WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.133 Well. Hello, everyone. 00:00:01.133 --> 00:00:04.800 Welcome to this evening presentation coming to you, 00:00:04.800 --> 00:00:08.266 using the National Marine Sanctuary Webinar Series platform. 00:00:08.266 --> 00:00:08.666 We're happy 00:00:08.666 --> 00:00:13.266 you could join us tonight for for what's washed in with, Julia Parrish. 00:00:13.266 --> 00:00:15.533 Introduction to myself. 00:00:15.533 --> 00:00:16.600 I'm Chris Butler. Miner. 00:00:16.600 --> 00:00:19.733 I'm the community engagement specialist with Olympic Coast 00:00:19.800 --> 00:00:21.000 National Marine Sanctuary. 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:24.133 And joining me are Gavin Miller. 00:00:24.266 --> 00:00:27.733 He, education associate with Farrell Marine Life Center. 00:00:27.733 --> 00:00:30.466 The two of us will be facilitating tonight's webinar. 00:00:30.466 --> 00:00:34.800 Also, in addition to the two of us, we will have 00:00:34.800 --> 00:00:36.466 two AmeriCorps service members 00:00:36.466 --> 00:00:39.133 that are serving with Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary. 00:00:39.133 --> 00:00:42.533 We have Story Smith Shoes and Sarah Louis Card. 00:00:42.666 --> 00:00:47.466 So they'll be helping today by, watching the question box or, 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:51.133 some people are more familiar with the term, chat box. 00:00:51.800 --> 00:00:54.800 But I think it's going to be labeled question box for you. 00:00:55.200 --> 00:00:59.333 And, please feel free to use that during the presentation 00:00:59.400 --> 00:01:02.666 if you're having any kind of technical issues or if, 00:01:02.666 --> 00:01:06.600 you don't want to forget a question that you have for Julia to answer 00:01:06.600 --> 00:01:08.400 at the end of the webinar, 00:01:08.400 --> 00:01:11.666 you can go ahead and put those, right into the chat box and we'll be 00:01:11.666 --> 00:01:16.200 monitoring, during the presentation, especially for technical issues. 00:01:16.200 --> 00:01:20.400 So what I'd like to, do, in addition to giving you those little housekeeping 00:01:21.066 --> 00:01:24.066 hands, is to introduce you to National Marine Sanctuary, 00:01:24.200 --> 00:01:25.733 if you're not familiar with them. 00:01:25.733 --> 00:01:28.733 So National marine sanctuaries in existence 00:01:28.733 --> 00:01:32.200 for, about the last 50 years. 00:01:32.200 --> 00:01:37.066 In that time, we've done a lot of good work, in working to protect 00:01:37.066 --> 00:01:41.133 natural resources, particularly ocean and great lake resources and, 00:01:41.133 --> 00:01:44.400 and also to promote sustainable ocean uses 00:01:44.400 --> 00:01:48.266 that ensure the health of these most valued ocean places. 00:01:48.266 --> 00:01:50.666 Because a healthy ocean is the basis 00:01:50.666 --> 00:01:54.466 for a thriving recreation, tourism and commercial activities. 00:01:54.466 --> 00:01:56.800 Aside from just the esthetic qualities. 00:01:56.800 --> 00:02:00.933 So as you can see from this map, sanctuaries are located around 00:02:00.933 --> 00:02:04.866 most of the U.S shorelines and coast, and NOAA's Office of National Marine 00:02:04.866 --> 00:02:09.866 Sanctuary is serves as the trustee for a network of these underwater 00:02:09.866 --> 00:02:15.400 areas, encompassing more than 620,000mi² of marine and great lake waters. 00:02:15.733 --> 00:02:18.333 So it's, pretty close to the size of Alaska. 00:02:18.333 --> 00:02:22.000 This network includes a system of 15 national marine sanctuaries, 00:02:22.466 --> 00:02:26.066 which are the white circles that you see on the map. 00:02:26.066 --> 00:02:29.600 And then also, to marine 00:02:29.600 --> 00:02:33.133 national monuments, which are the triangles, Honolulu, a.k.a. 00:02:33.466 --> 00:02:34.600 and Rose Atoll. 00:02:34.600 --> 00:02:37.000 The sanctuary that I work for. 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:40.933 Olympiakos National Marine Sanctuary is located on the, 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:44.933 coast of Washington state, on the Olympic Peninsula. 00:02:44.933 --> 00:02:50.266 And it's, within the usual and accustomed fishing areas of the ho tribe. 00:02:50.666 --> 00:02:54.600 The macaw tribe, the coyote tribe, and the Quinault Indian Nation. 00:02:55.133 --> 00:02:59.266 And these are all, federally recognized tribes. 00:02:59.266 --> 00:03:04.200 In addition to these tribes, we are broadcasting from, Port Angeles, 00:03:04.200 --> 00:03:08.933 which is located in the traditional lands of the Lower 00:03:08.933 --> 00:03:13.600 Elwha Clallam tribe, and near their village of Chawton. 00:03:13.666 --> 00:03:18.200 And, in this acknowledgment, broadcasting from the area, 00:03:18.600 --> 00:03:23.400 I would like to, ask you to join me in supporting them 00:03:23.400 --> 00:03:27.133 and their continued work to steward this area, 00:03:27.133 --> 00:03:30.533 by creating clean air, water, 00:03:30.866 --> 00:03:34.800 and other resources that are valuable to each one of us. 00:03:34.933 --> 00:03:39.866 And so I won't, read this, to you, but I'll give you the chance to read it. 00:03:40.466 --> 00:03:44.133 And essence, what it tells us is sanctuaries have special features 00:03:44.133 --> 00:03:47.466 that are worth protecting, and few places on the planet can compete 00:03:47.466 --> 00:03:50.933 with the diversity of the marine sanctuary system, which protects 00:03:51.333 --> 00:03:54.666 America's most iconic natural and cultural marine resources. 00:03:54.666 --> 00:04:00.200 And so we invite you in the Office of National Marine Sanctuary to celebrate, 00:04:00.200 --> 00:04:03.466 discover, explore, enjoy and save 00:04:03.800 --> 00:04:06.800 spectacular national marine sanctuaries. 00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:09.666 Now, I'd like to turn the presentation over to Gavin. 00:04:09.666 --> 00:04:10.466 Thanks, Chris. 00:04:10.466 --> 00:04:13.266 Hey, I'm Gavin from Ferry Marine Life Center. 00:04:13.266 --> 00:04:16.266 We're an aquarium in downtown Port Angeles, Washington. 00:04:16.333 --> 00:04:21.266 Founded in 1981 by a community leader and educated Arthur D Farrell. 00:04:21.933 --> 00:04:24.466 We specialize in education and feature 00:04:24.466 --> 00:04:28.200 a range of local intertidal creatures and interactive exhibits. 00:04:28.666 --> 00:04:31.733 Our mission is to connect the community to the ocean, 00:04:32.133 --> 00:04:36.066 allowing everyone to see, touch and learn about the world under the sea. 00:04:36.600 --> 00:04:39.866 And so glad you all can make it today and I look forward to the presentation. 00:04:40.333 --> 00:04:42.600 Back to you, Chris. Thank you. 00:04:42.600 --> 00:04:45.200 So it is my pleasure 00:04:45.200 --> 00:04:49.066 to be able to, give you an introduction to tonight's 00:04:49.066 --> 00:04:52.866 speaker, Julia Parrish, who is the associate dean 00:04:52.866 --> 00:04:57.400 for Academic affairs in the College of the environment Diversity in Washington. 00:04:58.266 --> 00:05:00.000 And, Aloha. 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:03.733 And Frankie L Wakefield, professor of ocean fishery sciences. 00:05:04.466 --> 00:05:07.866 She's a marine biologist, a conservation biologist, 00:05:08.200 --> 00:05:10.933 and a specialist in animal aggregation. 00:05:10.933 --> 00:05:16.333 And so for 20 years, more than 20 years, Julia's conducted research on seabirds, 00:05:16.666 --> 00:05:21.400 focused on the natural and human caused factors of population decline. 00:05:22.200 --> 00:05:26.400 Julia is also the executive director of the Coastal Observation 00:05:26.400 --> 00:05:30.866 and Seabird Survey Team, which are more commonly known as coast 00:05:31.466 --> 00:05:34.800 which is a West Coast citizen science program involving 00:05:34.800 --> 00:05:37.800 hundreds of participants collecting monthly data 00:05:37.933 --> 00:05:42.600 on the identity and abundance of beach cats, birds and marine debris. 00:05:42.600 --> 00:05:46.666 Their goal is creating the definitive baseline against which 00:05:46.666 --> 00:05:50.466 the impacts of any nearshore catastrophe could be measured. 00:05:50.466 --> 00:05:56.400 So with out further ado, I would like to welcome Julia Parrish. 00:05:56.666 --> 00:05:57.866 Thanks, Chris. 00:05:57.866 --> 00:05:59.466 Well, hello, everybody out there. 00:05:59.466 --> 00:06:03.266 Thanks for joining, 00:06:03.266 --> 00:06:08.400 this webinar and hoping there are coasters and if there are coasters out there 00:06:08.400 --> 00:06:11.933 and you can put, little party 00:06:12.400 --> 00:06:16.466 icon in the chat, go ahead and do it just to show solidarity. 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:20.000 So as Chris mentioned, my name is Julie Parrish. 00:06:20.066 --> 00:06:23.533 I am the executive director of the Coastal Observation 00:06:23.533 --> 00:06:27.000 and Seabird Survey Team, which is, very large 00:06:27.133 --> 00:06:31.600 citizen science program that is, centered at the University of Washington. 00:06:31.600 --> 00:06:32.800 That's where the offices are. 00:06:32.800 --> 00:06:34.200 But really, coast is everywhere. 00:06:34.200 --> 00:06:36.066 So, I'm going to start with this question. 00:06:36.066 --> 00:06:39.733 Can citizen science, be another part of the toolbox of science? 00:06:39.733 --> 00:06:45.400 And this is a question that I ask a lot, especially when I'm in, scientific. 00:13:23.133 --> 00:13:23.400 We can 00:13:23.400 --> 00:13:26.400 also see that the standing stack of debris is constant. 00:13:26.400 --> 00:13:27.800 That is, the two lines. 00:13:27.800 --> 00:13:30.866 The blue line and the red line are pretty similar to each other. 00:13:30.866 --> 00:13:33.800 And what are those lines mean for the blue line? 00:13:33.800 --> 00:13:37.133 Are places where, the debris was left, 00:13:37.400 --> 00:13:40.666 on the beach after it was sampled. 00:13:40.666 --> 00:13:43.733 And the red line or places where the debris was removed. 00:13:44.200 --> 00:13:46.600 And yet you can see that those lines are similar. 00:13:46.600 --> 00:13:47.933 What does that mean? 00:13:47.933 --> 00:13:52.066 That actually means that a lot of debris is moving around on the beach. 00:13:52.266 --> 00:13:56.066 It's pushed around by the wind and therefore it's removing debris. 00:13:56.066 --> 00:13:59.066 Debris is also coming in constantly to the beach. 00:13:59.066 --> 00:14:04.800 And so that influx actually overwhelms most, ability to 00:14:04.800 --> 00:14:08.333 to clean the beach off unless everybody's cleaning all of the time. 00:14:08.600 --> 00:14:10.266 So that's one message. 00:14:10.266 --> 00:14:11.666 Not a very nice message. 00:14:12.800 --> 00:14:15.266 You actually have a lot of marine debris sites. 00:14:15.266 --> 00:14:20.400 The red sites, on the map, are active marine debris sites in Puget Sound. 00:14:20.600 --> 00:14:24.466 And the green triangles on the outer coast, along the Washington, 00:14:24.466 --> 00:14:27.533 our coast, and then down into, Oregon. 