that  

00:44:15.400 --> 00:44:22.160
island chain acts as a bit of a comb for 
the currents moving through that sort of  

00:44:22.160 --> 00:44:28.480
subtropical north part of the Pacific.
But yeah, Palmyra isn't impacted in the  

00:44:28.480 --> 00:44:31.840
same way. And the paper that I'm working on, 
though, is really interesting, and I'll just  

00:44:31.840 --> 00:44:38.200
talk about that for just one second.
I'll give you a bit of a teaser. The  

00:44:38.200 --> 00:44:44.840
study looks at the transport of microplastics by 
seabirds. Big surprise, I'm focused on seabirds. 

00:44:44.840 --> 00:44:52.400
But what it shows is that every single sample 
of guano or seabird poop that we collected at  

00:44:52.400 --> 00:44:59.360
Palmyra–and we collected quite a few samples–had 
a significant amount of microplastic fibers in it. 

00:44:59.360 --> 00:45:05.920
So, if seabirds living at Palmyra are out foraging 
in the ocean, and everything they're consuming is  

00:45:05.920 --> 00:45:11.640
probably consuming something that is consuming 
something that is consuming a microplastic, 

00:45:11.640 --> 00:45:18.200
and Palmyra sits in one of the cleanest patches 
of ocean in the world, then, yeah, the marine  

00:45:18.200 --> 00:45:25.680
plastics problem is significant. And we’re 
just, the scientific community is just starting  

00:45:25.680 --> 00:45:32.120
to learn kind of the ramifications of that.
So, I'll stop talking before I get way far away  

00:45:32.120 --> 00:45:36.280
from what I really know about marine plastics.
[Sarah Luigard] We have another question here,  

00:45:36.280 --> 00:45:42.080
and it's asking if you know of any plans 
to start banding studies to look at the  

00:45:42.080 --> 00:45:49.400
population dynamics in seabird species?
[Dr. Wegmann] Um, so, yes and no. 

00:45:51.560 --> 00:45:55.880
We have done banding at 
Palmyra. I did a ton of banding 

00:45:55.880 --> 00:45:59.240
when I was working for US Fish and Wildlife 
Service up in the Northwestern Hawaiian  

00:45:59.240 --> 00:46:06.480
Islands. We aren’t currently doing banding–we 
being the conservation community at Palmyra–  

00:46:06.480 --> 00:46:12.440
we're not banding at the moment.
But a number of Palmyra’s ground  

00:46:12.440 --> 00:46:17.080
nesting boobies, the brown boobies, and 
the masked boobies have been banded,  

00:46:17.080 --> 00:46:22.680
along with the red-tailed tropic birds.
And so, when those bands are recovered  

00:46:22.680 --> 00:46:27.360
or recited, that information is sent 
into the bird banding laboratory and  

00:46:27.360 --> 00:46:34.320
those records are then available for analysis 
and looking at seabird population dynamics. 

00:46:34.320 --> 00:46:44.160
And we do know from not classic banding but from 
putting satellite geolocator tags on seabirds– 

00:46:44.720 --> 00:46:50.920
this has been done several times at Palmyra 
over the last decade and a half–we have a  

00:46:50.920 --> 00:46:55.440
pretty good idea on the foraging range of 
several species of seabirds from Palmyra  

00:46:55.440 --> 00:47:01.960
and then also on the potential dispersal range.
So, we recently–I think it was a year and a half  

00:47:01.960 --> 00:47:10.720
ago–put satellite transmitting geolocator 
tags on three different seabird species 

00:47:10.720 --> 00:47:19.080
at Palmyra–the red-footed boobies, sooty 
terns, and great frigatebirds–and found  

00:47:19.080 --> 00:47:24.880
that the great frigatebirds, at least with a 
couple of individuals, traveled quite great  

00:47:24.880 --> 00:47:32.720
distances, over one thousand miles from the atoll
and would absolutely be mixing with seabirds that  

00:47:33.600 --> 00:47:40.040
are hosted in other islands systems further down 
the Line Island chain and as far north as Johnston  

00:47:40.040 --> 00:47:47.480
Atoll, about 500 miles north of Palmyra, and 
possibly even up into the Hawaiian archipelago. 

00:47:47.480 --> 00:47:55.720
So, shorter version of that answer is it has 
been done but not at the moment for banding. 

00:47:55.720 --> 00:48:01.280
[Stori Smith] Another question we have is 
whether there's any concern about there being  

00:48:01.280 --> 00:48:08.960
too much free nitrogen as this continues, and if 
maybe harmful algal blooms, loss of coral algae,  

00:48:08.960 --> 00:48:15.080
or eutrophication is anything that's on your mind?
[Dr. Wegmann] Absolutely. 

00:48:15.080 --> 00:48:19.960
So, we are working with–and I had it in the 
list of additional studies that are happening  

00:48:19.960 --> 00:48:25.640
at Palmyra that we didn't really have a ton 
of time to go into–but there are two studies  

00:48:27.040 --> 00:48:32.440
that we're engaged in that are looking 
at kind of both aspects of that question. 

00:48:32.440 --> 00:48:38.840
So, one study is being led by a University 
of Hawai'i Graduate student, Jessica Glazner,  

00:48:38.840 --> 00:48:45.000
and this study is looking at the 
impact of seabird-derived nutrients, 

00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:53.200
so, guano directly applied 
to two corals in aquaria, 

00:48:53.200 --> 00:49:00.040
and looking at how the nitrogen and 
phosphorus transported by seabirds,  

00:49:00.040 --> 00:49:07.680
how different concentrations of nitrogen 
and phosphorus influence coral health. 

00:49:07.680 --> 00:49:12.440
And so, sure, it's possible 
that too much of a good, you know,  

00:49:12.440 --> 00:49:16.680
too much of a good thing is too much of 
a good thing and possibly a bad thing.  

00:49:16.680 --> 00:49:24.800
We haven't seen that at Palmyra, and Palmyra 
has, probably, one of the largest and densest 

00:49:25.800 --> 00:49:31.480
seabird colonies per unit 
area for an atoll ecosystem. 

00:49:31.480 --> 00:49:39.120
But yeah, I think it definitely could be.
So usually when people are identifying  

00:49:39.120 --> 00:49:43.400
nutrient inputs into marine systems 
and negative effects on coral reefs,  

00:49:43.400 --> 00:49:51.280
those are nutrient inputs that are associated 
mostly with human development and cities,  

00:49:51.280 --> 00:49:55.520
and so there's a lot more than just 
marine-derived nitrogen and phosphorus 

00:49:56.400 --> 00:50:06.000
in those nutrient discharge scenarios. And of 
course, like at Palmyra, we don’t have… we have  

00:50:06.000 --> 00:50:12.480
a tiny research station with a population 
between 6 and 30 people on a given day, 

00:50:12.480 --> 00:50:20.720
we have a bioremediation field for our wastewater 
at Palmyra, and so, we really don't, we aren't in  

00:50:20.720 --> 00:50:28.200
a scenario to measure the negative impacts 
of, sort of, the damaging nutrients that are  

00:50:28.200 --> 00:50:32.840
associated with wastewater as a discharge onto 
the coral reef of Palmyra. But I know that's a  

