WEBVTT

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<v ->All so much for joining tonight.</v>

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I'm gonna go ahead and get us started.

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So thank you so much for hopping on this call tonight.

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I am really excited for you all

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to be here in this virtual format.

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Welcome to the Discover Your Sanctuary Speaker series.

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My name is Sophia Barwegan, and I will be your host tonight.

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I am the Coastal Discovery Center Coordinator

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and Southern Region Liaison

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based out of San Simeon, California

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for Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

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And for those who aren't familiar

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with the California coastline,

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we are located right on California's Central Coast,

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right across the street from Per castle.

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This speaker series was created for you

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to learn more about the value

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of our national marine sanctuary system.

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Monterey Bay and the newly designated

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Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary

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are a part of NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary System,

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which encompasses more than 629,000 square miles

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of marine and great lake waters.

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And this system currently consists

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of 18 national marine sanctuaries

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and two national marine monuments.

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These are special ocean places

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that serve to advance research

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for sustainable and resilient oceans,

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provides solutions to solve

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coastal communities' toughest challenges,

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and help to boost local economies.

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Our speaker tonight, Dr. Steve Lonhart,

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is a Research Ecologist for us here

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at Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

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He will be taking a deeper dive into our black abalone

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here on the central coast.

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So we will have a designated session

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right following Steve's presentation to allow for Q&amp;A.

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At that point in time,

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you are welcome to drop your questions on the chat,

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and I will facilitate our session.

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Thank you all again for joining,

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and Steve, thank you so much for presenting here tonight.

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I'm gonna turn it on over to you.

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<v ->Great.</v>

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<v ->Get you back on here.</v>

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You should have access, Steve, to start presenting.

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<v ->Okay.</v>

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<v ->Oh, let me get you back on here.</v>

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<v ->Is, there we go.</v>

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Now can you see my slide?

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<v ->Yes, I can.</v>

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Thank you, Steve.

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<v ->Excellent.</v>

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Okay, now let me see if I can minimize our little window.

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Okay, there we go.

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Well, good evening people,

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out, wherever you are tuning in from.

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Thanks for coming this evening virtually

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to attend this sort of presentation.

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As Sophia mentioned, my name is Steve Lonhart.

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I'm a research ecologist

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at the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary,

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and have been since summer of 2002.

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What I'm going to be talking about this evening

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is here in this title slide,

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Fire Plus Atmospheric Rivers Equals Debris Flows.

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That's kind of a cool equation.

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Impacts on intertidal black abalone.

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And I'm gonna, we'll see how long this goes.

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It's probably gonna be at least 45 minutes.

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I have 60 slides to get through,

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but some of 'em will be kind of quick.

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So get comfortable, have a beverage or a snack,

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and save your questions for the end.

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Always happy to try and answer them.

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Okay, let's see.

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So there I am.

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The shot of me underwater is me in my natural habitat.

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I'm actually a kelp forest ecologist,

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but I do work in the intertidal,

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both in the rocky intertidal

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and in Elkhorn Slough on occasion.

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But most of the time I spend

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looking at invertebrates, fishes, and algae underwater

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along the central coast of California.

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And if you're interested in contacting me

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after this presentation, you can see my email is there,

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steve.lonhart@noaa.gov.

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What I'm gonna be talking about tonight

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is not work that I did by myself.

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This is a cast of many.

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The first person who actually has the permit

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to work with black abalone,

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which aren't an endangered species,

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is Dr. Pete Raimondi, who's a Professor at UC Santa Cruz.

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And really the main character in this story,

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the one who did a lot of stuff,

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and I was along to help her, was Wendy Bragg,

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who's a PhD candidate at UC Santa Cruz,

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who's wrapping up her dissertation right now.

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And then there was a whole cast

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of literally dozens upon dozens of undergraduates,

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volunteers, research staff from UC Santa Cruz,

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from other places, media,

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I mean we had all kinds of people

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coming out at all times of the day and night.

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One of the reasons I like to do

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subtidal scuba diving type ecology

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is because I'm not bound by the tides.

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You can just go underwater anytime you want,

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and go do some cool science.

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Whereas what I'm gonna be talking about today,

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working in the intertidal is driven by tidal cycles.

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So you can really only go when the water has receded.

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So the outline for tonight's talk

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is gonna be in a couple of different sections,

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a few a little bit longer than the others,

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but I'm gonna first talk briefly about fire,

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and then atmospheric rivers,

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and then that combination to generate debris flows.

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And then I'm gonna switch gears

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and kind of present the scene

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for where I'm really talking about a lot of stuff,

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which is along the Big Sur coastline

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in between kind of the Carmel Bay area

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and the sort of San Simeon and Cambria area.

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And then I'll talk briefly about black abalone

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an endangered mollusk,

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and then look at the impacts

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that those debris flows had,

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and then how people reacted and responded to those impacts.

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So first I wanna start off with fire.

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And if you live in California,

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and I'm born and raised right here in Monterey.

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And so I have had some experience with fires,

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certainly seems like a lot more recently.

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It's definitely much more memorable than when I was a child.

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But here's a plot that shows from 1987 up to 2023,

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two bits of information.

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And this is from California Department of Fire.

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The blue line shows the number of wildfires,

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and that's on the axis of about 14,000

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on the left hand side.

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And you see it kind of goes down,

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and then hovers around 8,000 fires,

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wildfires that occur in California on a roughly annual,

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on an annual basis, and roughly about 8,000 of them.

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But it's kind of a slightly declining trend.

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On the other hand, when you look at the acres burned,

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that's the orange line.

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You can see it was kind of hovering down below 2,000 acres

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for about the first decade on this plot.

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And then you see some pretty significant peaks

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with the most significant back in 2021,

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where we had a variety of very large fires

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throughout the state.

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If we focus in a little bit more

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and look at the Big Sur area,

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and here I just provide a partial list

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because you can get every single wildfire

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that occurred no matter what the size is.

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And some of them were relatively small,

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but here, the one that I grew up with as a kid

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was the Marble Cone Fire.

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That was a huge fire.