00:14:27.533 --> 00:14:31.066 And we actually did a, a piece of science looking at the difference 00:14:31.066 --> 00:14:33.200 between these two places and what we found. 00:14:33.200 --> 00:14:37.466 If you look at Puget Sound, so Salish Sea versus the outer coast 00:14:37.666 --> 00:14:41.000 and Puget Sound, about six items per 100m², 00:14:41.266 --> 00:14:44.266 along the Washington coast, only about 4.6. 00:14:44.400 --> 00:14:49.333 So per unit area inside waters, beaches appear to be trash year. 00:14:49.600 --> 00:14:52.800 That's not really news because there are many, many more people, 00:14:53.000 --> 00:14:56.600 in the Salish Sea area relative to the outer coast. 00:14:57.000 --> 00:14:59.333 But here's an interesting thing. 00:14:59.333 --> 00:15:02.866 The average width of the beach, in Puget Sound 00:15:02.866 --> 00:15:05.933 is much, much narrower than the outer coast. 00:15:06.133 --> 00:15:11.866 So when you look at things per lineal, kilometer of coastline, 00:15:11.866 --> 00:15:15.000 it turns out that this, story gets reversed. 00:15:15.333 --> 00:15:20.466 So if you walk along 100m, of beach in Puget Sound, 00:15:20.666 --> 00:15:23.866 you pick up about 282 items on average. 00:15:24.066 --> 00:15:27.866 But if you want that same lineal, extent of beach 00:15:28.066 --> 00:15:31.333 on the outer coast, you'll pick up 313. Why? 00:15:31.533 --> 00:15:33.666 Because that beach is so much wider. 00:15:33.666 --> 00:15:38.133 So it's got less debris load per unit area, but a lot more area. 00:15:38.466 --> 00:15:41.733 So that's one other thing to take away, really depends 00:15:41.733 --> 00:15:43.800 on how you look at the data. 00:15:43.800 --> 00:15:45.800 What kind of debris do we see. 00:15:45.800 --> 00:15:49.266 What you're looking at is Puget Sound on the left side of the graph, 00:15:49.466 --> 00:15:53.266 and the outer coast on the right side of the graph, and each one of those 00:15:53.266 --> 00:15:56.466 columns is a different year, starting from 2017 00:15:56.466 --> 00:15:59.466 and running through 2021. 00:15:59.666 --> 00:16:00.666 And what you're looking at in 00:16:00.666 --> 00:16:04.933 the colors are medium sized debris of different types. 00:16:05.266 --> 00:16:07.200 The the dominating color. 00:16:07.200 --> 00:16:09.333 The green color is plastic. 00:16:09.333 --> 00:16:11.600 This isn't also really news. 00:16:11.600 --> 00:16:15.800 Plastic is is a predominant marine debris type. Why? 00:16:15.933 --> 00:16:19.400 Because it lasts a very long period of time and it floods. 00:16:19.666 --> 00:16:21.066 It never sinks. 00:16:21.066 --> 00:16:24.000 But there's something else that you need to really look at here. 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:24.866 There's a real difference. 00:16:24.866 --> 00:16:26.800 Puget sound looks a lot more colorful. 00:16:26.800 --> 00:16:30.066 Those columns are a lot more colorful than on the outer coast. 00:16:30.266 --> 00:16:34.333 So on the outer coast, we're seeing predominantly plastic. 00:16:34.333 --> 00:16:38.200 But in the Salish Sea, we're seeing a whole bunch of different, 00:16:38.200 --> 00:16:43.666 debris types, including some types that don't float like metal or cement. 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:47.000 We also looked 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:50.000 at that debris according to where it occurs. 00:16:50.133 --> 00:16:51.866 On the beach. 00:16:51.866 --> 00:16:54.266 Is does it occur low on the beach? 00:16:54.266 --> 00:16:55.533 In the wreck zone? 00:16:55.533 --> 00:16:58.466 Does it occur up high on the beach and the bare 00:16:58.466 --> 00:17:01.466 dry sand, or does it occur, in the wood? 00:17:01.466 --> 00:17:06.000 And you can see that there's a lot of, different kinds of debris 00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:10.933 other than plastic, especially in the bare zone of Puget Sound. 00:17:11.133 --> 00:17:14.666 So depending on where you are, the high beach can, 00:17:14.800 --> 00:17:19.666 actually be quite diverse in the kinds of debris that we see. 00:17:20.266 --> 00:17:23.733 So the message that we got from this study is it's about plastic. 00:17:23.733 --> 00:17:24.733 It is the plastic. 00:17:24.733 --> 00:17:28.933 But in Salish Sea there are also some other types of materials. 00:17:29.333 --> 00:17:33.133 And what that's telling us is those pieces of debris 00:17:33.133 --> 00:17:35.533 probably didn't come from the marine environment. 00:17:35.533 --> 00:17:39.400 They probably either were dumped there by people 00:17:39.400 --> 00:17:42.933 or left there inadvertently by beach goers. 00:17:43.133 --> 00:17:48.533 And that's an interestingly, silver lining to the marine debris story. 00:17:48.533 --> 00:17:53.933 What it says is with the right outreach and even the right, dispose 00:17:53.933 --> 00:17:57.533 all options, perhaps on the back beach, perhaps in the parking lot, 00:17:57.733 --> 00:18:01.333 we may be able to shift that needle in the Salish Sea. 00:18:02.800 --> 00:18:03.133 Now, I'm 00:18:03.133 --> 00:18:06.866 going to turn to beach birds and tell you, some beach bird stories. 00:18:06.933 --> 00:18:10.733 So remember that our Beach Birds program has been going a lot longer. 00:18:10.733 --> 00:18:12.600 So we have a lot more data. 00:18:12.600 --> 00:18:15.266 Here's what it means to participate in beach birds. 00:18:15.266 --> 00:18:19.466 Depending on where you are, you may survey 1 to 5 hours a month. 00:18:19.800 --> 00:18:24.533 Not very birdie in the Salish Sea inside Puget Sound, for instance. 00:18:24.733 --> 00:18:26.866 Pretty bird on the outer coast. 00:18:26.866 --> 00:18:29.866 And kind of in between in the Strait. 00:18:31.133 --> 00:18:32.066 Okay. 00:18:32.066 --> 00:18:35.266 So, individuals go out on a monthly basis. 00:18:35.266 --> 00:18:36.666 They always start at the same place. 00:18:36.666 --> 00:18:40.666 They survey the entire beach, they come back to that starting place 00:18:40.666 --> 00:18:42.600 whenever they find carcasses, 00:18:42.600 --> 00:18:45.533 they're going to, as the people in this picture are doing, 00:18:45.533 --> 00:18:50.000 drop to their knees, slap on some gloves, open a book that's our field guide, 00:18:50.200 --> 00:18:53.266 and try and collect data from that carcass. 00:18:53.466 --> 00:18:55.066 What kinds of data are they collecting? 00:18:55.066 --> 00:18:56.733 They're identifying the foot type. 00:18:56.733 --> 00:19:00.466 They're making three standardized measurements of the bill, of the wing 00:19:00.466 --> 00:19:02.933 and of a foot. And they're taking two photographs. 00:19:02.933 --> 00:19:04.533 They're also collecting a lot of information 00:19:04.533 --> 00:19:07.600 about the condition of the carcass, for instance, whether it's intact 00:19:07.866 --> 00:19:10.600 and also where that carcass was found on the beach. 00:19:10.600 --> 00:19:14.133 They're using that evidence to identify the carcass, 00:19:14.266 --> 00:19:17.866 and they're doing that with our beach bird field guide. 00:19:18.000 --> 00:19:21.666 Now, this is not like one of those flower field guides where it's got all the white 00:19:21.666 --> 00:19:24.400 flowers on one place and all the pink flowers on the other end 00:19:24.400 --> 00:19:26.400 is sort of flipping through and holding them up and saying, 00:19:26.400 --> 00:19:29.400 yeah, well, I kind of think that's a Western star flower. 00:19:29.533 --> 00:19:31.400 That's not how it is with beach birds. 00:19:31.400 --> 00:19:35.666 What we do is use the evidence that's collected along with some other, 00:19:35.733 --> 00:19:40.133 evidence that you're asked to or guided to collect in the guide. 00:19:40.733 --> 00:19:45.266 First to figure out what what type family, using the footage, 00:19:45.466 --> 00:19:49.466 then using going through some simple questions on the family page 00:19:49.600 --> 00:19:54.600 to guide you to, box with a stop sign that has one or more species pages. 00:19:54.733 --> 00:19:56.533 So there's no guessing. 00:19:56.533 --> 00:19:59.666 In Coast coasters, a fully scientific program. 00:19:59.666 --> 00:20:02.266 And here's how we do it. Evidence first. 00:20:02.266 --> 00:20:05.666 But foot type, the three measurements plus plumage characteristics 00:20:05.866 --> 00:20:09.266 run through a specific tool a dichotomous key, 00:20:09.800 --> 00:20:12.800 and coasters use that to make a deduction. 00:20:13.133 --> 00:20:14.400 What is that deduction? 00:20:14.400 --> 00:20:18.466 The lowest possible taxa, which is the life history stage within a species. 00:20:18.600 --> 00:20:20.800 For instance, a breeding male 00:20:21.866 --> 00:20:25.000 that information, the evidence, the deduction 00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.733 and the photographs are sent to the Coast Main office where they're verified 00:20:29.866 --> 00:20:34.400 and the verifier comes up independently, also with the lowest possible taxa. 00:20:34.533 --> 00:20:37.533 So that means 100% of the coast data are verified. 00:20:38.066 --> 00:20:40.933 So let's talk about the coasters for a minute. 00:20:40.933 --> 00:20:46.466 Walking into a training a lot of coasters, or pre coasters, I guess I should say, 00:20:46.733 --> 00:20:50.800 are pretty skeptical about, whether they're even going to participate. 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:54.533 They're skeptical about their ability to identify birds. 00:20:54.933 --> 00:20:58.400 In fact, only about 15% of coasters say, yeah, I know I'm 00:20:58.400 --> 00:21:02.066 an expert or I'm an advanced birder, but fully half of the people 00:21:02.066 --> 00:21:06.066 who come into a training say, well, I'm kind of a beginner. 00:21:06.266 --> 00:21:09.266 I have never really even thought about identifying birds, 00:21:09.333 --> 00:21:13.533 or I have very, very little experience or no experience. 00:21:15.333 --> 00:21:16.066 How good 00:21:16.066 --> 00:21:19.066 can they get after a five hour training? 00:21:19.133 --> 00:21:22.133 This graphic indicates that on the x or the 00:21:22.133 --> 00:21:24.866 horizontal axis is previous experience. 00:21:24.866 --> 00:21:26.266 How many carcasses have you found? 00:21:26.266 --> 00:21:28.933 So if you haven't been in coast, the answer is zero, right? 00:21:28.933 --> 00:21:31.533 You haven't found you haven't identified any carcasses. 00:21:31.533 --> 00:21:35.066 Each dot is one or more coasters, and the size of the dot 00:21:35.400 --> 00:21:37.800 is something about how many people are in there. 00:21:37.800 --> 00:21:43.266 So you can see along that red curvy line down towards zero, the dots get bigger. 00:21:43.466 --> 00:21:46.800 That's because there are more folks that haven't had much experience, either 00:21:46.800 --> 00:21:50.733 because they just joined coast or because they're serving a not very bony beach. 00:21:51.266 --> 00:21:53.333 But some of those people look at those dots. 00:21:53.333 --> 00:21:56.333 They're out there like 400 or 500 carcasses. 00:21:56.333 --> 00:21:58.866 Now, that's a lot of coasting. 