00:50:32.840 --> 00:50:39.360
very hot topic and a hot field of study,
and there's a lot of research going into  

00:50:39.360 --> 00:50:42.720
that right now elsewhere.
[Chris Butler-Minor] Can  

00:50:42.720 --> 00:50:49.800
you comment on the situation with the 
corallimorpharia at Palmyra? I haven't  

00:50:49.800 --> 00:50:57.040
heard anything since the removal effort started.
[Dr. Wegmann] Absolutely. So, that's a great  

00:50:57.040 --> 00:51:04.840
story, and I'll try to make my answer short, 
but there's a lot in this. So corallimorph is, 

00:51:06.960 --> 00:51:12.720
if you look, it’s an amazing marine organism, 
it looks like, well, if you're in the Pacific  

00:51:12.720 --> 00:51:18.360
Northwest, it looks like a small anemone, or if 
you're on a Pacific Coast shoreline anywhere, it  

00:51:18.360 --> 00:51:24.880
looks like a small anemone you would see in a tide 
pool, but it’s found in tropical waters and its a,  

00:51:24.880 --> 00:51:32.200
it's, it is related to the corals,
but it doesn't have a calcium  

00:51:32.200 --> 00:51:39.320
carbonate skeleton like stony corals do.
And so, corallimorph is, the corallimorph at  

00:51:39.320 --> 00:51:50.320
Palmyra is likely a native organism to that reef 
ecosystem. But something happened in the 1990s, 

00:51:50.320 --> 00:52:01.960
kind of early 2000s, that somehow stimulated 
a spread of corallimorph way beyond its normal  

00:52:01.960 --> 00:52:08.800
distribution and coverage. And that something 
was probably a shipwreck. So, a longline fishing  

00:52:08.800 --> 00:52:16.080
vessel ran aground at Palmyra on the western 
reef terrace of the atoll in the early nineties. 

00:52:16.080 --> 00:52:23.680
And marine scientists started to notice about a 
decade later that the fishing vessel and the coral  

00:52:23.680 --> 00:52:28.960
surrounding it became covered–well not the fishing 
vessel itself, but the habitat surrounding it–

00:52:28.960 --> 00:52:35.040
just became blanketed in corallimorph. 
Just picture–I mean corallimorphs are  

00:52:35.040 --> 00:52:38.760
kind of brown with little bits of green 
and purple in them, but mostly brown– 

00:52:38.760 --> 00:52:45.280
just picture a beautiful coral reef 
transformed into just a brown shag carpet. 

00:52:45.280 --> 00:52:49.440
That's what it looked like.
And over a very rapid period  

00:52:49.440 --> 00:52:59.280
of expansion–I don’t know, 2008 to 
2018 or 19, just really recently,  

00:52:59.280 --> 00:53:07.160
maybe even 2020–corallimorph just ran 
like wildfire across that reef terrace. 

00:53:07.160 --> 00:53:12.280
And we became really worried about what 
this meant and where it was going to go, 

00:53:12.280 --> 00:53:20.440
and would it continue to cover all the four reefs 
surrounding Palmyra, all of the reef terraces? 

00:53:20.440 --> 00:53:25.160
And so, an effort was launched over about 
a five-year period to identify control  

00:53:26.160 --> 00:53:32.840
methods since nobody has ever really, well, I 
guess it's been very few cases where corallimorph  

00:53:32.840 --> 00:53:38.440
had been successfully controlled elsewhere, so 
we were operating with really little information. 

00:53:38.440 --> 00:53:43.000
So, a team came down and looked at a 
bunch of different ways to control it,  

00:53:43.000 --> 00:53:50.480
and none of them seemed extremely feasible 
in terms of covering large areas of reef. So,  

00:53:50.480 --> 00:53:54.400
we started to get a little bit worried.
But just about then, kind of, I think it was  

00:53:54.400 --> 00:54:01.120
around 2020, the corallimorph expansion stopped, 
and it seems like it's starting to retreat now. 

00:54:01.120 --> 00:54:06.280
And we're seeing habitat that used to be 
covered with corallimorph reverting back  

00:54:06.280 --> 00:54:12.640
to stony corals and giant clams.
So more to come on that. 

00:54:12.640 --> 00:54:20.800
But what it looks like right now is whatever 
environmental advantage the corallimorph was  

00:54:20.800 --> 00:54:29.720
given, probably by that shipwreck disturbance 
event, has worked its way out of the system. 

00:54:29.720 --> 00:54:33.800
And the corallimorph no longer have that 
advantage, and it seems like they are  

00:54:33.800 --> 00:54:38.120
working their way back towards their–and 
it'll be a while for them to get there,  

00:54:38.120 --> 00:54:42.973
I think–back towards their sort of normal 
carrying capacity within the ecosystem. 

00:54:42.973 --> 00:54:44.840
Cool.
[Gavin Truckenmiller] Another question here:  

00:54:45.600 --> 00:54:51.760
How fast or slow growing are the native trees 
on Palmyra? Does this transition time during  

00:54:51.760 --> 00:54:58.280
the restoration mean that seabirds and the 
atoll are more exposed to hazardous weather? 

00:54:58.280 --> 00:55:06.440
[Dr. Wegmann] Great question. So, two 
responses. So, about the native trees,  

00:55:06.440 --> 00:55:12.080
so remember, Palmyra gets tons of rain, like 
way more even than the Pacific Northwest. 

00:55:12.080 --> 00:55:18.760
Palmyra gets, I said in there 175 inches of rain 
per year. That's on average. A lot of years, or,  

00:55:18.760 --> 00:55:23.160
you know, many years are higher than that, so 
it's a very wet place that's also–sitting just  

00:55:23.160 --> 00:55:27.960
above the equator–an extremely warm place.
So, if you're a plant, you want to be there,  

00:55:27.960 --> 00:55:34.600
because you're going to grow fast.
And we know, from trees that we've  

00:55:34.600 --> 00:55:42.400
planted from seed at Palmyra, that it takes 
about 10 years from a planted seed of a native  

00:55:42.400 --> 00:55:50.520
rainforest tree of Palmyra to go from seed to 
about a 40-foot tall, canopy supporting tree. 

00:55:50.520 --> 00:55:58.640
So, with PARP, the Palmyra Atoll 
Rainforest and Reef Resilience Project, 

00:55:59.520 --> 00:56:06.120
we gave ourselves a 10-year response window.
And what we're already seeing, so we're five  

00:56:06.120 --> 00:56:14.280
years into it now, and even actually three years 
in, we were seeing native trees establishing  

00:56:14.280 --> 00:56:20.040
in patches of habitat where coconut palms have 
been removed. Native trees were established. We  

00:56:20.040 --> 00:56:24.920
either planted them, or they came up on their own 
through natural recruitment from the seed bank. 