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Those of you who've been around the area long enough

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know that the Los Padres Forest

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had the Marble Cone Fire,

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and burned a huge amount of the Ventana wilderness

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within the Los Padres National Forest.

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And many of you have probably been hiking or backpacking

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somewhere in the Ventana Wilderness,

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or Los Padres National Forest

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and seen the effects from that 1977 fire.

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More recently, we hit the Basin Complex Fire in 2008,

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which was nearly as big.

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And I remember actually diving off the coast of Big Sur

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at that time,

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and we actually had to turn around at one point,

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not because there was a threat of fire,

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obviously we were out in the ocean on a boat,

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but we couldn't fill our tanks

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because of the smoke in the air,

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and the fear that that was going to contaminate

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our breathing media in the tanks.

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So I remember seeing that at night when we were on anchor,

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just literally the sky being orange

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with the fires burning in the hills

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along the Big Sur coastline.

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More recently, we've had the Dolan Fire in 2020,

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which started in 2020,

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and then ended on New Year's Eve of 2020.

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And that was a very large fire as well.

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And there were also a variety of other fires

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that were happening on other parts of the state

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in Monterey County at that time.

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And most people remember

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that where we had just horrible air quality,

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and it seemed like everything was on fire all around us,

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particularly in Monterey County.

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So here's just a little map that shows kind of the extent.

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So in the very upper left corner of that map,

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that's kind of the Carmel Bay area,

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and sort of Point Lobos hitting the edge of the map.

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And then it goes all the way down,

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past Point Sur sticking out there,

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and then goes down below Lopez Point,

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and heads towards Gorda, towards the lower part of the map.

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So you can see that essentially

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all parts of Big Sur have burned at some point

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in the last sort of 20, 25 years.

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And that map just shows multiple fires

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layered on top of one another.

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One of the fires that folks probably also remember

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was the Soberanes Fire,

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and there's some really dramatic photos of that.

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On the left,

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you can see these flames approaching a building there.

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And then on the right you can see

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a lot of the red fire retardant,

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the chemicals that were dropped by aircraft

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to try and serve as a barrier against spread of the fire.

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And even our Bixby Bridge, beloved,

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something that people stop and take photos at on their trek,

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either north to Carmel,

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or south down to Cambria and Hearst Castle

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from the Monterey area.

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You can see the hills on fire on the photo on the left.

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And then you can see the burned area

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after the fire was put out from this aerial image.

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And one thing you should notice

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is that in many of these shots,

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if you've ever been along the Big Sur coastline,

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it's often called the greatest meeting of land and sea.

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It's a real steep drop right into the ocean,

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incredibly steep canyons,

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and redwood forest often in those canyons,

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leading up to sort of chaparral areas,

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oak forest on the top, and pine trees,

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and all of that area is just prone to burning.

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Much of it is actually fire adapted,

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but those steep fires, sorry,

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the fires and steep canyons

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make fighting these kinds of fires very difficult,

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and they also spread relatively quickly

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and burn for a long time

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because it is so difficult to access the steep terrain,

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where much of it is actually wilderness.

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There are not roads, or if there are roads,

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they're dirt roads.

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In many cases,

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they're marginally passable for heavy equipment.

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So fire affects the soil.

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And this is something that I was not aware of

257
00:12:41.940 --> 00:12:43.830
until relatively recently

258
00:12:43.830 --> 00:12:46.440
as we started getting into these fire cycles,

259
00:12:46.440 --> 00:12:49.290
or these more extreme fire cycles.

260
00:12:49.290 --> 00:12:52.470
And that is that under a normal circumstance,

261
00:12:52.470 --> 00:12:54.900
when you've got a forest that hasn't burned in a long time,

262
00:12:54.900 --> 00:12:57.750
you've got this nice layer of leaf litter.

263
00:12:57.750 --> 00:13:00.210
It's not trash litter, it's leaf litter,

264
00:13:00.210 --> 00:13:02.550
it's all the detritus from the trees and plants

265
00:13:02.550 --> 00:13:05.640
that builds up this sort of soft upper layer

266
00:13:05.640 --> 00:13:07.800
that helps to trap some moisture,

267
00:13:07.800 --> 00:13:10.293
and is a habitat of all kinds of organisms.

268
00:13:11.370 --> 00:13:16.370
During a fire, that litter burns, and the vegetation burns.

269
00:13:19.050 --> 00:13:21.153
In the process of burning,

270
00:13:22.020 --> 00:13:26.010
chemicals are released from the plants

271
00:13:26.010 --> 00:13:30.000
that create a change in the soil chemistry.

272
00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:31.410
And then after that,

273
00:13:31.410 --> 00:13:33.810
you have not only a change in the soil chemistry,

274
00:13:33.810 --> 00:13:38.220
but much of the vegetation that was formerly alive,

275
00:13:38.220 --> 00:13:39.420
and you know,

276
00:13:39.420 --> 00:13:43.830
physically holding soils in place are actually now gone,

277
00:13:43.830 --> 00:13:46.140
or have burned, been turned into ash.

278
00:13:46.140 --> 00:13:48.570
And so that ability to hold soil in place

279
00:13:48.570 --> 00:13:51.510
is severely reduced.

280
00:13:51.510 --> 00:13:56.510
And so that means that the dynamics of rain

281
00:13:57.780 --> 00:14:01.740
and the soil changes dramatically.

282
00:14:01.740 --> 00:14:05.670
So as vegetation and soil layers are burned,

283
00:14:05.670 --> 00:14:08.670
they basically become hydrophobic,

284
00:14:08.670 --> 00:14:10.800
so they're water repellent.

285
00:14:10.800 --> 00:14:14.490
And this zone basically is right at the surface.

286
00:14:14.490 --> 00:14:19.490
And so when you have rain following one of these fires,

287
00:14:19.770 --> 00:14:22.500
the rain, and you would think,

288
00:14:22.500 --> 00:14:25.830
oh, well there's no vegetation there, just dirt,

289
00:14:25.830 --> 00:14:27.690
shouldn't the water just go right into the dirt?

290
00:14:27.690 --> 00:14:29.070
Well, no it doesn't.