00:21:58.866 --> 00:22:00.933 So those folks have either been in coast 00:22:00.933 --> 00:22:04.466 for a long time and or they're on seriously body beaches 00:22:04.733 --> 00:22:09.733 or the vertical or the y axis that's carcass specific accuracy. 00:22:09.866 --> 00:22:13.800 That's how good you are over all of the carcasses that you found. 00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:16.800 And you can see that there are no dots up at 100%. 00:22:16.800 --> 00:22:19.466 So nobody gets every single carcass. Right. 00:22:19.466 --> 00:22:22.466 But you can see the dots are pretty high. 00:22:23.066 --> 00:22:26.733 And we can use a statistical model that's the red line 00:22:26.933 --> 00:22:32.400 to, get an average and go back all the way to the zero line. 00:22:32.400 --> 00:22:37.000 So at zero, just before you find your first bird, how good are you? 00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:39.133 That's the effect of the training. 00:22:39.133 --> 00:22:44.466 So walking out of a training at Bird Zero turns out coasters on average are at 70%. 00:22:44.800 --> 00:22:47.200 Wow, that is great. 00:22:47.200 --> 00:22:51.666 Seven out of ten carcasses you find, you get correct 00:22:51.666 --> 00:22:54.800 a species before you even started doing the surveys. 00:22:54.933 --> 00:22:59.333 So there's the effect of the training, but you can see that practice makes people 00:22:59.333 --> 00:23:00.200 even better. 00:23:00.200 --> 00:23:03.600 That curvy line goes up to an asymptote 00:23:03.600 --> 00:23:07.133 or a flat space, and that's at about 87%. 00:23:07.333 --> 00:23:12.000 So after about a year of doing coast, especially if you're on a bird beach 00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:16.733 and you're finding birds, that program average gets boosted up to 87%. 00:23:16.866 --> 00:23:20.466 That's almost nine out of ten carcasses correct to species. 00:23:20.666 --> 00:23:25.200 And remember, because we're doing the verification, we can prove that 00:23:26.400 --> 00:23:26.733 okay. 00:23:26.733 --> 00:23:27.933 Well so what? 00:23:27.933 --> 00:23:31.933 So maybe I've convinced you that we can train people 00:23:31.933 --> 00:23:36.600 to be super accurate at identifying dead birds on a beach, but if that information 00:23:36.600 --> 00:23:39.666 just went in to a digital drawer, it wouldn't be very useful. 00:23:39.800 --> 00:23:42.400 So now what we want to do is tell you what we do. 00:23:42.400 --> 00:23:45.400 What are the uses of the coast data? 00:23:46.400 --> 00:23:49.333 The very most important thing that we do in coast 00:23:49.333 --> 00:23:53.266 is we define the natural history of dead birds. 00:23:53.600 --> 00:23:57.933 So you can see in this graph here on the x or horizontal axis 00:23:57.933 --> 00:24:04.200 is time, stretching from April 2016 through May of 2017. 00:24:04.200 --> 00:24:06.400 So just a smidge more than a year. 00:24:06.400 --> 00:24:10.266 The space I'm showing you is the northern coast of Oregon, 00:24:10.466 --> 00:24:14.400 and I'm doing that because this is the quintessential coast pattern. 00:24:15.733 --> 00:24:16.200 Okay, 00:24:16.200 --> 00:24:20.866 so on the horror or on the vertical axis is the encounter rate 00:24:20.866 --> 00:24:22.466 or how many carcasses 00:24:22.466 --> 00:24:26.000 you would expect to encounter in a particular month of the year. 00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:29.000 So you can see in April and May it's pretty low. 00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:32.200 It's down around one, but come August, September 00:24:32.200 --> 00:24:35.200 it's bumping up to 4 or 5. 00:24:35.533 --> 00:24:37.866 The black line with, yellow 00:24:37.866 --> 00:24:41.866 wash is the long term normal, the black line is the long term average. 00:24:41.866 --> 00:24:47.000 And we make that average by taking every single beach in a region in a given month. 00:24:47.266 --> 00:24:51.066 Over all the years that we have data, and calculating a long term 00:24:51.066 --> 00:24:51.733 average from that. 00:24:51.733 --> 00:24:55.266 So every time new data comes into the coast 00:24:55.266 --> 00:24:58.533 database, we're updating those averages just a little bit. 00:24:58.733 --> 00:25:02.933 So think about it like the miles per gallon in your car right when you put 00:25:02.933 --> 00:25:08.600 in, New tank of gas and you reset the zero that's keeping a running average 00:25:08.800 --> 00:25:12.933 of how efficient your car is, the coast averages a little bit like that. 00:25:12.933 --> 00:25:16.933 And then the gray bars are what happened in any given year. 00:25:17.133 --> 00:25:20.333 So you can see that in this year along the northern outer 00:25:20.333 --> 00:25:23.400 coast of Oregon, 2016 2017, 00:25:23.533 --> 00:25:27.600 the gray bars are pretty much exactly matching the long term average line, 00:25:27.866 --> 00:25:31.200 telling us that, in fact, this year was pretty normal. 00:25:31.400 --> 00:25:35.266 So this is the long term normal or the average pattern. 00:25:35.666 --> 00:25:38.800 And once you know what that is, you can test against it 00:25:39.133 --> 00:25:42.400 both because there's a wow out, something bigger than normal, 00:25:42.600 --> 00:25:44.866 and also sometimes because there's an absence 00:25:44.866 --> 00:25:47.866 you're expecting something and nothing shows up. 00:25:47.866 --> 00:25:52.800 So if we look back one year in time along the northern coast of Oregon, 00:25:53.066 --> 00:25:56.333 and I'm going to show that's the same long term average 00:25:56.600 --> 00:26:02.933 two humped, line, but now it's going to look a lot flatter. 00:26:02.933 --> 00:26:07.266 And that's because a year before that, there were quite a lot of birds 00:26:07.266 --> 00:26:10.933 that were washing in in the August September time window. 00:26:11.466 --> 00:26:14.800 Upwards of 10 to 14 carcasses per kilometer. 00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:16.466 So that's a lot more than normal. 00:26:16.466 --> 00:26:20.666 If you take 9 to 14 carcasses per kilometer and multiply 00:26:20.666 --> 00:26:24.666 that times the entire coastline of northern Oregon. 00:26:24.666 --> 00:26:29.133 And remember, this is on average, what's washing in every day. 00:26:29.733 --> 00:26:32.333 That, adds up to about 3000 carcasses. 00:26:32.333 --> 00:26:33.866 So that's a lot. 00:26:33.866 --> 00:26:37.200 Let's go back another year and let me show you something 00:26:37.200 --> 00:26:38.666 that's really not normal. 00:26:38.666 --> 00:26:42.666 Now you can see that long term average and it looks almost like a flat line. 00:26:42.666 --> 00:26:43.533 So before it looked like 00:26:43.533 --> 00:26:47.066 a double humped mountain and now it looks like a flat line. Why? 00:26:47.333 --> 00:26:50.333 Because I've really had to extend the vertical axis 00:26:50.400 --> 00:26:53.400 all the way on up to 30 carcasses a kilometer. 00:26:53.466 --> 00:26:56.666 So at 32 carcasses a kilometer, which is what we hit 00:26:57.000 --> 00:26:59.866 in December of 2014 00:26:59.866 --> 00:27:05.000 along the northern coast of Oregon, that would have been 8000 carcasses a day. 00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:06.800 Washington. Wow. 00:27:06.800 --> 00:27:10.133 That is what we call a mass mortality event. 00:27:10.333 --> 00:27:14.933 Okay, so now that you know a little bit about what we do 00:27:14.933 --> 00:27:19.200 and looking for the natural history or the normal pattern 00:27:19.466 --> 00:27:22.466 in order to test cases where things are abnormal, 00:27:22.800 --> 00:27:25.800 let me tell you a few stories of abnormality, 00:27:25.866 --> 00:27:30.000 kind of the big tests of the coast baseline within Washington waters. 00:27:30.266 --> 00:27:32.666 But first of all, it's going to be about a harmful algal bloom. 00:27:32.666 --> 00:27:34.800 The second one is going to be about a disease, 00:27:34.800 --> 00:27:37.800 and the last ones are going to be about a marine heatwaves. 00:27:37.933 --> 00:27:40.666 So my first coast story is about, 00:27:40.666 --> 00:27:43.733 sea ducks, in this case surf and white winged scooters. 00:27:44.000 --> 00:27:45.733 These are pretty large birds. 00:27:45.733 --> 00:27:51.200 They actually breed up in Canada and in, into Alaska, 00:27:51.533 --> 00:27:53.800 give or take a lot of jazz hands here. 00:27:53.800 --> 00:27:55.533 It's about 500,000. 00:27:55.533 --> 00:27:58.466 Of each of these birds might be 400,000. 00:27:58.466 --> 00:27:59.800 Might be a million. 00:27:59.800 --> 00:28:02.066 Pretty hard to count them when they're breeding, 00:28:02.066 --> 00:28:05.000 but during the non breeding season they come down actually to both 00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:08.666 the West coast and East coast, of North America. 00:28:08.933 --> 00:28:13.666 And we regularly send up planes and count them along the coastline. 00:28:13.800 --> 00:28:17.200 In 2009, we started to see a lot of these birds 00:28:17.466 --> 00:28:23.266 not only washed ashore dead, but come up out of the water and stand on the beach, 00:28:23.266 --> 00:28:27.133 which is super, super abnormal for skodas in the non breeding season. 00:28:27.533 --> 00:28:30.400 So you're looking at a pretty complicated graphic here. 00:28:30.400 --> 00:28:34.333 The top graphic is a count of the number 00:28:34.333 --> 00:28:38.000 of cells of a dinoflagellates known as Akashi. 00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:41.066 Well Akashi was sanguine is the Latin name, 00:28:42.266 --> 00:28:44.533 And each one of those colorful lines 00:28:44.533 --> 00:28:48.066 was collected at a different point, which you can see at the map on the right. 00:28:48.266 --> 00:28:51.333 So the red line was a clay block, and the orange line 00:28:51.333 --> 00:28:54.333 was a canal, and the Green line was a cow palace. 00:28:54.866 --> 00:28:57.000 And when you see a peak, 00:28:57.000 --> 00:29:00.533 in those lines, we know there's lots and lots and lots. 00:29:00.533 --> 00:29:04.933 In fact, many gazillions of cells, in the coastal ocean, in fact, 00:29:04.933 --> 00:29:09.266 so many cells that turned the water red, hence the name red tide. 00:29:09.733 --> 00:29:13.800 What are the orange stripe and the blue stripe that are running down 00:29:13.800 --> 00:29:15.133 through those graphics? 00:29:15.133 --> 00:29:20.266 Those are two periods of time, when we saw lots of dead birds washing ashore. 00:29:20.600 --> 00:29:23.600 The orange stripe is lots of skodas, 00:29:23.666 --> 00:29:27.466 the blue stripe, the skodas plus Mars moons and great. 00:29:28.933 --> 00:29:29.333 Okay, so 00:29:29.333 --> 00:29:32.466 one thing that we can say is, gosh, when the birds 00:29:32.466 --> 00:29:36.266 were coming to shore, that's when we saw lots and lots and lots of cells. 00:29:36.533 --> 00:29:38.266 Oh, harmful algal bloom. 00:29:38.266 --> 00:29:41.266 Also in the middle panel you can see storm events. 00:29:41.400 --> 00:29:43.866 So that's when we got lots of big waves. 00:29:43.866 --> 00:29:45.066 That's the trace. 00:29:45.066 --> 00:29:48.266 And big storms. Those are the stars. 