00:56:26.040 --> 00:56:32.720
And within a year of the coconut palms 
being gone, the native tree canopy was 10,  

00:56:32.720 --> 00:56:37.120
15, 20 feet tall in some places,
and seabirds were already starting  

00:56:37.120 --> 00:56:46.160
to move into that new real estate for them.
So, to the second part of that question,  

00:56:47.640 --> 00:56:53.360
we're not too worried about storm impacts 
at Palmyra because the native vegetation  

00:56:53.360 --> 00:57:02.840
there grows so fast, and the soil will only 
be vulnerable to erosion and movement by  

00:57:02.840 --> 00:57:09.520
wave forcing for a very short period of time.
And then also, on top of that, Palmyra sits  

00:57:09.520 --> 00:57:16.720
outside of the normal hurricane path. So, in the 
150 years that we've been tracking hurricanes in  

00:57:16.720 --> 00:57:22.800
the Pacific, not a single one has come close 
to Palmyra. Doesn't mean we don't get storms  

00:57:22.800 --> 00:57:27.040
and we don't get swell events,
but it's not the same as Hawaii  

00:57:27.040 --> 00:57:31.440
or Guam or somewhere else that's 
in a more, like in a traditional  

00:57:31.440 --> 00:57:36.800
hurricane pathway or a cyclone pathway.
[Sarah Luigard] We have someone wondering,  

00:57:36.800 --> 00:57:45.200
what happened to the removed coconut palms? And 
how did you dispose of them during their removal? 

00:57:45.200 --> 00:57:53.120
[Dr. Wegmann] Excellent question.
So, removal is a bit of a euphemism,  

00:57:53.120 --> 00:57:59.240
so we killed the coconut palms.
And we intentionally did so in a  

00:57:59.240 --> 00:58:07.520
way that made sure that they would 
decompose as slowly as possible. 

00:58:07.520 --> 00:58:13.160
So, what we did instead of chopping down 
the palms or using heavy equipment to  

00:58:13.160 --> 00:58:20.280
remove them, both of which have, you know,
they’re methods that you definitely could  

00:58:20.280 --> 00:58:25.840
use to remove coconut palms, you could go in with 
chain saws and cut them down, you could go in with  

00:58:25.840 --> 00:58:32.240
excavators and push them down, no problem. 
We didn't want to do either of those. One,  

00:58:32.240 --> 00:58:38.280
coconut palms don't really grow straight most of 
the time so if you cut them down with a chainsaw,  

00:58:38.280 --> 00:58:44.640
they'll spin on the stump, and that's a very 
dangerous scenario for anyone in the area. 

00:58:44.640 --> 00:58:47.480
So, we didn't want to do that 
from the safety perspective. 

00:58:48.360 --> 00:58:52.960
And then we didn't want to use heavy equipment 
because we really wanted to protect as much  

00:58:52.960 --> 00:58:57.920
of Palmyra's terrestrial habitat as we could, 
and we didn't want big excavators driving all  

00:58:57.920 --> 00:59:03.160
over the islands and on the reefs between the 
islands. So, what we did end up using, and are  

00:59:03.160 --> 00:59:08.800
currently using, is a glyphosate herbicide.
So, coconut palms are an interesting plant.  

00:59:08.800 --> 00:59:16.960
They’re actually closer to a grass than 
a woody tree, and so their stems readily  

00:59:16.960 --> 00:59:23.640
take up glyphosate and the plant is very 
significantly affected by just a tiny amount  

00:59:23.640 --> 00:59:32.680
of it, just like an herb would be.
And so, we inject, I think it's 10  

00:59:32.680 --> 00:59:36.360
milliliters of glyphosate into each 
adult coconut palm by drilling four  

00:59:36.360 --> 00:59:40.600
holes around the trunk and injecting,
you know, it's a little bit of glyphosate  

00:59:40.600 --> 00:59:46.800
into each hole, and over a six-month period 
the coconut palm will drop its fronds,  

00:59:46.800 --> 00:59:54.320
it'll drop the coconuts, and then slowly die.
And that standing trunk of, the standing stem  

00:59:54.320 --> 01:00:00.120
of the coconut palm will remain there for - 
from what we've seen - for about 5 to 10 years,  

01:00:00.120 --> 01:00:06.520
from some of our longer trial pots that 
we did before we initiated the project. 

01:00:07.280 --> 01:00:14.520
And the way that it decays is it slowly, the trunk 
will just slowly break down until it's closer to  

01:00:14.520 --> 01:00:19.840
the ground, and then eventually it will fall over.
The reason why we wanted to engineer this  

01:00:19.840 --> 01:00:28.320
slow decay scenario, is that we were worried 
about creating a significant nutrient pulse, 

01:00:28.320 --> 01:00:33.000
specifically, a carbon pulse, that would 
then go out into the marine environment  

01:00:33.000 --> 01:00:37.280
and potentially have a negative 
impact on the coral reef ecosystem. 

01:00:37.280 --> 01:00:44.600
So, if you remember, in one of the studies 
I referenced in the talk where we determined  

01:00:44.600 --> 01:00:52.840
that the coconut palms sequester less carbon 
in the soil than the native rainforest does, 

01:00:52.840 --> 01:00:56.000
we also found that coconut 
palms release more carbon. 

01:00:56.000 --> 01:00:59.640
So, they're associated with 
greater carbon release. 

01:00:59.640 --> 01:01:07.120
And we didn't want to exacerbate the situation 
by just creating piles and piles of coconut palm  

01:01:07.120 --> 01:01:14.720
trunks along with all the fronds and the nuts, 
which all decay. When they're on the ground, 

01:01:14.720 --> 01:01:19.640
that plant matter decays really rapidly 
at Palmyra because it's such a wet hot  

01:01:19.640 --> 01:01:28.560
environment and there's a lot of microbial 
action going on that speeds up the decay process. 

01:01:28.560 --> 01:01:33.120
So, long answer, but great, great question.
So, yeah, it was very intentional, slow…  

01:01:33.120 --> 01:01:38.680
intentional method for a slow decay process.
[Stori Smith] To build off of the carbon you  

01:01:38.680 --> 01:01:43.840
started talking about, some people would like 
to know if you noticed any evidence of ocean  

01:01:43.840 --> 01:01:50.480
acidification while you were studying in Palmyra,
and whether you think the coral will be able to  

01:01:50.480 --> 01:01:56.826
restore itself quickly enough to protect 
itself a bit against the changing ocean. 

01:01:56.826 --> 01:02:03.880
[Dr. Wegmann] Um, awesome question. And 
here, I get vulnerable and say, I don't know. 

01:02:05.360 --> 01:02:10.400
I'm gonna write that down, because I want 
to look that up and see if there's… Gosh,  

01:02:10.400 --> 01:02:18.920
there have been over 200 studies conducted at 
Palmyra and papers published from the studies. 

01:02:18.920 --> 01:02:22.920
And a majority of those are marine 
studies, and the majority of those are  

01:02:22.920 --> 01:02:29.280
looking at the coral ecosystem.
And I wanna say that, uh,  

01:02:29.280 --> 01:02:35.960
ocean chemistry has definitely been a focus.
I know it has; I just don't know the answer to  

01:02:35.960 --> 01:02:41.680
that. I know people have measured 
ocean acidification at Palmyra. 