291
00:14:29.070 --> 00:14:33.690
It actually is repelled by this hydrophobic property

292
00:14:33.690 --> 00:14:34.950
of the soil.

293
00:14:34.950 --> 00:14:37.350
And so that barrier means that the water,

294
00:14:37.350 --> 00:14:40.620
instead of going into the ground, starts to run off.

295
00:14:40.620 --> 00:14:42.660
And if there's enough of the water,

296
00:14:42.660 --> 00:14:46.413
that can lead to some pretty dramatic changes.

297
00:14:47.880 --> 00:14:50.160
So here's another diagram

298
00:14:50.160 --> 00:14:53.340
that shows, there's a lot of arrows there.

299
00:14:53.340 --> 00:14:57.150
I really want you to focus on the middle of the five arrows

300
00:14:57.150 --> 00:15:00.780
on the bottom, soil hydrophobicity.

301
00:15:00.780 --> 00:15:05.250
Basically how water repellent is the soil.

302
00:15:05.250 --> 00:15:08.550
And so when it's green, it's normal, it's absorbent,

303
00:15:08.550 --> 00:15:10.290
water goes through the soil,

304
00:15:10.290 --> 00:15:12.090
down, permeates down into the soil,

305
00:15:12.090 --> 00:15:15.780
and is available for both the water table aquifer

306
00:15:15.780 --> 00:15:17.730
and for plants.

307
00:15:17.730 --> 00:15:19.950
But after a fire has happened,

308
00:15:19.950 --> 00:15:21.930
there's this hydrophobic layer

309
00:15:21.930 --> 00:15:26.930
that means that the ability to repel water has increased,

310
00:15:28.410 --> 00:15:31.770
and that's why that arrow is red there in the middle.

311
00:15:31.770 --> 00:15:33.840
And then one year after the wildfire,

312
00:15:33.840 --> 00:15:35.340
it's starting to decrease a little bit,

313
00:15:35.340 --> 00:15:40.320
but this effect lasts for multiple years.

314
00:15:40.320 --> 00:15:45.320
And back when we had the 2008 Basin Fire,

315
00:15:45.900 --> 00:15:48.390
we actually, everyone was preparing

316
00:15:48.390 --> 00:15:49.920
for massive debris flows.

317
00:15:49.920 --> 00:15:51.030
That didn't happen

318
00:15:51.030 --> 00:15:53.760
because we were in the middle of a drought

319
00:15:53.760 --> 00:15:56.580
in 2009 and '10,

320
00:15:56.580 --> 00:15:59.940
we didn't really have the expected big rains.

321
00:15:59.940 --> 00:16:03.000
That wasn't the case with the Dolan Fire.

322
00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:07.380
The Dolan Fire basically had the fire,

323
00:16:07.380 --> 00:16:08.627
end on December 31st,

324
00:16:08.627 --> 00:16:12.270
and about two and a half weeks later,

325
00:16:12.270 --> 00:16:17.070
we had a extreme downpour of rain.

326
00:16:17.070 --> 00:16:21.900
So this kind of vulnerability of the soil

327
00:16:21.900 --> 00:16:26.900
to having debris flows is a multi-year effect.

328
00:16:27.540 --> 00:16:30.720
And it's both the chemistry starts to break down

329
00:16:30.720 --> 00:16:32.550
slowly over the years,

330
00:16:32.550 --> 00:16:35.580
and also the vegetation starts to come back,

331
00:16:35.580 --> 00:16:39.030
and enough of it has roots penetrating deep enough

332
00:16:39.030 --> 00:16:43.233
that there is some capacity to hold the soil in place.

333
00:16:44.790 --> 00:16:46.440
Okay, so the pretty picture

334
00:16:46.440 --> 00:16:49.440
is my cue to say we're done with that topic,

335
00:16:49.440 --> 00:16:51.960
and now we're gonna move over to another topic.

336
00:16:51.960 --> 00:16:54.420
So we've talked about fire,

337
00:16:54.420 --> 00:16:57.423
and now we're gonna talk about atmospheric rivers.

338
00:16:58.320 --> 00:17:00.390
So atmospheric rivers

339
00:17:00.390 --> 00:17:03.900
are these often up to 300 or more

340
00:17:03.900 --> 00:17:08.310
mile-wide moisture streams

341
00:17:08.310 --> 00:17:11.850
that sort of peel off of the equator

342
00:17:11.850 --> 00:17:13.623
and head toward the poles.

343
00:17:15.540 --> 00:17:18.450
At any given time, like literally right now,

344
00:17:18.450 --> 00:17:21.510
there are four to five active atmospheric rivers

345
00:17:21.510 --> 00:17:23.550
on the planet somewhere.

346
00:17:23.550 --> 00:17:25.080
So they occur all over the place,

347
00:17:25.080 --> 00:17:26.733
it's not just in California.

348
00:17:28.200 --> 00:17:31.920
Each of these rivers moves the equivalent water

349
00:17:31.920 --> 00:17:35.430
that would flow through the mouth of the Amazon River.

350
00:17:35.430 --> 00:17:37.980
So even though it's water vapor,

351
00:17:37.980 --> 00:17:40.440
it contains a huge amount of water,

352
00:17:40.440 --> 00:17:43.710
because it's so broad and so deep.

353
00:17:43.710 --> 00:17:46.740
And that moisture-laden air,

354
00:17:46.740 --> 00:17:51.540
when it hits the land, can produce torrential rains,

355
00:17:51.540 --> 00:17:56.100
and as it gets to higher elevations, really heavy snow pack.

356
00:17:56.100 --> 00:17:58.350
Most of you are probably familiar

357
00:17:58.350 --> 00:18:01.410
with atmospheric rivers, the term now,

358
00:18:01.410 --> 00:18:03.270
because it's been in the news quite a bit

359
00:18:03.270 --> 00:18:05.340
the last five to six years.

360
00:18:05.340 --> 00:18:07.140
Before that, you probably heard of them

361
00:18:07.140 --> 00:18:11.400
as a specific atmospheric river, the Pineapple Express.