00:29:48.533 --> 00:29:53.066 So one other piece of evidence that we have is when we saw lots of birds 00:29:53.066 --> 00:29:54.133 washing in. 00:29:54.133 --> 00:29:57.400 That was during or right after storm events. 00:29:57.800 --> 00:29:59.533 What are you seeing on the bottom trains? 00:29:59.533 --> 00:30:02.533 You're seeing which way literally the wind is blowing. 00:30:02.533 --> 00:30:07.000 So the third piece of evidence that we have is when there was a wind reversal 00:30:07.200 --> 00:30:10.200 and we're starting to get a pulse of onshore winds, 00:30:10.400 --> 00:30:15.400 which is pushing all of the stuff in the coastal ocean right into the shore. 00:30:15.866 --> 00:30:18.866 What's being pushed in besides dead birds? 00:30:19.333 --> 00:30:21.466 So here's what we put together. 00:30:21.466 --> 00:30:24.800 And this is lots of people, not just coast working together. 00:30:24.933 --> 00:30:27.933 It was a particularly warm September, 00:30:27.933 --> 00:30:31.600 a warm fall that helped this sell. 00:30:31.600 --> 00:30:33.800 Akashi was saying when they enter bloom, 00:30:33.800 --> 00:30:37.200 lots and lots and lots of cells in the water, they literally ate 00:30:37.200 --> 00:30:40.866 all of the nutrients out of the coastal environment. 00:30:41.200 --> 00:30:44.133 And then became, 00:30:44.133 --> 00:30:49.933 senescent and very shell delicate when storms hit, and there were wind 00:30:49.933 --> 00:30:55.666 reversals, and all of those cells were, blown close to the shore. 00:30:55.800 --> 00:30:58.866 The waves also acted to break open those cells. 00:30:59.533 --> 00:31:03.600 Once the cell contents were released, the cell contents contained a soap 00:31:03.600 --> 00:31:04.866 like substance. 00:31:04.866 --> 00:31:09.600 We call it a surfactant that was whipped up by the waves into big foam. 00:31:09.800 --> 00:31:11.133 You can see that here. 00:31:11.133 --> 00:31:15.000 That foam stretched on for more than 100km of coastline, 00:31:15.200 --> 00:31:17.466 sometimes more than a meter deep. 00:31:17.466 --> 00:31:20.600 That foam, when it encountered the feathers of birds, 00:31:20.800 --> 00:31:25.333 d oiled those feathers so the birds suddenly lost their waterproofing. 00:31:25.600 --> 00:31:29.400 It's as if you're a surfer out there with a wetsuit, and suddenly it dissolved. 00:31:29.666 --> 00:31:31.333 The birds died of exposure. 00:31:32.733 --> 00:31:36.333 We know, from birds that we collected, 00:31:36.333 --> 00:31:40.200 and models that we did that about 6000 surf scooters. 00:31:40.200 --> 00:31:42.600 Washington lost their life in that event. 00:31:42.600 --> 00:31:45.866 That was the largest, documented 00:31:45.866 --> 00:31:50.066 die off due to a harmful algal bloom of marine birds anywhere. 00:31:50.066 --> 00:31:50.466 Ever. 00:31:50.466 --> 00:31:53.466 So the story I'm going to tell you about is rhinoceros orchids. 00:31:53.666 --> 00:31:56.933 That's, smaller bird than Skodas. 00:31:56.933 --> 00:31:59.000 And a different family, the alphas. 00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:01.666 The alphas are the football with wings family. 00:32:01.666 --> 00:32:05.266 And you can see that, in the rhino at top here. 00:32:05.533 --> 00:32:07.800 That's a, healthy rhino. 00:32:07.800 --> 00:32:10.600 The rhino bottom is a very sick rhino. 00:32:10.600 --> 00:32:13.866 A rhino that can't sit, high up in the water, 00:32:13.866 --> 00:32:15.666 that can't keep its head straight. 00:32:15.666 --> 00:32:17.266 Its head is lolling back. 00:32:17.266 --> 00:32:22.333 These are, very good signs that there's something wrong, with that rhinoceros. 00:32:22.333 --> 00:32:22.666 Okay. 00:32:24.133 --> 00:32:26.400 And in the Salish Sea, 00:32:26.400 --> 00:32:30.000 the center of breeding of rhinoceros orchids is Protection Island. 00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:32.533 Pretty close to, Port Townsend. 00:32:32.533 --> 00:32:36.800 There about 72,000 rhinoceros orcas that breed on that island. 00:32:37.066 --> 00:32:38.266 It's amazing. 00:32:38.266 --> 00:32:39.933 Amazing place to go. 00:32:39.933 --> 00:32:42.600 And you have a full head gear? 00:32:42.600 --> 00:32:44.666 Including face masks at night. 00:32:44.666 --> 00:32:47.466 Because the rhinos, when they fly in, run into you. 00:32:47.466 --> 00:32:49.466 So you're looking here, at. 00:32:49.466 --> 00:32:52.466 Right, a map, with big, 00:32:52.466 --> 00:32:55.800 red circles the size of the circle tells you something 00:32:55.800 --> 00:32:59.600 about the number of rhinos washing into particular beaches, 00:33:00.666 --> 00:33:04.533 in inside waters and also in outside waters. 00:33:04.800 --> 00:33:08.600 The graphics to the left tell you something about what was going on. 00:33:08.866 --> 00:33:10.600 In 2016. 00:33:10.600 --> 00:33:14.733 So each month versus the long term average, that's the, 00:33:14.733 --> 00:33:19.733 black line with, green wash to it. 00:33:19.866 --> 00:33:24.266 Suffice to say that those orange bars were way high above, 00:33:24.533 --> 00:33:27.333 the long term average. 00:33:27.333 --> 00:33:30.600 You can see a cluster of red circles that are around 00:33:30.733 --> 00:33:36.000 Protection Island, which I'm showing, with that, long arrow there. 00:33:36.133 --> 00:33:39.333 So all of the birds that were dying and washing ashore 00:33:39.533 --> 00:33:43.400 were coming in within about 50km of protection island. 00:33:43.400 --> 00:33:44.133 And that makes sense 00:33:44.133 --> 00:33:47.933 because that's about the foraging range, of rhinoceros orchids. 00:33:48.066 --> 00:33:51.800 But we can also see that they came in along the outer coast, 00:33:52.266 --> 00:33:55.600 in fact, rhinoceros office when they finished 00:33:55.600 --> 00:33:59.133 breeding, go out the straight and smear down the outer coast. 00:34:00.466 --> 00:34:01.800 So how many died? 00:34:01.800 --> 00:34:04.800 Coastal bays picked out up just over 500. 00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:08.666 The public also reported about another 500. 00:34:08.800 --> 00:34:12.000 We were able to do statistics along the outer coast, 00:34:12.200 --> 00:34:15.600 which suggests that the die off, of rhinos 00:34:16.666 --> 00:34:19.133 was about 20 times normal turnout. 00:34:19.133 --> 00:34:20.666 The cause of this event 00:34:20.666 --> 00:34:24.266 was something that we had never seen, a massive bacterial infection. 00:34:24.533 --> 00:34:27.400 So these birds were dying of septicemia. 00:34:27.400 --> 00:34:31.333 Also, late in the season, a decrease in the fish supply. 00:34:32.266 --> 00:34:35.400 So this was a really, really interesting event. 00:34:35.400 --> 00:34:41.266 There's some evidence that, warming water added to the disease. 00:34:41.266 --> 00:34:43.800 But, that hasn't been proven yet. 00:34:43.800 --> 00:34:44.466 But there were enough 00:34:44.466 --> 00:34:48.066 rhinos that died that it actually had a long term effect on the colony. 00:34:48.533 --> 00:34:51.533 So you're looking at three graphics here. 00:34:51.666 --> 00:34:55.800 And the top is burrow occupancy, the middle is hatching success. 00:34:56.200 --> 00:34:59.200 And the lowest graph is fledging success. 00:34:59.466 --> 00:35:03.800 The black line is rhinoceros chocolate breeding on Destruction Island. 00:35:04.066 --> 00:35:06.333 That's an island along the outer coast. 00:35:06.333 --> 00:35:10.133 The blue line, are birds that are breeding on protection. 00:35:10.133 --> 00:35:13.266 So I want to just zero in to the protection line. 00:35:13.533 --> 00:35:15.866 And that big red box 00:35:15.866 --> 00:35:19.333 are the years of the Northeast Pacific marine heatwave or the blob. 00:35:19.533 --> 00:35:23.200 When the ocean got stuck on warm for a long period of time. 00:35:23.400 --> 00:35:26.066 So what can we tell from these graphics? 00:35:26.066 --> 00:35:27.866 Well, two things. 00:35:27.866 --> 00:35:30.600 One is that in the year of that mass 00:35:30.600 --> 00:35:34.066 mortality event of rhinos, which was 2016, 00:35:34.266 --> 00:35:38.666 there was a way low fledging success, only about 1,555%. 00:35:38.666 --> 00:35:41.933 That's the lowest on record of Protection Island. Why? 00:35:42.200 --> 00:35:43.600 Because parents were dying. 00:35:43.600 --> 00:35:46.866 And it takes two parents to successfully raise a chick. 00:35:47.133 --> 00:35:51.466 And with those densities, 72,000 birds on protection Island, 00:35:51.733 --> 00:35:55.666 that bacterial infection was being passed around the colony. 00:35:55.866 --> 00:35:58.733 So we had not only death of parents but death of chicks. 00:35:58.733 --> 00:36:03.333 And that resulted in historically low fledging success of chicks. 00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:07.133 But we can also see a follow on effect in the next year. 00:36:07.133 --> 00:36:10.133 After the mass mortality event. 00:36:10.133 --> 00:36:13.400 There was a 20% drop in burrow occupancy, 00:36:13.533 --> 00:36:17.000 so lots more burrows were empty than in the previous year. 00:36:17.333 --> 00:36:21.800 That's interesting because what that means is even young birds 00:36:21.800 --> 00:36:25.133 that were sort of waiting offshore to get into the colony 00:36:25.133 --> 00:36:29.333 and get into a burrow, even when they did that, enough of that colony 00:36:29.333 --> 00:36:34.800 had been cut down by septicemia that there was still a lot of room available. 00:36:34.933 --> 00:36:38.666 This suggests to us that that mortality event was serious enough, 00:36:38.933 --> 00:36:42.666 but there's a long term, impact on the colony. 00:36:44.000 --> 00:36:45.466 The next two stories I want 00:36:45.466 --> 00:36:48.466 to tell you about are explicitly about the marine heat wave. 00:36:48.733 --> 00:36:51.333 The septicemia event seems to have been 00:36:51.333 --> 00:36:54.333 somewhat related to the heat wave, but we don't know that for sure. 00:36:54.400 --> 00:36:57.400 But these two stories are definitely related to the heat wave. 00:36:57.866 --> 00:37:00.000 I'm going to tell you a story about cousins, Auckland's 00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:02.933 same family, Allison's football with wings. 00:37:02.933 --> 00:37:05.933 Except this guy is smaller, only about the size of my fist. 00:37:06.333 --> 00:37:09.400 And there more of them was about 5.5 million cousins. 00:37:09.400 --> 00:37:11.800 Auckland's, in the world. 00:37:11.800 --> 00:37:17.400 The center of their breeding population is Triangle Island, which is that, big, 00:37:17.866 --> 00:37:21.333 gold star at the northwest tip of Vancouver Island. 00:37:21.533 --> 00:37:24.533 So they definitely breed down in Washington State. 00:37:24.666 --> 00:37:28.266 But on that one island alone, Triangle Island, 00:37:28.400 --> 00:37:33.466 we believe there are about 2.7 million Carson's offers. 00:37:33.800 --> 00:37:36.800 Wow. A lot of thousands of flights there. 00:37:37.000 --> 00:37:42.266 After the breeding season is finished, those BC orcas will go out to sea, 00:37:42.266 --> 00:37:46.133 but they'll also come down into the lower 48 reef. 00:37:47.000 --> 00:37:50.533 So here is a graphic of encounter rate. 00:37:50.533 --> 00:37:56.400 You may recognize this, this individual, long term average. 