01:02:41.680 --> 01:02:49.840
And if you look up Dr. Jennifer Smith at Scripps 
Institute of Oceanography with UC San Diego,  

01:02:51.320 --> 01:02:56.840
some of the papers that either she has 
published, or the papers coming out of her lab, 

01:02:56.840 --> 01:03:04.880
I think will point you towards an answer there.
So, the second part of that is, as far as I know,  

01:03:04.880 --> 01:03:13.040
we're not seeing a pronounced impact of 
ocean acidification on the corals at Palmyra. 

01:03:13.040 --> 01:03:22.120
However, if the increasing acidity of the world's 
oceans, which Palmyra is obviously subject to,  

01:03:22.120 --> 01:03:27.160
is stressing the corals, then they're 
gonna have a harder time recovering  

01:03:27.160 --> 01:03:32.040
from other stress events like the current 
El Niño scenario that we're experiencing. 

01:03:32.800 --> 01:03:43.000
So yeah, we are worried about ocean acidification 
and we're worried that corals, stony corals,  

01:03:43.000 --> 01:03:51.280
their ability to create the calcium carbonate 
skeletons and structures that they live in is  

01:03:51.840 --> 01:03:57.120
potentially going to decrease as the 
oceans become more and more acidic. 

01:03:57.120 --> 01:04:00.480
So yeah, that's something 
we're absolutely worried about. 

01:04:00.480 --> 01:04:08.400
And kind of along the same lines of sea 
level rise, you know, our general, high-level  

01:04:08.400 --> 01:04:17.760
hypothesis is: these systems like Palmyra–
any island system–has the best chance of  

01:04:17.760 --> 01:04:22.680
withstanding or being resilient in the face 
of global impacts like sea level rise and  

01:04:22.680 --> 01:04:30.840
ocean acidification and ocean warming if 
their natural functionality is intact. 

01:04:30.840 --> 01:04:37.200
So, the natural nutrient chains and cycles that 
I described in my talk, if those are intact, 

01:04:37.200 --> 01:04:44.840
if the fish population is not overharvested, if 
there isn't significant land base sedimentation  

01:04:44.840 --> 01:04:50.760
and wastewater discharge decreasing 
the overall health of the reef system, 

01:04:50.760 --> 01:04:55.400
if none of that is in place or if those 
threats are minimized, those systems,  

01:04:55.400 --> 01:05:01.880
those reef systems are going to be better 
positioned to survive moving into the future,  

01:05:01.880 --> 01:05:06.720
no matter what climate scenario is ahead of us.
[Chris Butler-Minor] OK, well, we are at ten  

01:05:06.720 --> 01:05:15.346
after, are you up for another question or two?
[Dr. Wegmann] Yeah, I'll go all night. 

01:05:15.346 --> 01:05:16.400
[Dr. Wegmann] These are great.
[Chris Butler-Minor] Well we won’t ask  

01:05:16.400 --> 01:05:19.952
you to do that.
[Dr. Wegmann] These are really good questions. 

01:05:19.952 --> 01:05:22.560
[Chris Butler-Minor] Let's see.
So, are there  

01:05:23.280 --> 01:05:32.760
very many non-native plants on the atoll? And, if 
so, do they threaten other ecological processes  

01:05:32.760 --> 01:05:39.720
that you haven’t necessarily touched on here?
[Dr. Wegmann] Yeah. So, yes, there are a number  

01:05:39.720 --> 01:05:48.120
of other non-native plants at Palmyra. Palmyra’s 
native flora is, we think, about 25 species. 

01:05:48.120 --> 01:05:54.080
There are currently, just a little bit, I think 
it's like 95 species of plants at Palmyra,  

01:05:55.560 --> 01:06:00.120
somewhere in those ranges.
So, as you can see, about  

01:06:00.120 --> 01:06:05.080
three quarters of the plant species that 
are currently at Palmyra were introduced. 

01:06:05.080 --> 01:06:11.880
Most of those are around the main island where the 
research… they’re on the main island, it’s called  

01:06:11.880 --> 01:06:17.960
Cooper Island, where the research station is. That 
was also the center of operations during World War  

01:06:17.960 --> 01:06:25.440
II and most of those introductions took place.
I'd say a good majority of the plants are more  

01:06:25.440 --> 01:06:32.280
or less innocuous. There's some grasses 
and other flowering plants that don't  

01:06:32.280 --> 01:06:38.520
really penetrate too far into the rainforest.
There are a couple of plants that are invasive,  

01:06:38.520 --> 01:06:45.040
and they are hugely invasive in other island 
ecosystems, and so we're definitely managing  

01:06:45.040 --> 01:06:51.720
them and we're knocking them back, as, you 
know, as best we can, when we come across them. 

01:06:51.720 --> 01:07:01.218
But overwhelmingly, the most impactful invasive 
plant at Palmyra is the coconut palm for sure. 

01:07:01.218 --> 01:07:04.200
[Gavin Truckenmiller] We have a few 
different people interested in if  

01:07:04.200 --> 01:07:11.360
there's any diseases affecting the birds on the 
island, especially because they're so far-ranging. 

01:07:11.360 --> 01:07:14.680
Avian flu or anything like that.
[Dr. Wegmann] Yeah. Great question.  

01:07:14.680 --> 01:07:20.520
None detected so far.
We've done, well we've  

01:07:20.520 --> 01:07:26.120
only done sort of–we being, again, the 
conservation community, not me personally– 

01:07:26.120 --> 01:07:35.320
but we've done a few… I'm trying to think, I 
know during projects like, so, for example,  

01:07:35.320 --> 01:07:40.480
during the rat eradication, we took a 
number of shorebirds into captivity to  

01:07:40.480 --> 01:07:47.040
protect them from the eradication action.
And the shorebirds had health assessments  

01:07:47.040 --> 01:07:52.080
done. And I think pathology was done and 
looked at, or epidemiology was done and  

01:07:52.080 --> 01:07:57.240
looked at what diseases they were carrying, 
and they really, they were quite clean. 

01:07:57.240 --> 01:08:05.120
And we haven't had any major die offs from avian 
influenza or West Nile Virus or some of the more  

01:08:05.120 --> 01:08:17.640
common avian disease scenarios that we see in 
continental systems. So, no, not at Palmyra,  

01:08:17.640 --> 01:08:23.360
and I cross my fingers and say, not yet.
[Sarah Luigard] Someone is wondering if  

01:08:23.360 --> 01:08:30.626
you have any concern of glyphosate runoff into 
the ocean with all the rainfall that occurs.

01:08:30.626 --> 01:08:36.720
[Dr. Wegmann] Yeah, again, great question.
We don't, but we are monitoring for that. 

01:08:36.720 --> 01:08:45.040
We did look at the available literature before 
initiating this project, and we looked at the few  

01:08:45.040 --> 01:08:53.400
studies that had looked at glyphosate runoff 
in scenarios where orders of magnitude more  

01:08:53.400 --> 01:08:59.240
glyphosate was used in a chronic scenario rather 
than an acute scenario like we have at Palmyra. 

01:08:59.240 --> 01:09:06.240
So, these studies looked at glyphosate runoff 
and impacts on coral reefs, and the few studies  

01:09:06.240 --> 01:09:12.640
that we found indicated that there really 
wasn't a negative response by the coral reefs. 