362
00:18:11.400 --> 00:18:14.010
That's been around for quite a while.

363
00:18:14.010 --> 00:18:15.360
And there are probably other names

364
00:18:15.360 --> 00:18:20.130
for ones that have a very key sort of geographic signature.

365
00:18:20.130 --> 00:18:22.980
The Pineapple Express shoots out over Hawaii

366
00:18:22.980 --> 00:18:26.340
and then heads our way, hence the name Pineapple.

367
00:18:26.340 --> 00:18:31.340
So here's a gif that NOAA made that shows back in 2012,

368
00:18:32.880 --> 00:18:35.040
these green tendrils that you see

369
00:18:35.040 --> 00:18:38.910
are whipping out and hitting the coastline.

370
00:18:38.910 --> 00:18:40.230
Here it's green and red,

371
00:18:40.230 --> 00:18:44.190
that's showing you the amount of vapor,

372
00:18:44.190 --> 00:18:45.900
and sort of the water vapor

373
00:18:45.900 --> 00:18:48.630
that's coming off of the equator,

374
00:18:48.630 --> 00:18:53.630
and then making landfall on the west coast of the US.

375
00:18:53.880 --> 00:18:57.060
And like I said, there are many of these rivers

376
00:18:57.060 --> 00:18:59.640
all over the globe hitting all kinds of,

377
00:18:59.640 --> 00:19:02.580
you know, hitting Africa, hitting different continents.

378
00:19:02.580 --> 00:19:05.940
And when they do, they bring a tremendous amount

379
00:19:05.940 --> 00:19:07.623
of precipitation.

380
00:19:10.170 --> 00:19:12.810
So here's a graphic that you may have seen

381
00:19:12.810 --> 00:19:15.840
a version of this in your local newspaper

382
00:19:15.840 --> 00:19:19.680
or on one of your social media feeds.

383
00:19:19.680 --> 00:19:22.500
And it basically explains what I was talking about.

384
00:19:22.500 --> 00:19:23.670
There's another fact here

385
00:19:23.670 --> 00:19:27.150
that says the a strong atmospheric river

386
00:19:27.150 --> 00:19:28.830
has enough water in it

387
00:19:28.830 --> 00:19:32.820
that's is similar to seven to 15 times

388
00:19:32.820 --> 00:19:34.590
the average flow of water

389
00:19:34.590 --> 00:19:37.020
coming out of the Mississippi River.

390
00:19:37.020 --> 00:19:39.420
So Mississippi's not quite as big as the Amazon.

391
00:19:40.680 --> 00:19:42.690
And then these occur all over the place,

392
00:19:42.690 --> 00:19:47.190
like I said, they can be up to 300 or more miles wide.

393
00:19:47.190 --> 00:19:52.190
And like I said, in 2021, in January of 2021,

394
00:19:52.410 --> 00:19:53.610
the Central Coast,

395
00:19:53.610 --> 00:19:56.250
and in particular the Big Sur coastline

396
00:19:56.250 --> 00:20:01.250
in particularly at a a spot called Chalk Peak,

397
00:20:01.920 --> 00:20:06.920
had upwards of 15 inches of rain in a 36 hour time span.

398
00:20:09.030 --> 00:20:12.750
So it's not just that there's a lot of moisture,

399
00:20:12.750 --> 00:20:14.490
it's that a lot of moisture

400
00:20:14.490 --> 00:20:17.160
also gets dropped out of the atmosphere

401
00:20:17.160 --> 00:20:20.550
and onto the land very quickly.

402
00:20:20.550 --> 00:20:23.520
And if it's up in the Sierras, that's great,

403
00:20:23.520 --> 00:20:25.470
'cause it's a huge snow pack.

404
00:20:25.470 --> 00:20:28.110
And since California relies on the snow pack

405
00:20:28.110 --> 00:20:32.100
for so much of our water supply, we like that.

406
00:20:32.100 --> 00:20:35.730
But that's not always the case, particularly when it's warm,

407
00:20:35.730 --> 00:20:37.860
like in some cases when we have the Pineapple Express

408
00:20:37.860 --> 00:20:39.723
brings some of that really warm air,

409
00:20:40.560 --> 00:20:42.660
we don't necessarily get the same kind of snow pack,

410
00:20:42.660 --> 00:20:44.883
we just have mostly rain.

411
00:20:46.710 --> 00:20:51.710
So similar to hurricanes having categories,

412
00:20:51.922 --> 00:20:54.030
there's also a rating system

413
00:20:54.030 --> 00:20:56.610
associated with atmospheric rivers.

414
00:20:56.610 --> 00:20:57.900
This one's a little bit different

415
00:20:57.900 --> 00:21:02.070
because it actually combines the benefits

416
00:21:02.070 --> 00:21:04.140
with the hazards.

417
00:21:04.140 --> 00:21:07.470
So if you're a Category 1 atmospheric river,

418
00:21:07.470 --> 00:21:11.700
which is primarily on the weak end,

419
00:21:11.700 --> 00:21:14.280
mostly it's beneficial 'cause you're getting rain,

420
00:21:14.280 --> 00:21:17.190
and it's not in that torrential downpour,

421
00:21:17.190 --> 00:21:18.300
but it's steadier,

422
00:21:18.300 --> 00:21:21.300
and it might be spread out over multiple days.

423
00:21:21.300 --> 00:21:23.730
Versus a Category 5,

424
00:21:23.730 --> 00:21:26.190
which is more like what I was talking about

425
00:21:26.190 --> 00:21:28.080
occurred at Dolan,

426
00:21:28.080 --> 00:21:31.230
where you have this tremendous amount of water

427
00:21:31.230 --> 00:21:33.423
coming down in a very short period of time.

428
00:21:34.830 --> 00:21:37.290
So if you ever hear that,

429
00:21:37.290 --> 00:21:38.610
recognize that this is

430
00:21:38.610 --> 00:21:43.440
not category bad through category worst,

431
00:21:43.440 --> 00:21:48.440
it's actually a mix of benefits because we do need rain.