00:37:56.400 --> 00:37:58.533 I'm just printing over every year. 00:37:58.533 --> 00:37:59.133 So it kind of 00:37:59.133 --> 00:38:03.733 looks like an EKG or heartbeat graph because it's the same long term average. 00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:06.733 There's that two humped mountain that I showed you back 00:38:06.733 --> 00:38:09.333 when we were looking at the natural history of dead birds. 00:38:09.333 --> 00:38:13.866 And remember that wow out year where things were really not normal, 00:38:13.866 --> 00:38:19.066 up to 32 carcasses per kilometer, per lineal kilometer. 00:38:19.266 --> 00:38:22.066 You can see that there with the two red bars. 00:38:22.066 --> 00:38:24.000 What I didn't tell you about that. 00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:27.866 Is that all of those birds were one species. 00:38:28.066 --> 00:38:29.533 Carson's acolytes. 00:38:29.533 --> 00:38:31.866 Oh, my goodness, what happened? 00:38:32.933 --> 00:38:35.933 Well, in 2014, 2015, 00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:39.600 that's when the blob or the Northeast Pacific 00:38:39.800 --> 00:38:42.600 marine heat wave was just warming. 00:38:42.600 --> 00:38:46.400 Now, during the spring and summer along the Pacific Northwest, 00:38:46.400 --> 00:38:50.066 our coast, we have this cool phenomenon called seasonal upwelling. 00:38:50.200 --> 00:38:53.266 And during that period of time, the flow of surface 00:38:53.266 --> 00:38:56.466 waters is predominantly pushing towards offshore. 00:38:56.600 --> 00:39:02.066 In fact, that flow is so strong that deep water wells up from the surface, 00:39:02.200 --> 00:39:03.200 which is why we call it 00:39:03.200 --> 00:39:07.600 upwelling, that deep water brings nutrients with it, which is really good. 00:39:07.600 --> 00:39:10.066 It's a turbo boost to the coastal ecosystem, 00:39:10.066 --> 00:39:13.066 but also brings cold water because deep water is cold. 00:39:13.200 --> 00:39:16.800 What that means is if you looked at, satellite map of sea 00:39:16.800 --> 00:39:20.933 surface temperature, it's very cold close to the coast. 00:39:21.000 --> 00:39:24.333 And actually becomes warmer as you go farther out. 00:39:24.533 --> 00:39:29.400 You can see that in the graphics on the left here, the black trace is, 00:39:29.666 --> 00:39:33.466 sea surface temperature anomaly or change from long term normal. 00:39:34.733 --> 00:39:36.733 And what you can see is when 00:39:36.733 --> 00:39:41.466 seasonal upwelling stopped, which happens at the end of summer and fall, 00:39:41.666 --> 00:39:46.466 there's a change in surface direction and water rolls back into the coast. 00:39:46.733 --> 00:39:47.666 What happened? 00:39:47.666 --> 00:39:52.000 All that warm blob water that was sitting offshore rolled into the coast. 00:39:52.666 --> 00:39:56.200 But when that change happened, something else happened. 00:39:56.933 --> 00:39:58.866 We had a change in prey base. 00:39:58.866 --> 00:40:01.666 So the two prey of Carsons orchids, 00:40:01.666 --> 00:40:04.600 or little insect like things called copepods, 00:40:04.600 --> 00:40:07.800 we had a sudden loss of, high 00:40:07.800 --> 00:40:11.333 energy larger copepods, northern copepods. 00:40:11.333 --> 00:40:15.000 They were replaced by low energy small copepods. 00:40:15.266 --> 00:40:18.733 We also had a change in the krill or shrimp like organisms 00:40:18.866 --> 00:40:21.333 from larger krill to smaller crop. 00:40:21.333 --> 00:40:22.600 What does that mean for Carsons? 00:40:22.600 --> 00:40:26.533 Quite, Well, Carson's orca has to die for its food. 00:40:26.866 --> 00:40:30.600 And when the food becomes smaller, Carson's like that has to spend 00:40:30.600 --> 00:40:32.533 more energy getting into. 00:40:33.600 --> 00:40:35.466 And in fact, during this event, 00:40:35.466 --> 00:40:39.000 that, equation of energy expended 00:40:39.466 --> 00:40:42.866 versus energy gained switched into negative space. 00:40:43.066 --> 00:40:45.600 So these birds literally starved to death. 00:40:45.600 --> 00:40:48.266 We now know that about 400,000 Carson's 00:40:48.266 --> 00:40:51.266 acolytes lost their life during this one event, 00:40:51.333 --> 00:40:55.066 which is about 8 to 10% of the world population of this species. 00:40:56.466 --> 00:40:59.866 The last story I want to tell you about is a story about common murres. 00:41:00.066 --> 00:41:04.466 This is one of the larger acids, of the football 00:41:04.466 --> 00:41:07.866 with wings family, and also one of the most abundant, 00:41:09.133 --> 00:41:12.533 common markers are a top predator and a dominant top predator 00:41:12.800 --> 00:41:16.866 in temperate and, subarctic ecosystems. 00:41:16.866 --> 00:41:23.333 So from California on up into Alaska, there are about 18 to 24 million 00:41:23.333 --> 00:41:27.866 common murres, both in the Pacific and also in the Atlantic. 00:41:27.866 --> 00:41:32.066 So it's a whole Arctic species that occurs all the way around the Arctic 00:41:32.266 --> 00:41:35.266 and then down into temperate environments. 00:41:35.733 --> 00:41:37.466 So I'm not going to go through a lot of graphs. 00:41:37.466 --> 00:41:40.200 I'm just going to tell you the main story. 00:41:41.800 --> 00:41:42.333 This is a 00:41:42.333 --> 00:41:45.333 story that happened the year after the Carson's Auckland event. 00:41:45.533 --> 00:41:47.333 So what's happening in the marine environment? 00:41:47.333 --> 00:41:50.533 Well, it's still warm, so of course it's cooler 00:41:50.533 --> 00:41:54.600 in the winter and warmer in the summer, but the average sea surface 00:41:54.600 --> 00:42:00.400 temperature is 1 to 4°C above long term normal. 00:42:00.733 --> 00:42:03.866 And the size of that warm 00:42:03.866 --> 00:42:07.000 water is about the size of continental Canada. 00:42:07.133 --> 00:42:12.133 So it's stretching over the entire northeast Pacific region from Canada 00:42:12.133 --> 00:42:16.600 all the way to the Gulf of Alaska and over to the Alaska Peninsula. 00:42:17.066 --> 00:42:21.266 So all of that warm water resident there for such a long time 00:42:21.600 --> 00:42:25.400 first affected the small things, the insect like things like copepod 00:42:25.400 --> 00:42:30.933 and krill in the ocean, but then radiate it up to the next level of the ecosystem. 00:42:30.933 --> 00:42:35.066 Forage fish, things shown here like smelt, 00:42:35.066 --> 00:42:40.333 or sand lance, anchovies, sardines, things like that. 00:42:40.733 --> 00:42:43.466 These are the prey base of common murres, 00:42:43.466 --> 00:42:47.733 but they're also the premise of large predatory 00:42:47.733 --> 00:42:52.333 and in this case, commercially important fish like walleye pollock shown here. 00:42:53.666 --> 00:42:56.333 And so what actually happened? 00:42:56.333 --> 00:42:59.666 The forage fish not only grew slower, 00:42:59.666 --> 00:43:02.666 so there were fewer forage fish in the system. 00:43:03.266 --> 00:43:05.666 But they were smaller on average. Right. 00:43:05.666 --> 00:43:07.400 So less prey available. 00:43:07.400 --> 00:43:10.200 They also went deeper in the water column. 00:43:10.200 --> 00:43:13.200 So they're going down towards, 00:43:13.533 --> 00:43:16.200 predatory fish, but they're going away from birds. 00:43:16.200 --> 00:43:21.800 So again, the energy calculus of birds is they're having to spend more energy to go 00:43:21.800 --> 00:43:26.733 get smaller prey, which is pushing them towards an energy negative state. 00:43:26.933 --> 00:43:28.533 But here's the other thing that happened. 00:43:28.533 --> 00:43:31.666 And this is really an amazing part of the story. 00:43:32.666 --> 00:43:34.733 When the water gets warmer, 00:43:34.733 --> 00:43:37.466 the fish in it also warm up 00:43:37.466 --> 00:43:41.266 and a big, big fish like a pollock that's warming 00:43:41.266 --> 00:43:45.800 even by only a few degrees has an increased metabolism. 00:43:45.800 --> 00:43:47.266 What does that mean? 00:43:47.266 --> 00:43:48.933 That means it's going to eat more. 00:43:48.933 --> 00:43:53.533 So literally, the blob, the Northeast Pacific marine heatwave 00:43:54.000 --> 00:43:58.466 not only made it harder for little fish to grow, it made big fish hungrier. 00:43:58.666 --> 00:44:02.466 And big hungry fish took more of those little fish out of the environment. 00:44:02.600 --> 00:44:06.866 They were better competitors for the forage fish than the were. 00:44:07.266 --> 00:44:10.200 That left murres with way less to eat. 00:44:10.200 --> 00:44:12.133 How many did we lose? 00:44:12.133 --> 00:44:15.866 We currently think we lost about 4 million birds 00:44:16.133 --> 00:44:19.733 in that one single, mass mortality event 00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:22.866 across 2015 2016. 00:44:22.866 --> 00:44:28.200 This is the largest documented single of the death of Haumea. 00:44:28.200 --> 00:44:31.200 Therms for warm blooded organisms 00:44:31.733 --> 00:44:34.200 anywhere in the world. 00:44:34.200 --> 00:44:35.000 Ever. 00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:37.466 And it happened in our backyard. 00:44:37.466 --> 00:44:42.000 And we know about it because we had people on the beaches 00:44:42.200 --> 00:44:45.200 monitoring and collecting that basic evidence, 00:44:45.466 --> 00:44:48.066 making those deductions and sending that data. 00:44:48.066 --> 00:44:53.066 And without that data collected by knowledgeable coastal residents 00:44:53.333 --> 00:44:57.733 going out year in and year out, we would know, oh, 00:44:58.933 --> 00:45:01.866 are there bigger lessons besides the one I just told you about, 00:45:01.866 --> 00:45:06.266 which is when you work with people, who are coastal residents 00:45:06.266 --> 00:45:09.133 who know what they're seeing and know what they're talking about 00:45:09.133 --> 00:45:12.066 and collect, can collect that data over time. 00:45:12.066 --> 00:45:15.600 Not just one, not just two, not just ten people, not just 100 people, 00:45:15.733 --> 00:45:18.133 but nearly a thousand people collecting data. 00:45:18.133 --> 00:45:21.133 You can tell a very, very powerful science story. 00:45:21.466 --> 00:45:25.266 In fact, we have taken all of that data and we've put it together 00:45:25.466 --> 00:45:30.200 and not just a coast data, but data collected, to the north of us 00:45:30.200 --> 00:45:35.800 by our partner, British Columbia Beach Bird Survey, BCBS and two sister programs 00:45:35.800 --> 00:45:40.200 that we have to the south of us in California Beach Watch and Beachcombers. 00:45:40.400 --> 00:45:43.666 When we put all of those four programs data 00:45:43.666 --> 00:45:48.533 into a melting pot of data, that gives us four citizen science programs, 00:45:48.533 --> 00:45:51.866 about 29 years, of data collection 00:45:51.866 --> 00:45:55.133 and about 90,000 beach bird surveys. 00:45:55.333 --> 00:45:58.800 That's what I call big data science. 00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:02.600 So here's a railroad track, 00:46:02.600 --> 00:46:07.400 of time stretching from 2006 to about 2021. 