01:09:12.640 --> 01:09:20.400
And so, we decided to move forward at Palmyra with 
that method, with using the glyphosate herbicide,  

01:09:20.400 --> 01:09:28.600
as, you know, we did so testing not just the 
soil but the freshwater lands on the islands  

01:09:28.600 --> 01:09:36.680
and also the nearshore marine system 
as well. And we have not seen anything  

01:09:38.560 --> 01:09:44.360
that would suggest there has been an impact.
And I think part of that is, one, we're using  

01:09:44.360 --> 01:09:52.720
very small amounts. So, we're doing specific 
applications, not broadcast applications. So,  

01:09:52.720 --> 01:09:59.360
we're not spraying the glyphosate herbicide 
anywhere. We're applying it to the adult  

01:09:59.360 --> 01:10:05.440
coconut palms with injectors straight into the 
trunks, and we're applying it to the coconut palm  

01:10:05.440 --> 01:10:11.560
seedlings by cutting the stem of the seedling 
and directly applying it to that cut stem. 

01:10:11.560 --> 01:10:18.400
And so, I think that sort of specific application 
and less acute application scenario where we're  

01:10:18.400 --> 01:10:24.520
not chronically applying herbicide, we're only 
applying to achieve our management objective  

01:10:24.520 --> 01:10:28.240
and then we're stopping the application 
for, you know, within a given plot once  

01:10:28.240 --> 01:10:34.600
the management objective is achieved. Yeah, we're 
not, we're not concerned, but we are watching. So,  

01:10:34.600 --> 01:10:39.360
I guess that's the best way to respond to that.
[Stori Smith] …do you think it would be to  

01:10:39.360 --> 01:10:45.666
replicate this kind of restoration project 
somewhere else, on different atolls? 

01:10:45.666 --> 01:10:48.680
[Dr. Wegmann] So, Stori, sorry, you cut off 
in the beginning there, was the question:  

01:10:48.680 --> 01:10:53.760
How easy would it be to replicate?
[Stori Smith] Whether there are any plans,  

01:10:53.760 --> 01:11:00.360
or if you think it would be very doable?
[Dr. Wegmann] Uh, yes, and yes. 

01:11:00.360 --> 01:11:06.800
So, Palmyra is very special, but Palmyra 
is not unique. It’s an atoll ecosystem,  

01:11:06.800 --> 01:11:10.560
and as we know, there are 400,
I think it's close to 440  

01:11:10.560 --> 01:11:17.520
atoll ecosystems around the world.
There are a couple of other atolls  

01:11:17.520 --> 01:11:24.920
and low coral islands that have some of the, 
sort of the enabling conditions that would make  

01:11:24.920 --> 01:11:29.120
it easy to do additional demonstration 
projects, like we've done at Palmyra. 

01:11:29.120 --> 01:11:34.200
So, with the project at Palmyra, it's a 
bit of a one-off. Like if we get positive  

01:11:34.200 --> 01:11:40.920
results from it, how do we know that that kind 
of intervention–removing the seabird predators,  

01:11:40.920 --> 01:11:46.880
restoring seabird habitat, actively 
bringing seabirds back in–if we find  

01:11:46.880 --> 01:11:55.160
at Palmyra that that actually does, sort of give 
the reef… if it really makes the reef happier,  

01:11:55.160 --> 01:12:01.680
which gives the whole atoll ecosystem, you 
know, greater resilience to climate change, 

01:12:01.680 --> 01:12:08.080
if we find that that's the case at Palmyra, 
you know, how do we know that's gonna really  

01:12:08.080 --> 01:12:12.680
be the case anywhere else? So yeah, we've 
been looking at other atoll ecosystems. 

01:12:12.680 --> 01:12:22.520
There's one that is absolutely considering a very 
similar intervention. And this is Teti’aroa Atoll,  

01:12:22.520 --> 01:12:28.120
which is in the Society Islands. It's 
an atoll about 30 miles north of Tahiti. 

01:12:28.120 --> 01:12:33.440
And it's a fantastic place.
It’s very similar to Palmyra,  

01:12:33.440 --> 01:12:37.680
except in a couple of ways. It does, you know, we 
have a research station at Palmyra. Teti’aroa has  

01:12:37.680 --> 01:12:42.120
a small resort plus a research station, so 
they have a little bit more infrastructure,  

01:12:42.120 --> 01:12:48.240
well, a lot more infrastructure than we do.
But it also is protected, like Palmyra is. 

01:12:48.240 --> 01:12:54.600
And they, just, they're just finishing 
up the removal of invasive rats from  

01:12:54.600 --> 01:12:58.240
Teti’aroa. So, the Teti’aroa Society,
the conservation group there, is finishing  

01:12:58.240 --> 01:13:07.000
up that project, and they're in the planning 
process for a rainforest management action,  

01:13:07.000 --> 01:13:12.520
which will be similar to what we're doing 
at Palmyra. There'll be some differences,  

01:13:12.520 --> 01:13:19.520
because of the local scenario at Teti’aroa.
So yeah, I think within, I don't want to assign  

01:13:19.520 --> 01:13:23.360
them a timeline, but I'm optimistic 
within the next couple of years 

01:13:24.800 --> 01:13:29.480
we'll see another demonstration 
of this kind of intervention. 

01:13:29.480 --> 01:13:33.320
And there are a number of other 
atoll and low coral island  

01:13:33.320 --> 01:13:38.520
scenarios that we think would be really good
kind of follow-on demonstration projects to  

01:13:38.520 --> 01:13:46.200
help us learn more about the intervention, 
the benefits of doing this, and refine the  

01:13:46.200 --> 01:13:51.080
tools and the methods and the processes to 
make them more efficient and more effective. 

01:13:51.080 --> 01:13:53.440
So, yeah, onward.
[Chris Butler-Minor] So, maybe we'll  

01:13:53.440 --> 01:13:59.960
just do one more round, if that's OK with you.
So, do you have any thoughts about beach  

01:13:59.960 --> 01:14:05.720
nourishment and T-groins to mitigate impacts 
of sea level rise or coastal erosion,  

01:14:05.720 --> 01:14:11.000
and how those responses might affect 
coastal resources like fish, coral,  

01:14:11.000 --> 01:14:20.760
benthic habitats, et cetera, et cetera?
[Dr. Wegmann] Wow. Really good question,  

01:14:20.760 --> 01:14:30.520
and so beach nourishment and T-groins...
I just will again be vulnerable and  

01:14:30.520 --> 01:14:37.120
honest–outside my area of expertise.
I do know, there are, I have read  

01:14:37.120 --> 01:14:42.680
a number of papers that… so I don't 
have any direct experience in that. 

01:14:42.680 --> 01:14:46.040
But I have read a number of papers 
that have been published recently,  

01:14:46.040 --> 01:14:55.000
within the last 3 or 4 years, that do look at 
the… but see these are atoll-specific scenarios. 

01:14:55.000 --> 01:15:06.200
So, look at the consequences of coastal 
armoring, and how it disrupts that sediment,  

01:15:06.200 --> 01:15:15.160
that natural sediment conveyor belt that's 
pulling coral, sort of coral rubble and sand  

01:15:15.160 --> 01:15:21.800
created through bioerosion off the reef and up 
onto the islands to keep, you know, keep the  

01:15:21.800 --> 01:15:28.920
islands themselves above sea level rise. So, you 
know, keep, maintain freeboard for those islands. 