432
00:21:48.900 --> 00:21:52.410
Our plants do need rain, we need rain,

433
00:21:52.410 --> 00:21:55.980
and our aquifers, and our streams,

434
00:21:55.980 --> 00:21:58.530
and rivers, and lakes need rain.

435
00:21:58.530 --> 00:22:00.810
But sometimes it comes down too fast

436
00:22:00.810 --> 00:22:02.823
and too focused of an area.

437
00:22:04.110 --> 00:22:07.110
Okay, pretty picture again.

438
00:22:07.110 --> 00:22:09.780
So that means that I'm done

439
00:22:09.780 --> 00:22:12.360
with the atmospheric river part.

440
00:22:12.360 --> 00:22:17.360
And this is actually a shot of Big Creek down in Big Sur,

441
00:22:18.030 --> 00:22:20.640
where they're currently doing a lot of road work right now,

442
00:22:20.640 --> 00:22:23.520
this is where Highway 1 is closed, right,

443
00:22:23.520 --> 00:22:24.840
one of the spots where Highway 1

444
00:22:24.840 --> 00:22:27.810
is having a tremendous amount of work due to landslides.

445
00:22:27.810 --> 00:22:30.150
And in this shot you can actually see this waterfall,

446
00:22:30.150 --> 00:22:34.020
a seasonal waterfall that's spilling down onto the beach.

447
00:22:34.020 --> 00:22:35.853
So this was after one of those,

448
00:22:36.930 --> 00:22:39.543
a few days or weeks after one of those rainy events.

449
00:22:40.890 --> 00:22:45.100
Okay, now I'm gonna talk about the combination of fire

450
00:22:45.990 --> 00:22:49.230
and atmospheric rivers generating debris flows.

451
00:22:49.230 --> 00:22:52.380
Debris flows can be generated without fire,

452
00:22:52.380 --> 00:22:54.720
but when it's combined with a fire,

453
00:22:54.720 --> 00:22:58.080
they are particularly devastating.

454
00:22:58.080 --> 00:23:02.070
So debris flow is a mass that's moving,

455
00:23:02.070 --> 00:23:05.310
sometimes upwards of 30 miles per hour.

456
00:23:05.310 --> 00:23:10.310
It's a massive water, mud, sand, rock.

457
00:23:12.660 --> 00:23:13.980
And when we say rock,

458
00:23:13.980 --> 00:23:17.100
it means from like gravel, to fist sized rocks,

459
00:23:17.100 --> 00:23:21.540
up to boulders the size of a car,

460
00:23:21.540 --> 00:23:23.490
and trees and any other debris

461
00:23:23.490 --> 00:23:27.390
that gets caught in that sort of sludge

462
00:23:27.390 --> 00:23:30.480
that has a consistency of concrete

463
00:23:30.480 --> 00:23:33.330
that comes shooting down a watershed.

464
00:23:33.330 --> 00:23:37.500
So it can flow, but it's not really just water,

465
00:23:37.500 --> 00:23:40.230
it's got so much more than water in it,

466
00:23:40.230 --> 00:23:42.330
otherwise that would be a flood.

467
00:23:42.330 --> 00:23:47.250
And the debris flows can occur, like I said,

468
00:23:47.250 --> 00:23:48.510
without a wildfire,

469
00:23:48.510 --> 00:23:51.540
but they're particularly potent when it's combined

470
00:23:51.540 --> 00:23:53.730
with an area that has been recently burned

471
00:23:53.730 --> 00:23:56.850
and still has soil with that hydrophobic,

472
00:23:56.850 --> 00:23:58.893
that water repellent characteristic.

473
00:23:59.820 --> 00:24:03.310
So when you have a burned area

474
00:24:04.230 --> 00:24:07.530
that already has this water repellent nature,

475
00:24:07.530 --> 00:24:11.010
and then you have this stream

476
00:24:11.010 --> 00:24:14.820
of super moisture-laden air coming over it

477
00:24:14.820 --> 00:24:18.330
that then gets squeezed as it increases in elevation,

478
00:24:18.330 --> 00:24:21.870
and basically dumps moisture out of it

479
00:24:21.870 --> 00:24:25.920
in a very high intensity and short duration,

480
00:24:25.920 --> 00:24:28.080
then you get this combination

481
00:24:28.080 --> 00:24:29.880
to generate a debris flow.

482
00:24:29.880 --> 00:24:32.820
In the Big Sur area and also we saw in other parts

483
00:24:32.820 --> 00:24:33.990
down in Southern California

484
00:24:33.990 --> 00:24:37.350
that have particularly steep terrain,

485
00:24:37.350 --> 00:24:41.370
those little canyons that might have a normal, you know,

486
00:24:41.370 --> 00:24:44.280
when there's been no fire and there's normal vegetation,

487
00:24:44.280 --> 00:24:46.050
and just kind of regular rain,

488
00:24:46.050 --> 00:24:48.390
these little creeklets that you might be able

489
00:24:48.390 --> 00:24:50.523
to just sort of jump over,

490
00:24:51.990 --> 00:24:56.990
those turn into these essentially masses of material

491
00:24:57.630 --> 00:25:00.960
coming down that are moving trees.

492
00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:03.393
And in the case of the Big Sur area,

493
00:25:04.530 --> 00:25:07.710
redwood trees down like they were toothpicks,

494
00:25:07.710 --> 00:25:11.403
and literally obliterating anything in their path.

495
00:25:13.620 --> 00:25:14.940
This was a video,

496
00:25:14.940 --> 00:25:17.730
I highly recommend if you've never watched

497
00:25:17.730 --> 00:25:21.000
a debris flow video, do that when we're done,

498
00:25:21.000 --> 00:25:23.340
go Google debris flow.

499
00:25:23.340 --> 00:25:25.350
And Switzerland has some amazing ones.

500
00:25:25.350 --> 00:25:27.510
They're not necessarily just from rain,

501
00:25:27.510 --> 00:25:29.160
they're from rain combined with snow

502
00:25:29.160 --> 00:25:31.050
and sometimes avalanches.