00:46:07.666 --> 00:46:10.733 And I'm going to put circles on this railroad track. 00:46:10.733 --> 00:46:12.266 And the size of the circle 00:46:12.266 --> 00:46:15.266 tells you something about how big the mortality event is. 00:46:15.533 --> 00:46:19.466 And the color of the circle tells you something about what kind of bird it is. 00:46:19.666 --> 00:46:23.266 And I'm going to put little thumbnail photographs of those birds 00:46:23.466 --> 00:46:25.000 so that you can get them. 00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:30.333 And I want you to look for especially, red, orange colored birds. 00:46:30.600 --> 00:46:33.466 Those are the al-Said and the Bluebirds. 00:46:33.466 --> 00:46:36.466 Those are the perseverance or the tube noses, 00:46:36.666 --> 00:46:40.066 including northern Mars and shearwaters. 00:46:41.733 --> 00:46:45.000 Okay, so before the heat wave hit, 00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.400 we had mass mortality events, lots of different colors of birds. 00:46:49.600 --> 00:46:54.533 But after the heat wave event, what we saw is many more, 00:46:56.066 --> 00:46:57.200 mass mortality events. 00:46:57.200 --> 00:47:00.333 So the more frequent, many more, 00:47:00.333 --> 00:47:03.400 circles there, there are also larger circles, 00:47:03.400 --> 00:47:08.133 you can see, much larger than they were before the ocean got stuck on warm. 00:47:08.400 --> 00:47:11.800 And also there's just two colors, the al-Said color 00:47:12.066 --> 00:47:17.600 and personally at the Fulmer and Shearwater color. 00:47:17.933 --> 00:47:20.933 What does this tell us when we have 00:47:21.000 --> 00:47:24.000 persistent changes in ocean warming? 00:47:24.133 --> 00:47:27.466 There are winners and there are losers for reasons 00:47:27.466 --> 00:47:30.600 that we don't yet know, this is still a science mystery. 00:47:30.800 --> 00:47:33.666 The alphas and the personal areas appear to be 00:47:33.666 --> 00:47:37.200 particularly vulnerable to mass mortality. 00:47:37.866 --> 00:47:42.333 So we've taken all of these data as well as many more smaller events. 00:47:42.600 --> 00:47:45.066 And we've done a statistics analysis with it. 00:47:45.066 --> 00:47:48.866 And this is the last data wonk graph I'm going to show you. 00:47:48.866 --> 00:47:50.933 And let me just walk you through this. 00:47:50.933 --> 00:47:55.666 So on the x or the horizontal axis is sea surface temperature anomaly. 00:47:55.666 --> 00:47:58.600 That's the change from long term normal. 00:47:58.600 --> 00:48:01.466 So we set long term normal at the zero mark. 00:48:01.466 --> 00:48:03.066 So cooler than normal. 00:48:03.066 --> 00:48:06.800 And the blue direction is a negative number and warmer than normal. 00:48:06.800 --> 00:48:09.533 And the red direction is a positive number. 00:48:10.666 --> 00:48:13.933 What is on the vertical or the y axis. 00:48:14.133 --> 00:48:17.066 This is event magnitude how big it is. 00:48:17.066 --> 00:48:22.533 So we take a few things and we put it into an index called magnitude one. 00:48:22.533 --> 00:48:24.133 Is the encounter rate. 00:48:24.133 --> 00:48:26.333 How many carcasses per kilometer. 00:48:26.333 --> 00:48:28.466 The second one is how many kilometers. 00:48:28.466 --> 00:48:32.000 What's the what's the extent the geographic extent 00:48:32.266 --> 00:48:33.866 of the mass mortality event. 00:48:33.866 --> 00:48:35.400 And the third one is time. 00:48:35.400 --> 00:48:38.733 How many months, was that event persistent over. 00:48:39.133 --> 00:48:42.533 So I just want to make one mathematical point here, 00:48:42.933 --> 00:48:45.933 and that is this is a log scale. 00:48:46.066 --> 00:48:49.800 So with every big notch in the scale, 00:48:49.800 --> 00:48:54.200 it goes up by a factor of ten from 1 to 10, 00:48:54.600 --> 00:48:57.600 from 10 to 100, from 100 to 1000. 00:48:57.600 --> 00:49:02.400 So a leap from 1 to 1000 is three orders of magnitude. 00:49:02.600 --> 00:49:05.266 That's a huge amount of change. 00:49:05.266 --> 00:49:06.733 What are the dots? 00:49:06.733 --> 00:49:08.866 Each dot is a mass mortality event. 00:49:08.866 --> 00:49:13.066 The red ones are bigger, which is why they're higher on the magnitude scale. 00:49:13.266 --> 00:49:15.333 The gray ones are smaller. 00:49:15.333 --> 00:49:18.200 We use statistical techniques to be able 00:49:18.200 --> 00:49:22.133 to, chart a path through all of these data. 00:49:22.333 --> 00:49:26.666 This suggests to us that there's not a linear or a straight line 00:49:26.666 --> 00:49:30.533 relationship, but a curve, a linear relationship. 00:49:30.733 --> 00:49:34.666 And more important, that there's a step up, 00:49:34.666 --> 00:49:38.666 between zero and about half a degree above normal. 00:49:38.866 --> 00:49:40.533 What does this say? 00:49:40.533 --> 00:49:44.266 The says that when the ocean is persistently warm 00:49:44.466 --> 00:49:47.866 for at least six months of time, bad things are going to happen. 00:49:48.266 --> 00:49:50.400 Let me translate it for you. 00:49:50.400 --> 00:49:55.600 When the ocean temperature goes up one degree centigrade for six months 00:49:55.600 --> 00:49:58.666 or more in time, the ecosystem is going 00:49:58.666 --> 00:50:01.666 to lose millions of marine birds. 00:50:01.800 --> 00:50:04.733 That can be a conservation disaster. 00:50:06.600 --> 00:50:09.333 Okay, so what's the goal? 00:50:09.333 --> 00:50:14.933 My goal is science is great science, and I can only do great science 00:50:14.933 --> 00:50:19.933 because I'm standing on the shoulders of hundreds and in fact, thousands 00:50:20.200 --> 00:50:24.466 of dedicated coastal residents are going out there and collecting the data. 00:50:24.666 --> 00:50:28.400 Month in and month out, whether there are birds on the beach or not, 00:50:28.600 --> 00:50:32.400 whether it's windy or not, whether it's cold or not, 00:50:32.533 --> 00:50:36.466 they are out there collecting data, but there are at least three other goals. 00:50:36.466 --> 00:50:40.666 I would say a citizen science one for individuals is enjoyment. 00:50:40.933 --> 00:50:45.200 You might think to yourself, really, people enjoy dead birds, 00:50:45.200 --> 00:50:49.800 but if it's not a mass mortality event, in fact, yes, you can tell a lot 00:50:49.800 --> 00:50:52.866 about the health of the system and what's happening in the system. 00:50:53.066 --> 00:50:56.400 And and tell a lot about how those birds made their living 00:50:56.666 --> 00:50:59.733 by just being able to handle them and collect information about them. 00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:01.866 And that also leads to education. 00:51:01.866 --> 00:51:05.533 So people, join citizen science programs 00:51:05.533 --> 00:51:08.533 because they enjoy doing whatever it is they're asked to do. 00:51:08.666 --> 00:51:11.400 And they also get, some education. 00:51:11.400 --> 00:51:13.200 They learn things out of it. 00:51:13.200 --> 00:51:18.400 But lots of people doing that work in community can empower communities to call 00:51:18.400 --> 00:51:24.133 for change, to call for stewardship of places or organisms or ecosystems 00:51:24.266 --> 00:51:27.733 or use of living natural resources in different ways. 00:51:27.866 --> 00:51:30.933 Informed communities can have a strong voice, 00:51:31.266 --> 00:51:35.333 and I would like to say that all four of these goals science, 00:51:35.333 --> 00:51:39.066 enjoyment, education, and community can work together 00:51:39.600 --> 00:51:44.400 so that we can do responsible resource management in a warming world. 00:51:44.666 --> 00:51:46.533 And that is what coast is about. 00:51:47.800 --> 00:51:50.400 So here are eight. 00:51:50.400 --> 00:51:55.800 So what eight reasons that I believe that coast makes a difference. 00:51:56.000 --> 00:51:59.400 Climate impacts I told you some climate impacts stories tonight 00:51:59.666 --> 00:52:03.000 oil spill modeling I haven't talked about that, but it's something that we do. 00:52:03.266 --> 00:52:07.666 I've talked about how harmful algal blooms we are just getting into issues 00:52:07.666 --> 00:52:10.800 of wind farm siting and impact monitoring. 00:52:10.866 --> 00:52:14.066 And of course, if birds aren't running into, 00:52:14.400 --> 00:52:18.066 wind farms, then there's a change in mortality. 00:52:18.333 --> 00:52:23.400 Those carcasses are floating to shore so we can use beach bird monitoring, 00:52:23.666 --> 00:52:26.933 to do, impacts monitoring of wind farm. 00:52:27.333 --> 00:52:30.733 I haven't talked about fishery bycatch and competition, but that is also 00:52:30.733 --> 00:52:32.000 something that we've worked in. 00:52:32.000 --> 00:52:34.466 I've talked about disease outbreaks. 00:52:34.466 --> 00:52:37.266 I talked a little bit about marine debris. 00:52:37.266 --> 00:52:40.266 I also want to assure you that there's a cool, 00:52:40.266 --> 00:52:43.466 unexpected things, story within coast. 00:52:44.000 --> 00:52:45.466 If you go to the coast website, 00:52:46.600 --> 00:52:47.666 you can read 00:52:47.666 --> 00:52:51.200 more about those things under our news and views. 00:52:51.466 --> 00:52:54.333 You can also explore our data. 00:52:54.333 --> 00:52:57.400 If you're a data wonk and you can make actually those graphs, 00:52:57.600 --> 00:53:01.533 just like the ones that I showed you, the natural history of dead bird graphs. 00:53:01.733 --> 00:53:04.933 So if you want to check out what's going on in the Salish Sea 00:53:04.933 --> 00:53:10.200 or the strait, or along the outer coast of Washington, check out Explore Data. 00:53:11.066 --> 00:53:13.600 If you're thinking maybe that you're interested in coast, 00:53:13.600 --> 00:53:16.666 if you're not a coaster already and you're, interested, 00:53:16.933 --> 00:53:18.666 you can go to join our team, 00:53:18.666 --> 00:53:22.466 and trainings and events and see there are upcoming trainings. 00:53:22.733 --> 00:53:26.066 Or you can go down to the bottom of the homepage 00:53:26.266 --> 00:53:28.000 and just look at upcoming events. 00:53:28.000 --> 00:53:28.666 For instance, 00:53:28.666 --> 00:53:32.200 if you went there, you would see the talk that I am giving you right now. 00:53:32.733 --> 00:53:36.466 But you would also see our upcoming, talks including Mount 00:53:36.466 --> 00:53:40.600 Vernon and Long Beach might be a little bit far away from where you are, 00:53:40.733 --> 00:53:43.733 but we also do Coast Light or online trainings. 00:53:43.866 --> 00:53:47.133 All of those are available in upcoming events. 00:53:48.866 --> 00:53:51.866 So I'm going to stop sharing. 00:53:51.866 --> 00:53:54.733 My screen, 00:53:54.733 --> 00:54:00.000 and happy, happy to answer questions, 00:54:00.400 --> 00:54:04.400 or let folks comment, if they want to. 00:54:04.400 --> 00:54:07.600 And thanks everybody for listening to me. 00:54:07.600 --> 00:54:09.533 Well great job. Thank you so much. 00:54:09.533 --> 00:54:11.200 This is a lot of good information. 