01:15:28.920 --> 01:15:32.280
So yeah, the papers I've read have been specific 
to atoll ecosystems, and when you're thinking  

01:15:32.280 --> 01:15:37.400
about other, like a continental coastal 
scenario, there are a lot of other factors  

01:15:37.400 --> 01:15:43.400
in play there. There may not be that natural 
sediment conveyor belt, there probably isn't.  

01:15:43.400 --> 01:15:49.080
There's a different sediment conveyor belt. So 
yeah, I guess I don't have a lot to say on that. 

01:15:49.080 --> 01:15:56.200
Other than, do a search, look for 
those key terms. I guarantee you,  

01:15:56.200 --> 01:16:02.880
there has been a lot of research done on that. 
Coastal, coastal integrity, coastal erosion, 

01:16:03.520 --> 01:16:08.440
coastal armoring, or coastal adaptation 
as it's called a lot in the literature,  

01:16:08.440 --> 01:16:14.120
is an increasingly intense topic 
with a lot of focus. You know,  

01:16:14.680 --> 01:16:20.760
as the world is starting to realize the 
impacts of current, you know, current  

01:16:20.760 --> 01:16:27.880
sea level rise and the inevitability of greater 
sea level rise as we enter into this next phase  

01:16:27.880 --> 01:16:31.400
of atmospheric carbon and global warming.
[Gavin Truckenmiller] Several people are  

01:16:31.400 --> 01:16:37.920
interested if there have been any efforts 
to directly re-introduce, for example,  

01:16:37.920 --> 01:16:53.160
the missing birds by bringing them there, or 
the foliage by replanting the missing or the  

01:16:53.160 --> 01:16:59.720
decreased trees and certain things.
[Dr. Wegmann] Yeah, absolutely. 

01:16:59.720 --> 01:17:07.120
So, I'll answer the second part of that 
first, and then I'll get to the birds. 

01:17:07.120 --> 01:17:17.480
So, with the rainforest project, with PARP, we're 
doing a lot of localized translocations of trees.  

01:17:17.480 --> 01:17:23.800
So, we grew, we've been growing a small number 
of trees from seed. It takes a while to do that. 

01:17:24.560 --> 01:17:28.120
You have to have, you know, 
kinda nurseries set up, 

01:17:28.720 --> 01:17:32.360
and it's a little bit complicated. And what 
we found through some early studies with the  

01:17:32.360 --> 01:17:38.200
project is that we were more, well, almost 
just as successful, if not more successful,  

01:17:38.200 --> 01:17:45.520
and it was way more efficient to just grab 
seeds from the available seed stock and  

01:17:45.520 --> 01:17:51.800
direct plant into the ground at Palmyra.
And so, we did a lot of that. We also,  

01:17:51.800 --> 01:17:56.720
with some of the tree species, you can just take 
a cutting from a branch and stick it in a little  

01:17:56.720 --> 01:18:02.200
bit of rooting hormone, stick it in the ground, 
it rains so much at Palmyra you don't really even  

01:18:02.200 --> 01:18:10.520
have to water it, and a good proportion of 
those trees will establish and grow as well. 

01:18:10.520 --> 01:18:16.760
And then what we've also found is that we haven't 
had to do as much of all of that as we expected,  

01:18:16.760 --> 01:18:24.120
because the seed bank at Palmyra was so much more 
prolific than me than we thought it would be. 

01:18:24.120 --> 01:18:30.080
So, there are a number of areas where we didn't 
do active restoration of the native tree species,  

01:18:30.080 --> 01:18:37.640
and a number of the native trees came up on their 
own, just by being exposed to light when the,  

01:18:37.640 --> 01:18:44.480
you know, having the soil be exposed to light when 
the coconut palm canopy was removed. That allowed  

01:18:44.480 --> 01:18:51.640
the native seed bank to be activated.
So, back to the first part of  

01:18:51.640 --> 01:18:57.560
the question with birds at Palmyra.
So, two groups of birds–seabirds and forest birds. 

01:18:57.560 --> 01:19:07.200
So, the seabirds. Yes. So, we are actively, with 
the seabird social attraction project, we are  

01:19:07.200 --> 01:19:15.280
actively trying to encourage birds to come back 
to Palmyra on their own. If that doesn't succeed,  

01:19:15.280 --> 01:19:23.760
we are definitely going to consider translocating
seabirds from nearby islands where, from a  

01:19:23.760 --> 01:19:29.200
population genetics perspective, it makes sense 
that birds established at Palmyra would still be  

01:19:29.200 --> 01:19:35.200
part of that genetic population. So, yeah, 
that's that. We haven't enacted that yet. 

01:19:35.200 --> 01:19:40.640
Seabird translocation projects 
are hugely successful. 

01:19:40.640 --> 01:19:48.120
They're being done increasingly in island 
and even, yeah, in island scenarios. 

01:19:48.120 --> 01:19:54.560
And we will definitely move towards 
that, if we feel like we need to. 

01:19:54.560 --> 01:20:02.800
There are, there is one land bird introduction 
project to Palmyra that we're very excited about, 

01:20:02.800 --> 01:20:08.800
and that's the introduction of the sihek, 
or the Guam kingfisher, to Palmyra. 

01:20:08.800 --> 01:20:12.000
I won't go into this a ton because it's 
such a cool story, and I’d talk to you  

01:20:12.000 --> 01:20:15.360
guys all night about it,
but stay tuned for that. 

01:20:15.360 --> 01:20:24.120
There's, there'll be more and more announced about 
that in the months to come. But I'll just give a  

01:20:24.120 --> 01:20:31.800
teaser that this is a bird that’s been extinct in 
the wild for well over 30 years. It's an endemic  

01:20:31.800 --> 01:20:39.480
kingfisher to Guam, the island of Guam,
and the Mariana Islands and it can't,  

01:20:39.480 --> 01:20:47.520
it can't persist on Guam right now because of the 
brown tree snake that exploded across Guam decades  

01:20:47.520 --> 01:20:54.840
ago, and the brown tree snake has just decimated 
Guam's bird population, and the Guam kingfisher,  

01:20:54.840 --> 01:20:59.480
the sihek was, luckily a few individuals 
were captured before the species went extinct  

01:20:59.480 --> 01:21:05.360
and they've been held in captivity ever since.
So, they're going to be brought back into the wild  

01:21:05.360 --> 01:21:10.440
for the first time in over 30 years at Palmyra, 
and so we're super excited about that. And Palmyra  

01:21:10.440 --> 01:21:16.240
is a stepping stone for them back to, eventually, 
back to Guam when the conditions will be right. 