503
00:25:31.050 --> 00:25:34.320
But this video, which unfortunately I thought I could play,

504
00:25:34.320 --> 00:25:35.310
but I can't,

505
00:25:35.310 --> 00:25:40.173
shows this material coming down this drainage.

506
00:25:41.310 --> 00:25:46.310
And those are, you know, rocks the sizes of motorcycles.

507
00:25:47.700 --> 00:25:51.390
This is not water, this is like cement,

508
00:25:51.390 --> 00:25:53.820
and it's picking up

509
00:25:53.820 --> 00:25:56.280
and grinding things on either side of the channel

510
00:25:56.280 --> 00:26:00.900
as they go down, which adds to the mass of the material

511
00:26:00.900 --> 00:26:03.153
that's flowing down these steep ravines.

512
00:26:06.090 --> 00:26:10.373
There's actually a couple of things that happen

513
00:26:11.700 --> 00:26:15.060
when you get these debris flows.

514
00:26:15.060 --> 00:26:17.910
Under normal circumstances, like I said,

515
00:26:17.910 --> 00:26:20.730
the water can penetrate into the soil,

516
00:26:20.730 --> 00:26:25.730
it can go into groundwater to help with aquifers.

517
00:26:25.920 --> 00:26:28.770
The water gets essentially soaked up

518
00:26:28.770 --> 00:26:32.310
by the sponge of the forest floor and the terrain,

519
00:26:32.310 --> 00:26:33.600
it actually gets filtered.

520
00:26:33.600 --> 00:26:35.760
It goes into our water supplies.

521
00:26:35.760 --> 00:26:36.690
It's great.

522
00:26:36.690 --> 00:26:40.440
But when you have the fire, that doesn't happen.

523
00:26:40.440 --> 00:26:41.400
And so the water,

524
00:26:41.400 --> 00:26:46.400
instead of going into our water system,

525
00:26:47.040 --> 00:26:52.040
basically flows into streams that head into the ocean,

526
00:26:52.797 --> 00:26:57.797
and we often get these really big runoff events.

527
00:26:58.590 --> 00:27:03.590
And so this is the combination

528
00:27:04.380 --> 00:27:06.563
that I've been talking about the whole time.

529
00:27:08.040 --> 00:27:11.040
The debris flow can come in a variety

530
00:27:11.040 --> 00:27:13.080
of sort of configurations

531
00:27:13.080 --> 00:27:16.680
depending on whether or not it's eroding material away

532
00:27:16.680 --> 00:27:17.790
or if it's on rock.

533
00:27:17.790 --> 00:27:21.120
In some mountainous regions, it's just on stone.

534
00:27:21.120 --> 00:27:23.940
So it's mobilizing smaller material

535
00:27:23.940 --> 00:27:28.940
that's basically on a hard impervious surface.

536
00:27:29.130 --> 00:27:33.090
Other places like that shot I showed you in Switzerland,

537
00:27:33.090 --> 00:27:36.810
and especially in the Big Sur area,

538
00:27:36.810 --> 00:27:38.940
there's a lot of soil in those little ravines,

539
00:27:38.940 --> 00:27:41.910
and those gullies, and those steep small,

540
00:27:41.910 --> 00:27:44.520
I guess you could call them watersheds almost,

541
00:27:44.520 --> 00:27:48.300
that this material scoops up as it's going.

542
00:27:48.300 --> 00:27:49.530
And in many cases,

543
00:27:49.530 --> 00:27:53.190
you have these sort of non-uniform debris flows

544
00:27:53.190 --> 00:27:55.740
where there might be a small head of water in front,

545
00:27:55.740 --> 00:27:58.920
but then you've got these really large rocks,

546
00:27:58.920 --> 00:28:01.590
and boulders, trees, and the like

547
00:28:01.590 --> 00:28:03.030
that are at the head of it

548
00:28:03.030 --> 00:28:04.980
that are being pushed from behind.

549
00:28:04.980 --> 00:28:09.870
And that comes through first, blows out the whole area,

550
00:28:09.870 --> 00:28:12.810
and then you have ongoing amounts of water

551
00:28:12.810 --> 00:28:15.900
with finer sediments, smaller material

552
00:28:15.900 --> 00:28:17.160
that's also being carried,

553
00:28:17.160 --> 00:28:22.093
that looks kind of more like a really viscous flood event.

554
00:28:25.050 --> 00:28:27.927
Okay, so what does this look like?

555
00:28:27.927 --> 00:28:31.890
And you guys have probably seen photos of this.

556
00:28:31.890 --> 00:28:33.780
This is Rat Creek.

557
00:28:33.780 --> 00:28:38.780
Okay, so this is just not too far down the coastline

558
00:28:39.600 --> 00:28:42.240
from the Carmel Monterey area.

559
00:28:42.240 --> 00:28:45.630
And this is a photograph that the Adelmans took.

560
00:28:45.630 --> 00:28:50.630
They cruise along the coastline on a sort of annual basis,

561
00:28:51.270 --> 00:28:53.733
taking photographs of the entire coastline.

562
00:28:54.600 --> 00:28:57.120
And it's a fantastic resource

563
00:28:57.120 --> 00:28:58.500
if you ever want to go look at

564
00:28:58.500 --> 00:29:02.820
what the coastline has looked like in the past

565
00:29:02.820 --> 00:29:07.803
and how it's changed, it's the coastal records,

566
00:29:08.760 --> 00:29:12.600
just Google Adelman, A-D-E-L-M-A-N,

567
00:29:12.600 --> 00:29:15.030
and coastal records,

568
00:29:15.030 --> 00:29:17.700
and you'll find literally thousands and thousands

569
00:29:17.700 --> 00:29:19.777
of photographs of the Big Sur

570
00:29:19.777 --> 00:29:21.690
and central California coastline,

571
00:29:21.690 --> 00:29:23.760
as well as other parts of the state.

572
00:29:23.760 --> 00:29:25.143
They fly the whole state.

573
00:29:26.160 --> 00:29:27.450
So here's what it looked like beforehand.