00:54:11.200 --> 00:54:13.933 We do have some questions in the question box. 00:54:13.933 --> 00:54:18.133 For those of you that might be, waiting for an opportunity 00:54:18.133 --> 00:54:21.133 to raise your hand, we don't really have that function in this, 00:54:22.466 --> 00:54:24.400 in this venue. 00:54:24.400 --> 00:54:27.600 So, please do put your questions in the question box. 00:54:27.600 --> 00:54:33.133 Even if we run out of time to answer them, we will email any outstanding 00:54:33.133 --> 00:54:38.666 questions to Julia so she can answer them and send them back out to, along with 00:54:39.733 --> 00:54:40.866 your certificate for 00:54:40.866 --> 00:54:43.866 continuing education that you've earned from watching this. 00:54:43.933 --> 00:54:47.800 But, all of that aside, let's get to some of these questions. So, 00:54:48.933 --> 00:54:53.066 one of the first questions that I see, and by the way, we're going to do this 00:54:53.066 --> 00:54:53.800 round robin. 00:54:53.800 --> 00:54:57.866 So, one of the questions I'd like to share with you, Julia, is 00:54:58.466 --> 00:55:01.800 what about stomach contents to look for ingested 00:55:01.800 --> 00:55:04.933 plastics for the bird carcasses, or are they doing that as well? 00:55:06.666 --> 00:55:09.400 Yeah, that's a super good question. 00:55:09.400 --> 00:55:12.466 We don't do that in class, and we don't ask people 00:55:12.466 --> 00:55:15.800 to open carcasses on the beach. 00:55:16.200 --> 00:55:18.866 There's a whole bunch of reasons for that. 00:55:18.866 --> 00:55:21.133 Including health and safety. 00:55:21.133 --> 00:55:25.666 There are, however, some, ongoing programs. 00:55:25.666 --> 00:55:30.866 And I actually think that your center was part of plastic ingestion. 00:55:31.266 --> 00:55:33.933 There is, professor 00:55:33.933 --> 00:55:36.933 at a University of Puget Sound, Peter Houghton. 00:55:37.733 --> 00:55:40.066 And he has also 00:55:40.066 --> 00:55:43.066 looked at, plastics ingestion. 00:55:43.066 --> 00:55:46.466 He and his students have looked at plastics ingestion, 00:55:46.466 --> 00:55:49.933 and you can see, basically what you would think, right. 00:55:49.933 --> 00:55:54.866 The, the birds that make their living by what we call surface season. 00:55:55.333 --> 00:55:56.666 So they're either 00:55:56.666 --> 00:55:59.666 swimming along the surface and they're picking things off the surface 00:55:59.733 --> 00:56:03.200 or they're diving in, and, and plunge diving. 00:56:03.866 --> 00:56:07.533 And those birds certainly include all of, all of the possible rates. 00:56:07.800 --> 00:56:10.666 So northern for that breeding in Alaska. 00:56:10.666 --> 00:56:14.066 But coming to our part of the world, mostly outer coast, 00:56:14.066 --> 00:56:19.600 they don't really get into, the Salish Sea, but also, sorry, sorry. 00:56:19.600 --> 00:56:21.600 And short tailed shearwaters. 00:56:21.600 --> 00:56:23.200 Try saying that. Bass. 00:56:23.200 --> 00:56:25.466 Sorry. Short tailed short. 00:56:25.466 --> 00:56:28.466 Those are, residents of the Southern hemisphere, 00:56:28.466 --> 00:56:31.533 breeding in the southern Hemisphere and coming, up our way. 00:56:31.666 --> 00:56:34.933 They also have a lot of plastics in the, gut. 00:56:36.066 --> 00:56:38.000 We did do several years ago 00:56:38.000 --> 00:56:41.400 a study of, albatrosses, both black 00:56:41.400 --> 00:56:44.800 footed and Laysan albatrosses, adults, 00:56:45.200 --> 00:56:51.066 and, found quite a lot of plastic in, the gut. 00:56:51.066 --> 00:56:55.266 And one of the things about that study that was somewhat alarming 00:56:55.266 --> 00:56:58.600 is the number of, small plastic fibers, 00:56:59.466 --> 00:57:03.933 so microplastics, that, that we're seeing 00:57:03.933 --> 00:57:07.000 and this is really indicating that those birds are, 00:57:07.400 --> 00:57:10.066 collecting, 00:57:10.066 --> 00:57:14.266 prey that, microplastics are sticking to. 00:57:14.266 --> 00:57:19.066 And so they're ending up with a big bolus of microplastics, in the gut. 00:57:19.066 --> 00:57:22.066 So, you know, we have our work cut out for us 00:57:22.466 --> 00:57:25.600 in thinking about how we're going to clean up our environment. 00:57:25.933 --> 00:57:31.400 But what I would say is doing this work, and really getting it out there, 00:57:31.733 --> 00:57:36.000 documenting what's going on really is a first step to convincing people. 00:57:36.000 --> 00:57:40.066 Yeah, we got to come on and and we all have to work together to change it. 00:57:40.466 --> 00:57:41.666 Thanks for that question. 00:57:41.666 --> 00:57:42.000 All right. 00:57:42.000 --> 00:57:47.733 We've got a few other people asking about whether there are similar programs 00:57:47.733 --> 00:57:51.800 to Coast, on the East Coast, 00:57:51.866 --> 00:57:54.866 Atlantic or Gulf Coast of the United States. 00:57:56.133 --> 00:57:57.266 Yeah, super good question. 00:57:57.266 --> 00:57:58.400 Thanks, Gavin. 00:57:58.400 --> 00:58:02.666 There is a program along the East Coast. 00:58:02.666 --> 00:58:05.666 It's struggling a bit. It's called seen it. 00:58:06.133 --> 00:58:08.800 And, 00:58:08.800 --> 00:58:10.533 we are, 00:58:10.533 --> 00:58:13.666 trying to figure out whether we can dial that back up again. 00:58:13.666 --> 00:58:16.133 So quite interestingly, the U.S. 00:58:16.133 --> 00:58:19.200 Fish and Wildlife Service, at a national level, 00:58:19.466 --> 00:58:22.933 is now really thinking about, beach bird surveys. 00:58:22.933 --> 00:58:26.533 Paradoxically, because of, offshore wind. 00:58:27.000 --> 00:58:30.933 So our counterparts on the East coast are ahead of us, 00:58:31.266 --> 00:58:34.266 in terms of offshore wind farms and in fact, 00:58:34.466 --> 00:58:38.400 our counterparts, over in the North Sea are far in advance of us. 00:58:38.666 --> 00:58:39.533 And, 00:58:39.533 --> 00:58:43.933 folks are thinking that beach bird surveys are one way to do impact monitoring. 00:58:43.933 --> 00:58:48.333 So we're working with, Fish and Wildlife Service, 00:58:48.333 --> 00:58:53.333 along the East Coast to really think about how we can, reengage 00:58:53.800 --> 00:58:56.133 the beach bird monitoring along the East coast 00:58:56.133 --> 00:58:58.866 and make sure that the programs are done the same way. 00:58:58.866 --> 00:59:02.533 We call that interoperable, so that all the data are collected 00:59:02.533 --> 00:59:06.600 and we can put them together and in one big statistical melting pot, 00:59:07.133 --> 00:59:10.066 we also are working with, Bird Studies 00:59:10.066 --> 00:59:13.600 Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada. 00:59:13.666 --> 00:59:15.400 Each sea Canada. 00:59:15.400 --> 00:59:20.133 Those are federal institutions, somewhat analogous to U.S. 00:59:20.133 --> 00:59:21.600 Fish and Wildlife Service. 00:59:21.600 --> 00:59:24.600 And there we've just coast has just finished a project, 00:59:25.000 --> 00:59:27.600 in eastern Canada, 00:59:27.600 --> 00:59:32.200 doing a field guide for, individuals that are on offshore 00:59:32.200 --> 00:59:36.000 oil platforms, because birds run into those platforms. 00:59:36.133 --> 00:59:39.400 So there's all sorts of really interesting stuff going up. 00:59:39.600 --> 00:59:41.333 On, on the East Coast, 00:59:41.333 --> 00:59:44.333 there are long term beach bird monitoring programs in Europe. 00:59:44.600 --> 00:59:47.200 And in the UK, also 00:59:47.200 --> 00:59:50.933 in New Zealand, Tasmania and Australia. 00:59:51.066 --> 00:59:54.000 Our next question. Is. 00:59:54.000 --> 00:59:57.466 Someone's asking, besides deciphering the type, 00:59:57.866 --> 01:00:02.133 what data are you looking for when you're collecting samples of marine debris? 01:00:02.866 --> 01:00:04.000 Marine debris? 01:00:04.000 --> 01:00:05.866 That is a fabulous question. 01:00:05.866 --> 01:00:08.666 Thank you so much for, sure. That was a coastal plant. 01:00:08.666 --> 01:00:11.066 Thanks for asking that question. 01:00:11.066 --> 01:00:14.200 So, you know, when Coast started, its marine 01:00:14.200 --> 01:00:18.066 debris program was not too long after the Japanese tsunami, 01:00:18.600 --> 01:00:21.933 and it was before that wave of debris hit our coastal, 01:00:22.666 --> 01:00:26.666 and we were very, very curious, obvious about that tsunami, 01:00:27.000 --> 01:00:30.000 but we were also curious to tie 01:00:30.000 --> 01:00:33.000 debris to particular kinds of harm. 01:00:33.400 --> 01:00:38.400 So what's really interesting about the difference between debris and birds, 01:00:38.600 --> 01:00:42.733 besides the fact that debris is created by people, is there are only a certain 01:00:42.733 --> 01:00:46.200 number of birds, that is to say, a certain number of types of birds. 01:00:46.266 --> 01:00:50.600 We know all the species in the, in the Pacific, environment, 01:00:51.000 --> 01:00:55.000 but debris types are infinite because people keep inventing new things 01:00:55.200 --> 01:00:56.000 and throwing them away. 01:00:57.066 --> 01:00:58.466 And so it's really hard to come up 01:00:58.466 --> 01:01:01.933 with a list of debris types because it's an infinite list. 01:01:02.266 --> 01:01:03.933 Right? And you don't want to pull down menu. 01:01:03.933 --> 01:01:05.733 That's a thousand things. 01:01:05.733 --> 01:01:08.466 So what we did is we went back to square one 01:01:08.466 --> 01:01:11.466 and we thought about, well, what's really important about marine debris 01:01:11.466 --> 01:01:14.533 and what's really important about the marine debris is the characteristics 01:01:14.533 --> 01:01:17.866 of the great things, like what it's made of. 01:01:18.600 --> 01:01:21.600 But also things like, is it floppy? 01:01:22.400 --> 01:01:25.866 And does it have loops on it because it turns out, for instance, 01:01:25.866 --> 01:01:28.866 floppy loopy things, are, 01:01:28.866 --> 01:01:31.866 are very deadly for entanglement. 01:01:31.866 --> 01:01:35.333 Big loops entangle whales, medium sized loops, 01:01:35.666 --> 01:01:39.600 entangled pinnipeds, small loops, entangled birds. 01:01:40.333 --> 01:01:40.800 Right. 01:01:40.800 --> 01:01:45.000 And so from a bird's point of view, whether it's, coiled up 01:01:45.000 --> 01:01:48.800 rope or, six pack 01:01:49.333 --> 01:01:52.533 top, or, part 01:01:52.533 --> 01:01:56.133 of, gill net, those are all floppy, loopy things. 01:01:56.333 --> 01:02:00.466 So coasters, when they are typing and characterizing debris, 01:02:00.800 --> 01:02:03.666 they're looking at all of those characteristics. 01:02:03.666 --> 01:02:06.666 So I'll tell you another marine debris story. 01:02:06.666 --> 01:02:11.400 Albatross eat the the albatross that nests in Hawaii 01:02:11.800 --> 01:02:14.400 eat primarily flying fish eggs. 01:02:14.400 --> 01:02:17.866 And they are in a color range from sort of brilliant 01:02:17.866 --> 01:02:20.866 gold through deep garnet red. 01:02:21.200 --> 01:02:24.800 And they also eat neon flying squid. 01:02:25.066 --> 01:02:25.933 What a cool name. 01:02:25.933 --> 01:02:30.000 Neon flying squid and neon flying squid are pretty small squids, 01:02:30.000 --> 01:02:33.333 so the the mantle is only maybe 01:02:33.666 --> 01:02:37.666 5 to 8cm and you guessed it, bright red. 01:02:38.600 --> 01:02:42.533 And it turns out that the mantle of neon flying squid and, 01:02:42.933 --> 01:02:46.666 flying fish eggs, which are very sticky and float 01:02:46.666 --> 01:02:51.000 in little clumps, look a lot like cigaret lighters, 01:02:52.266 --> 01:02:54.133 like Zippo lighters. 