01:21:16.240 --> 01:21:24.280
So that's an example of, we're not bringing 
back something that's indigenous to Palmyra,  

01:21:24.280 --> 01:21:29.880
but we're using Palmyra’s conservation 
status, its protected status, 

01:21:29.880 --> 01:21:36.880
and its fantastic habitat to prevent the 
extinction of this extremely charismatic  

01:21:36.880 --> 01:21:41.760
and beautiful and important species. 
And Palmyra will be its home for a while  

01:21:41.760 --> 01:21:46.120
until it goes back to Guam.
So, there, I just told you  

01:21:46.120 --> 01:21:49.840
the whole story anyways. [group laughter]
[Sarah Luigard] Someone is  

01:21:49.840 --> 01:21:55.480
wondering if within the Palmyra 
ecosystem, there are any lagoons  

01:21:55.480 --> 01:22:00.960
which are separated from the ocean, the 
open ocean, and if so, how would those  

01:22:00.960 --> 01:22:09.440
ecosystems be affected differently?
[Dr. Wegmann] So, Palmyra does have  

01:22:09.440 --> 01:22:20.360
lagoon habitat and it has, kind of a, it has 
several different sorts of lagoon bodies. 

01:22:20.360 --> 01:22:27.000
And so, so, no, none of them are entirely 
closed off from the ocean and then there's  

01:22:27.000 --> 01:22:31.960
water that flows over shallow, either 
reef areas or shallow sand flat areas  

01:22:31.960 --> 01:22:36.960
that connects the lagoons to the ocean.
But that's such a good question because it's  

01:22:36.960 --> 01:22:41.680
something I thought about going into during the 
talk, but then I just felt like it would take me  

01:22:41.680 --> 01:22:49.440
down, way down a road of, you know, sort of into 
a different topic. During the World War II period,  

01:22:49.440 --> 01:22:57.280
Palmyra was very heavily modified.
So, it was transformed from a ring of,  

01:22:57.280 --> 01:23:00.840
maybe even I even have a slide 
here that can show this. Let me… 

01:23:00.840 --> 01:23:04.960
Are you guys, can you still see my screen?
I had a bunch of extra slides here at the end  

01:23:04.960 --> 01:23:09.680
of the talk. [Chris Butler-Minor] Yeah, we can.
[Dr. Wegmann] OK let me go, do I have this  

01:23:09.680 --> 01:23:16.200
slide still, you know what? I cut it 
out. Never mind. OK, OK, false alarm. 

01:23:16.200 --> 01:23:21.600
Where am I going here, wherever was I? 
Questions, questions. There we go. OK. So,  

01:23:21.600 --> 01:23:29.560
Palmyra used to be a kind of a horseshoe shaped 
ring of small islands, there are about 52 of them. 

01:23:29.560 --> 01:23:33.000
Prior to World War II, 
inside that ring of islands,  

01:23:33.000 --> 01:23:37.400
each island was separated by a little channel.
The water would flow in and out of, in and out  

01:23:37.400 --> 01:23:42.360
of the atolls lagoon system on a regular 
basis. There's quite a bit of water flowing  

01:23:42.360 --> 01:23:47.480
across the lagoon in, across the atolls, reef 
platform, into the lagoons, through the lagoons,  

01:23:47.480 --> 01:23:54.280
and across the atoll on the other side.
Come World War II and the need to establish  

01:23:54.280 --> 01:24:03.040
runways and houses, at one point there was 4,000 
people, 4,000 troops, and civilians stationed at  

01:24:03.040 --> 01:24:07.800
Palmyra during the war effort.
And to support all of that,  

01:24:07.800 --> 01:24:15.040
all 52 of those islands were joined into one 
kind of large landmass that encircled all of  

01:24:15.040 --> 01:24:21.680
Palmyra’s lagoons and cut off that water flow.
And several causeways were built across the  

01:24:21.680 --> 01:24:27.640
lagoons, further cutting off their water flows.
And so that was the closest Palmyra’s lagoons  

01:24:27.640 --> 01:24:34.400
ever got to being disconnected from the ocean in 
a meaningful way, and the consequences of that  

01:24:34.400 --> 01:24:40.280
have been lasting. So, I've been blabbing about 
how beautiful and amazing and intact Palmyra is. 

01:24:40.280 --> 01:24:47.240
And it is, except for this lagoon ecosystems, 
which still have not fully recovered from that,  

01:24:47.240 --> 01:24:55.120
that land reclamation and road and causeway 
building that occurred back in the early 1940s. 

01:24:55.120 --> 01:25:03.720
And some of the major consequences of that were… 
The hydrodynamic flow of water through the atoll  

01:25:03.720 --> 01:25:12.640
is what ensures that the habitat within the 
lagoon ecosystems isn't overly inundated by  

01:25:12.640 --> 01:25:18.960
sediment, that the water temperature is in 
a range appropriate for benthic organisms,  

01:25:18.960 --> 01:25:24.360
like corals and giant clams,
and that just the overall water  

01:25:24.360 --> 01:25:29.520
quality is suitable for life. When 
the islands were connected and the  

01:25:29.520 --> 01:25:36.760
causeways were built that flow mostly stopped.
What that meant is water would still enter the  

01:25:36.760 --> 01:25:42.440
atoll on a high tide cycle, but it would stay 
a lot longer and it would get superheated,  

01:25:43.120 --> 01:25:47.120
and then sediment generated just 
by the natural atoll processes– 

01:25:47.120 --> 01:25:52.440
and, I'm sure, by all the dredging activity 
and everything that was happening then–would  

01:25:52.440 --> 01:25:58.200
accumulate and stay much longer 
suspended in that lagoon water. 

01:25:58.200 --> 01:26:05.720
And within a very short period, what was described 
as a verdant garden of coral and fish in Palmyra’s  

01:26:05.720 --> 01:26:10.560
lagoon systems was killed.
All the giant clams were gone. 

01:26:10.560 --> 01:26:13.880
Coral was gone. There are still fish in 
there. There are a lot of fish. There's  

01:26:13.880 --> 01:26:19.680
a lot of fish and turtles and other organisms 
that can thrive in that kind of habitat or that  

01:26:19.680 --> 01:26:24.880
kind of water quality scenario.
But the corals really couldn’t. 

01:26:24.880 --> 01:26:31.000
So, what we're seeing today as, you know, as 
the landform created during the World War II  

01:26:31.000 --> 01:26:40.080
effort starts to break down and these roads and 
connections between islands fail and the natural  

01:26:40.080 --> 01:26:45.560
hydrodynamic flow of ocean water moving into 
the atoll and out of the atoll is starting to  

01:26:45.560 --> 01:26:51.120
re-establish, we are seeing coral come back.
We're seeing coral come back in between the  

01:26:51.120 --> 01:26:56.480
islands where the cuts are forming. We’re 
seeing giant clams start to re-establish on  

01:26:56.480 --> 01:27:03.320
the platforms inside, you know, inside the atoll.
And so, there's something we're actively looking  

01:27:03.320 --> 01:27:08.400
at and following. We're using some of 
the same tools, like the drones with  

01:27:09.360 --> 01:27:18.800
artificial intelligence programs too to
identify and quantify coral cover as it's  

01:27:18.800 --> 01:27:22.480
establishing within the lagoon system.
So, all of that's happening, and it's  

01:27:22.480 --> 01:27:27.640
a parallel line of investigation and study.
And you know, it all kinda ties back into this  

01:27:27.640 --> 01:27:37.000
overall atoll health scenario where for Palmyra to 
really be its best self, we really kinda need that 

01:27:37.000 --> 01:27:44.680
that lagoon ecosystem to recover because it's not 
really doing anything for the atoll right now. And  

01:27:44.680 --> 01:27:51.280
in fact, it could still be harming the surrounding 
coral reef a little bit by still holding water  

01:27:51.280 --> 01:27:57.800
longer than it should and holding suspended 
sediment longer and pushing that out onto the  

01:27:57.800 --> 01:28:02.440
reef, onto the fringing reef.
So yeah, great question. 