574
00:29:27.450 --> 00:29:30.120
And I wanna point out that right in the middle,

575
00:29:30.120 --> 00:29:32.730
you can kind of see there's this V, you know,

576
00:29:32.730 --> 00:29:35.790
there's a little watershed that's full of trees,

577
00:29:35.790 --> 00:29:37.587
and it's kind of going from the left down into the right,

578
00:29:37.587 --> 00:29:40.110
and it comes right into the highway,

579
00:29:40.110 --> 00:29:40.943
and then there's,

580
00:29:40.943 --> 00:29:42.720
you can see a inverted sort of triangle there

581
00:29:42.720 --> 00:29:47.720
with some greenery right as it goes into the ocean there.

582
00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:50.280
And you can see there's some kelp in the ocean,

583
00:29:50.280 --> 00:29:51.300
nice blue water.

584
00:29:51.300 --> 00:29:55.443
This is what it looked like in October of 2019.

585
00:29:56.850 --> 00:30:00.360
Well, if you look at what happened

586
00:30:00.360 --> 00:30:04.230
in January 28th, 2021,

587
00:30:04.230 --> 00:30:08.670
you had this massive debris float that went down

588
00:30:08.670 --> 00:30:13.530
and blew through the little pipe and infrastructure

589
00:30:13.530 --> 00:30:17.880
that was underneath the road to allow water to get through.

590
00:30:17.880 --> 00:30:19.527
Normally there's not a lot of water,

591
00:30:19.527 --> 00:30:21.270
and that system could handle it,

592
00:30:21.270 --> 00:30:23.190
but when you have a debris flow

593
00:30:23.190 --> 00:30:25.770
with this torrential downpour

594
00:30:25.770 --> 00:30:30.120
coupled with an area that has had some fire activity,

595
00:30:30.120 --> 00:30:32.817
you get a lot of material that comes down,

596
00:30:32.817 --> 00:30:35.760
and you can see it went right across the road,

597
00:30:35.760 --> 00:30:36.630
blew it all out,

598
00:30:36.630 --> 00:30:38.250
and then there's a fan of dirt

599
00:30:38.250 --> 00:30:40.800
down at the base covering the intertidal,

600
00:30:40.800 --> 00:30:42.330
the water's brown.

601
00:30:42.330 --> 00:30:45.120
And if we look at a closeup,

602
00:30:45.120 --> 00:30:48.450
you can see that those are tree trunks,

603
00:30:48.450 --> 00:30:51.840
and trees got blown down there, like I said,

604
00:30:51.840 --> 00:30:53.220
like they are toothpicks,

605
00:30:53.220 --> 00:30:56.910
and completely devastated the area.

606
00:30:56.910 --> 00:30:59.940
Now this was a relatively small debris flow

607
00:30:59.940 --> 00:31:00.960
in the scale of things.

608
00:31:00.960 --> 00:31:03.060
They were able to get the highway reopened

609
00:31:03.060 --> 00:31:04.743
in about three months.

610
00:31:05.730 --> 00:31:08.520
And if you could drive by there now,

611
00:31:08.520 --> 00:31:11.700
you could hardly tell outside of the new structures

612
00:31:11.700 --> 00:31:12.750
that Caltrans put in,

613
00:31:12.750 --> 00:31:16.083
you could hardly tell that there was a debris flow there.

614
00:31:18.270 --> 00:31:19.920
Okay, another pretty picture.

615
00:31:19.920 --> 00:31:21.480
So we're switching again.

616
00:31:21.480 --> 00:31:22.920
So we've talked about fire,

617
00:31:22.920 --> 00:31:26.100
atmospheric rivers and debris flows,

618
00:31:26.100 --> 00:31:29.380
and now we're going to talk about

619
00:31:30.690 --> 00:31:32.700
beautiful and dynamic Big Sur.

620
00:31:32.700 --> 00:31:37.140
So Big Sur is an area that, you know, you gotta love it.

621
00:31:37.140 --> 00:31:39.600
It's a place I grew up as a child

622
00:31:39.600 --> 00:31:43.230
backpacking, and hiking, and fishing on the rivers,

623
00:31:43.230 --> 00:31:45.720
and just exploring the area as a kid.

624
00:31:45.720 --> 00:31:48.270
It's very near and dear to my heart.

625
00:31:48.270 --> 00:31:50.160
It's a beautiful area,

626
00:31:50.160 --> 00:31:54.840
and it's always changing, both from the land side,

627
00:31:54.840 --> 00:31:59.840
because on the land, you have both fires and debris flows.

628
00:32:00.540 --> 00:32:04.080
But more recent, sort of like in the last 20, 30 years,

629
00:32:04.080 --> 00:32:07.050
most of us have been thinking about landslides,

630
00:32:07.050 --> 00:32:09.960
and how landslides have altered the coastline there.

631
00:32:09.960 --> 00:32:11.490
And then of course you have the ocean,

632
00:32:11.490 --> 00:32:13.350
which is very dynamic.

633
00:32:13.350 --> 00:32:14.730
The tremendous amount of energy

634
00:32:14.730 --> 00:32:18.030
that's generated by the ocean as it hits into the shore

635
00:32:18.030 --> 00:32:20.100
and has it erodes away the shore,

636
00:32:20.100 --> 00:32:22.830
is part of what gives the coastline

637
00:32:22.830 --> 00:32:27.810
such a dramatic sort of view shed

638
00:32:27.810 --> 00:32:31.383
for tourists and locals alike to really enjoy.

639
00:32:32.730 --> 00:32:36.270
So here's a series of images

640
00:32:36.270 --> 00:32:40.260
that the USGS created for Mud Creek,

641
00:32:40.260 --> 00:32:43.890
which added 15 new acres to California.

642
00:32:43.890 --> 00:32:46.410
It's California actually expanded.

643
00:32:46.410 --> 00:32:48.690
And you can see that that was a landslide,

644
00:32:48.690 --> 00:32:49.800
this was not a debris flow,

645
00:32:49.800 --> 00:32:52.590
this was a landslide that happened back in 2017.