01:02:54.133 --> 01:02:56.666 And those are also floating, 01:02:56.666 --> 01:02:58.600 but they only look like lighters 01:02:58.600 --> 01:03:01.800 that are yellow or orange or red, 01:03:02.133 --> 01:03:05.933 that all look like lighters that are green or blue or black. 01:03:06.333 --> 01:03:10.466 So, albatrosses have lighters 01:03:10.800 --> 01:03:14.133 and bottle caps and other small plastic things 01:03:14.400 --> 01:03:17.266 that are about five centimeters down to about one 01:03:17.266 --> 01:03:20.800 centimeters inside that are within a particular color spectrum. 01:03:21.066 --> 01:03:26.066 So the things that matter that imperil albatrosses 01:03:26.400 --> 01:03:29.333 are color, size, and material. 01:03:29.333 --> 01:03:31.266 That's why characteristics matter. 01:03:31.266 --> 01:03:34.333 And that's why coast collects information on characteristics. 01:03:34.400 --> 01:03:37.400 So we can actually map the harm 01:03:37.466 --> 01:03:40.600 that we're seeing, in a particular beach environment. 01:03:40.866 --> 01:03:41.733 Great question. 01:03:41.733 --> 01:03:44.600 Thanks for letting me tell you that story. I real people. 01:03:44.600 --> 01:03:49.133 Would like to know what you do after a dead bird is discovered. 01:03:49.133 --> 01:03:50.600 Do you leave the body there? 01:03:50.600 --> 01:03:53.266 Can you take it for further research? 01:03:53.266 --> 01:03:55.333 That's a great question. Yeah. 01:03:55.333 --> 01:03:59.666 Well, we teach and post the death as part of the life of the ecosystem. 01:04:00.133 --> 01:04:03.200 So in a in a normal death, 01:04:03.933 --> 01:04:07.533 it may pluck at your heartstrings. 01:04:07.733 --> 01:04:11.266 But what you have to remember is that each bird, when it comes 01:04:11.266 --> 01:04:17.666 ashore, is going to feed everything from the little beach hopper amphipods, 01:04:17.666 --> 01:04:20.666 and the kelp flies all the way on up to, 01:04:20.866 --> 01:04:24.200 black bears and brown bears up in Alaska. 01:04:24.400 --> 01:04:28.666 So there are many, many, many organisms that make their living, 01:04:28.666 --> 01:04:33.000 foraging in, coastal environment or what's washed in. 01:04:33.066 --> 01:04:37.200 So in coast, when we find a beach bird tag, it 01:04:38.133 --> 01:04:42.866 and we tag it with a small, now totally sustainable, 01:04:43.066 --> 01:04:46.333 wooden puck that has a number burned into it. 01:04:46.666 --> 01:04:50.866 And we tie that, onto the wing and we tuck it under the wing 01:04:51.066 --> 01:04:52.733 so you can't see it. 01:04:52.733 --> 01:04:55.800 And we do that so that we don't count the carcass twice 01:04:56.133 --> 01:04:58.333 because we leave the carcass in place. 01:04:58.333 --> 01:05:02.400 So we recognize that, again, death is part of the life of the ecosystem. 01:05:02.666 --> 01:05:07.466 The only time that we take carcasses off the beach to, general cases. 01:05:07.600 --> 01:05:11.933 One when the when there's something, affecting the carcass. 01:05:11.933 --> 01:05:14.266 That's a bad thing. For instance, the carcass is oiled 01:05:14.266 --> 01:05:16.933 or might be entangled. It might be hook on it. 01:05:16.933 --> 01:05:21.000 So it will continue to, impart harm in the ecosystem. 01:05:21.000 --> 01:05:24.000 And then we take the carcass off the beach so we stop the hunt. 01:05:24.466 --> 01:05:27.333 The other thing is, when we have deputized coasters 01:05:27.333 --> 01:05:30.333 because we're doing a specific scientific study 01:05:30.400 --> 01:05:33.733 and, a scientist needs, samples. 01:05:34.333 --> 01:05:35.666 And in that case, 01:05:35.666 --> 01:05:39.733 we sign people on to my collection permit so that we can collect samples. 01:05:39.733 --> 01:05:43.266 But other than that, that that's part of the life of the ecosystem. 01:05:43.333 --> 01:05:45.666 We leave things on the beach. Super great question, 01:05:46.600 --> 01:05:47.666 Julia. 01:05:47.666 --> 01:05:47.800 Yeah. 01:05:47.800 --> 01:05:51.266 I just wanted to check with you to see how, your time is going. 01:05:51.266 --> 01:05:54.533 I know, that you had some things that are going to be going. 01:05:54.533 --> 01:05:58.466 On about four minutes before I have to dash out of this office, 01:05:58.466 --> 01:06:01.333 so I happy to answer, another question. 01:06:01.333 --> 01:06:03.533 If there is one. Okay. Yeah. 01:06:03.533 --> 01:06:06.400 I don't know how easy the one this will be to take, 01:06:06.400 --> 01:06:09.600 how easy this will be to answer, but is there any way 01:06:09.600 --> 01:06:12.866 to tell what we're missing when the when doesn't flow? 01:06:13.133 --> 01:06:17.866 Is there any, I'm having a hard time 01:06:17.866 --> 01:06:21.800 intuiting, what that question might mean. 01:06:21.866 --> 01:06:24.333 So let's just back up to wins. 01:06:24.333 --> 01:06:27.066 The winds, 01:06:27.066 --> 01:06:31.066 along the outer coast, the winds in Puget Sound 01:06:31.066 --> 01:06:35.400 are a little harder to, be able to predict. 01:06:35.933 --> 01:06:39.200 But the winds along the outer coast, 01:06:39.200 --> 01:06:44.200 do allow us to see that there's this seasonal upwelling that goes on. 01:06:44.400 --> 01:06:49.333 So sometime in the spring, about March, April, we have a transition 01:06:49.333 --> 01:06:52.333 that's called the spring transition, because that happens in the spring. 01:06:52.333 --> 01:06:57.000 And after the spring transition, the, predominant movement, 01:06:57.400 --> 01:07:00.400 of wind is actually to the south. 01:07:00.533 --> 01:07:05.466 But because of the direction of the wind and the, rotation of the Earth, 01:07:05.733 --> 01:07:09.466 the movement of the water is actually west, offshore. 01:07:09.866 --> 01:07:13.066 And so, this is oceanography 101. 01:07:13.333 --> 01:07:15.533 And it's not that the wind blows subtly. 01:07:15.533 --> 01:07:17.866 There are times when we see reversal. 01:07:17.866 --> 01:07:22.133 So storm events usually, blow in the other direction and move the water 01:07:22.133 --> 01:07:22.800 onshore. 01:07:22.800 --> 01:07:27.333 So it's a very event driven, oceanography of our system. 01:07:27.333 --> 01:07:30.333 But predominantly offshore during the spring, summer. 01:07:30.400 --> 01:07:33.333 And then we get to the fall transition, which is a little messier. 01:07:33.333 --> 01:07:35.600 Spring transition happens in a day. 01:07:35.600 --> 01:07:37.800 Fall transition is a little messier. 01:07:37.800 --> 01:07:41.133 And that's when we start to see those fall storms falling in. 01:07:41.133 --> 01:07:45.400 And the predominant direction is, is is towards the shore. 01:07:45.666 --> 01:07:49.666 And that phenomena that the physics of that happen every year. 01:07:49.866 --> 01:07:52.800 So some years may be more intense than other years. 01:07:52.800 --> 01:07:56.400 But we know that's going to, happen every year. 01:07:56.800 --> 01:08:00.533 However, here's a fun wind story in the spring, 01:08:00.866 --> 01:08:04.933 even though there's that transition to, southward, 01:08:05.200 --> 01:08:08.066 winds a little component 01:08:08.066 --> 01:08:11.400 of that wind is actually east, actually easterly. 01:08:11.533 --> 01:08:15.666 So if you just measured the wind and not the circulation, 01:08:15.933 --> 01:08:20.066 not the you didn't take the, rotation of the Earth into account. 01:08:20.333 --> 01:08:23.266 The winds go a little more easterly during 01:08:23.266 --> 01:08:26.266 the spring summer than they do during the fall winter. 01:08:26.333 --> 01:08:28.000 And that means that something that's floating 01:08:28.000 --> 01:08:31.000 really high in the water that the wind can push against 01:08:31.066 --> 01:08:34.666 is actually more likely to come ashore, in the, in the spring. 01:08:34.666 --> 01:08:38.066 So what is something that's floating on the surface of the water 01:08:38.200 --> 01:08:41.466 by the gazillions in the spring? 01:08:41.666 --> 01:08:44.666 La la la la la la by the wind sailors. 01:08:44.733 --> 01:08:49.400 And this very spring, we had a huge, huge, 01:08:49.800 --> 01:08:54.333 onslaught, a mass mortality event, by the wind. 01:08:54.333 --> 01:08:57.333 Sailors, particularly down in Oregon and California. 01:08:57.600 --> 01:09:00.333 I was just down in Oregon a few weeks ago, and the beach is so covered 01:09:00.333 --> 01:09:01.800 that you can't see the sand. 01:09:01.800 --> 01:09:03.600 So these little guys, 01:09:03.600 --> 01:09:07.133 little gelatinous zooplankton, they get to about eight centimeters. 01:09:07.466 --> 01:09:10.600 There are a flat disk that sits on the surface and a half round 01:09:10.800 --> 01:09:16.333 it sits above that and a beautiful little ring of dark blue purple tentacles. 01:09:17.866 --> 01:09:18.266 And they were 01:09:18.266 --> 01:09:21.333 pushed in to shore literally by the gazillions. 01:09:21.600 --> 01:09:24.466 And we see that when the wind 01:09:24.466 --> 01:09:27.466 shifts, as it does every year in the spring 01:09:27.733 --> 01:09:30.733 and when it's been a warmer than normal winter, 01:09:31.533 --> 01:09:34.533 and it's just been also calmer offshore, 01:09:34.733 --> 01:09:37.733 so there's more chance for those colonies to survive. 01:09:37.866 --> 01:09:40.200 And that's exactly what we experienced this year. 01:09:40.200 --> 01:09:42.933 And that's why we're seeing this, big event. 01:09:42.933 --> 01:09:45.000 So there's a wind story for you. 01:09:45.000 --> 01:09:45.866 Okay. 01:09:45.866 --> 01:09:49.400 Well, since we know that you need to get going, 01:09:49.400 --> 01:09:52.733 I'm just going to take a few more seconds 01:09:52.733 --> 01:09:55.733 to say thank you so much. 01:09:56.133 --> 01:09:58.933 We really appreciate you being willing to come and talk with us. 01:09:58.933 --> 01:10:00.266 Julia. 01:10:00.266 --> 01:10:00.866 For those of you 01:10:00.866 --> 01:10:05.400 that still have unanswered questions, I will send those to Julia and, 01:10:05.400 --> 01:10:09.466 ask her to give us some responses so I can send them back out to you all. 01:10:09.800 --> 01:10:13.666 And, I did say someone had asked this in the chat, but, 01:10:13.666 --> 01:10:18.066 we will be, this webinar has been reported. 01:10:18.333 --> 01:10:21.600 We will send it, through editing so that we can close 01:10:21.600 --> 01:10:24.600 caption it, and then it will be shared on our website, 01:10:25.000 --> 01:10:30.133 which is the National Marine Sanctuary Webinar series, archived webinars. 01:10:30.133 --> 01:10:33.400 And then this is the last of our, 01:10:33.400 --> 01:10:36.600 early season, 2024 speaker series. 01:10:36.866 --> 01:10:39.600 But we hope you'll join us again next year. 01:10:39.600 --> 01:10:43.266 And do watch the Olympic Ghost Ring Sanctuary website 01:10:43.266 --> 01:10:46.266 and our Marine Life Center for upcoming events. 01:10:46.466 --> 01:10:47.200 Thank you so much.