01:28:02.440 --> 01:28:11.880
And it's a really interesting aspect of the atoll 
that's changing rapidly. Every time I go down,  

01:28:11.880 --> 01:28:16.720
there's a new cut in between an island, 
there's more coral growing inside the lagoon,  

01:28:16.720 --> 01:28:21.066
inside the lagoon habitat. So, it's really 
fun to watch that recovery take place. 

01:28:21.066 --> 01:28:27.160
[Stori Smith] How often do teams head out to 
Palmyra to do this kind of restoration work  

01:28:27.160 --> 01:28:32.800
or any other invasive removal restoration work?
And some people would like to know what it's like  

01:28:32.800 --> 01:28:39.200
to start to get involved in these kinds of things.
[Dr. Wegmann] Yeah, great question. It’s really  

01:28:39.200 --> 01:28:48.120
hard to get to Palmyra. So, it's a five day boat 
ride on a large ocean-going vessel. It's an eight  

01:28:48.120 --> 01:28:54.760
day sail there from Honolulu. Honolulu is the 
closest logistics port that we operate out of. 

01:28:56.200 --> 01:28:59.520
So, it's, go, getting there by 
ocean is really challenging. 

01:28:59.520 --> 01:29:06.440
You can fly to Palmyra. The Nature Conservancy
does maintain a crash coral airstrip. It's the  

01:29:06.440 --> 01:29:12.880
original airstrip from the World War II era 
that we've sort of refurbished and maintain,  

01:29:12.880 --> 01:29:17.080
and we do fly small planes down 
there. When I say small planes,  

01:29:17.080 --> 01:29:23.880
they’re small jet planes. Because of Palmyra’s 
distance from Honolulu–it’s a thousand miles away– 

01:29:23.880 --> 01:29:28.880
it's kind of, in this, this 
really inconvenient scenario,  

01:29:28.880 --> 01:29:36.720
where it's a long way to get there by boat,
it's too far, or too small, to fly, you know,  

01:29:36.720 --> 01:29:40.960
a small, sort of, relatively cheap plane 
down there. So, we're really left with  

01:29:40.960 --> 01:29:48.960
if we want to have ready, efficient access,
we take private charter or private aircraft down  

01:29:48.960 --> 01:29:53.080
there, and the flights are very expensive, 
and so we don't do them very often. So,  

01:29:53.080 --> 01:29:59.960
by that, I mean flights are about, what, 
about every two weeks to a month. So,  

01:29:59.960 --> 01:30:05.880
if you go down for a science trip or you're 
working on one of the conservation projects,  

01:30:05.880 --> 01:30:13.560
you can expect to be there at least two weeks.
Probably, you know, most, most teams stay three  

01:30:13.560 --> 01:30:17.280
weeks to four weeks to get 
the most out of their trip. 

01:30:17.280 --> 01:30:25.880
As far as public access, you can 
access Palmyra via your own vessel, 

01:30:25.880 --> 01:30:31.040
if you'd like to. All of the water’s at 
Palmyra are part of the National Wildlife  

01:30:31.040 --> 01:30:36.520
Refuge. And then, the National Wildlife 
Refuge does allow public visitation. 

01:30:36.520 --> 01:30:40.720
There's a seven-day limit on 
that, and if you go to the 

01:30:40.720 --> 01:30:45.560
Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge 
website, I think there's information there  

01:30:45.560 --> 01:30:54.760
on how to secure the needed permits to enter 
the refuge and stay for a seven-day period. And  

01:30:54.760 --> 01:31:00.040
if you ever have the opportunity to sail there,
it's a wonderful experience. I've done that and  

01:31:00.040 --> 01:31:07.400
would recommend it to anyone who has sea legs.
As far as volunteering at Palmyra and getting  

01:31:07.400 --> 01:31:12.960
involved in conservation projects, The Nature 
Conservancy does have a conservation science  

01:31:12.960 --> 01:31:22.120
volunteer program, which is a fantastic 
program where two, usually sort of emerging,  

01:31:22.120 --> 01:31:29.280
conservation professionals will be down at 
Palmyra at any given time. They're serving  

01:31:29.280 --> 01:31:37.080
six month terms. The program is currently set 
up to have each volunteer serve six-month terms,  

01:31:37.080 --> 01:31:41.640
and they get involved in all of our conservation 
projects that we have going on down there. 

01:31:41.640 --> 01:31:48.080
So, everything I talked about today at Palmyra, 
our science volunteers are involved in, and so  

01:31:48.080 --> 01:31:53.400
much more that I didn't mention, including a lot 
of the research and conservation that's going on  

01:31:53.400 --> 01:32:00.640
out in the pelagic habitat out in the open ocean. 
A lot of the coral reef stuff. So, yeah. So really  

01:32:00.640 --> 01:32:06.200
awesome opportunity for someone who thinks 
they want to get into conservation science. 

01:32:06.200 --> 01:32:12.240
Now, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is 
also intermittently recruiting volunteer  

01:32:12.240 --> 01:32:17.480
teams to work on PARP, on the Palmyra Atoll 
Rainforest and Reef Resilience Project. These  

01:32:17.480 --> 01:32:23.440
volunteer teams have been the mainstay of 
the control action against the coconut palms. 

01:32:23.440 --> 01:32:28.640
And teams have been going down there since 
2019, and we have a team down there right  

01:32:28.640 --> 01:32:37.120
now working on the project. So again, I think 
that opportunity is also available through the  

01:32:37.120 --> 01:32:40.360
Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge website.
[Chris Butler-Minor] Well I am going to say 

01:32:40.360 --> 01:32:45.440
thank you so much for this 
presentation, Alex. This is great. 

01:32:45.440 --> 01:32:49.760
I feel like I learned so much.
And I saw a version of it… 

01:32:53.400 --> 01:32:58.520
Really great.
So, I'm just gonna wrap  

01:32:58.520 --> 01:33:06.520
us up here to say thank you to Alex. Thanks to
those of you that helped me out here, helped Gavin  

01:33:06.520 --> 01:33:14.040
and I out. And also, thank you very much to the 
audience for joining us and staying the distance. 

01:33:15.040 --> 01:33:22.600
There will be a certificate that goes out to 
you for continuing education credits. And I  

01:33:22.600 --> 01:33:29.240
will be sending the unanswered questions to 
Alex and asking him to fill in the blanks,  

01:33:29.760 --> 01:33:36.200
as well as provide some of the reference,  
links to the reference materials used in his  

01:33:36.200 --> 01:33:42.240
presentation. And to remind you to join us again 
in February when we have Megan Juran talk to us  

01:33:42.240 --> 01:33:46.680
about marine debris.
Thank you.