646
00:32:52.590 --> 00:32:53.700
But I wanted to show you this,

647
00:32:53.700 --> 00:32:57.090
'cause this is an example that I can kind of talk about

648
00:32:57.090 --> 00:33:02.090
how material that goes from the land into the ocean

649
00:33:03.750 --> 00:33:05.520
doesn't just stay there,

650
00:33:05.520 --> 00:33:07.650
it actually gets eroded by the ocean,

651
00:33:07.650 --> 00:33:09.930
and then the ocean moves it,

652
00:33:09.930 --> 00:33:13.620
and it actually goes up and down the coast.

653
00:33:13.620 --> 00:33:17.103
Well beyond the initial footprint of the slide.

654
00:33:18.000 --> 00:33:21.660
So here's a shot of a whole cast of characters.

655
00:33:21.660 --> 00:33:24.960
Back in 2017, we had folks

656
00:33:24.960 --> 00:33:27.570
from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife,

657
00:33:27.570 --> 00:33:32.570
from nonprofit groups, from UC Santa Cruz,

658
00:33:34.110 --> 00:33:37.560
from the sanctuary, from Caltrans,

659
00:33:37.560 --> 00:33:42.560
folks all over the place who we got down to the shoreline

660
00:33:42.930 --> 00:33:45.390
after they had stabilized the slide enough

661
00:33:45.390 --> 00:33:47.220
to let people come down here

662
00:33:47.220 --> 00:33:49.530
who weren't part of the construction team

663
00:33:49.530 --> 00:33:51.270
and the engineering team.

664
00:33:51.270 --> 00:33:53.160
And the biologists started looking at,

665
00:33:53.160 --> 00:33:56.760
well, we know the material's not staying put,

666
00:33:56.760 --> 00:34:01.050
it's moving, and it's now encroaching to areas

667
00:34:01.050 --> 00:34:05.370
where we know there's healthy populations of black abalone.

668
00:34:05.370 --> 00:34:06.420
And there was concern

669
00:34:06.420 --> 00:34:08.730
that the material was going to spread

670
00:34:08.730 --> 00:34:11.550
from the original footprint of the slide

671
00:34:11.550 --> 00:34:13.830
and kill more black abalone.

672
00:34:13.830 --> 00:34:15.660
And I wanna draw your attention to,

673
00:34:15.660 --> 00:34:18.600
there's a series of arrows.

674
00:34:18.600 --> 00:34:20.130
There's a white arrow, a yellow arrow,

675
00:34:20.130 --> 00:34:23.130
and a red arrow right across the middle of the image,

676
00:34:23.130 --> 00:34:25.530
and then there's a blue triangle and a red triangle.

677
00:34:25.530 --> 00:34:27.030
Those will always point

678
00:34:27.030 --> 00:34:30.870
to the same exact rocks on the shoreline.

679
00:34:30.870 --> 00:34:31.890
But where you're gonna see it through

680
00:34:31.890 --> 00:34:36.270
the next couple of slides is how that shoreline changes.

681
00:34:36.270 --> 00:34:38.700
So right now you can see that where we are,

682
00:34:38.700 --> 00:34:42.930
we had an easy walk coming down from the construction zone,

683
00:34:42.930 --> 00:34:45.690
walked across a black sand beach,

684
00:34:45.690 --> 00:34:48.240
and got basically to the start

685
00:34:48.240 --> 00:34:49.380
of where the rocks were,

686
00:34:49.380 --> 00:34:52.440
and where we were starting to see some of the black abalone.

687
00:34:52.440 --> 00:34:55.383
So that's November 2nd, 2017.

688
00:34:56.430 --> 00:35:01.430
If you look at it in January, just a few months later,

689
00:35:02.010 --> 00:35:06.990
again, blue triangle, red triangle, couple of arrows,

690
00:35:06.990 --> 00:35:09.390
you see that that sand is mostly gone

691
00:35:09.390 --> 00:35:11.940
and has moved offshore,

692
00:35:11.940 --> 00:35:15.720
and the rock that was underlying that sand

693
00:35:15.720 --> 00:35:17.670
has been re-exposed.

694
00:35:17.670 --> 00:35:22.670
But all the biology that was on that rock is gone.

695
00:35:22.950 --> 00:35:27.870
So if there had been algae, barnacles, limpets,

696
00:35:27.870 --> 00:35:30.060
you know, seaweeds,

697
00:35:30.060 --> 00:35:33.690
all those things had been basically buried,

698
00:35:33.690 --> 00:35:37.170
scoured and died.

699
00:35:37.170 --> 00:35:39.150
And then the sea then retreated,

700
00:35:39.150 --> 00:35:41.913
leaving a lot of very bare rock.

701
00:35:43.020 --> 00:35:47.883
Also, the sort of tidal height changed as the slope changed.

702
00:35:49.320 --> 00:35:54.320
So here's the same shot in October of 2018,

703
00:35:54.630 --> 00:35:57.780
and now you can see the sand is back.

704
00:35:57.780 --> 00:36:00.630
So that whole area that had all those boulders

705
00:36:00.630 --> 00:36:02.520
is now buried again.

706
00:36:02.520 --> 00:36:04.350
And this is something that happens,

707
00:36:04.350 --> 00:36:06.000
many of you, if you're a surfer

708
00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:08.160
or were a surfer in your youth,

709
00:36:08.160 --> 00:36:09.630
or know someone who surfs,

710
00:36:09.630 --> 00:36:11.850
they very much track where sand bars are

711
00:36:11.850 --> 00:36:13.590
and where the waves are building,

712
00:36:13.590 --> 00:36:15.060
and how those change

713
00:36:15.060 --> 00:36:18.000
over the course of spring, summer, and winter,

714
00:36:18.000 --> 00:36:19.800
and where the surf break can be.

715
00:36:19.800 --> 00:36:23.190
So sand's moving inshore and offshore all the time.

716
00:36:23.190 --> 00:36:25.440
In this case, it's both moving inshore and offshore,

717
00:36:25.440 --> 00:36:28.410
but it was also moving up the coastline

718
00:36:28.410 --> 00:36:30.480
and down the coastline,

719
00:36:30.480 --> 00:36:32.010
and that's where we were really concerned

720
00:36:32.010 --> 00:36:34.380
that it was going to be impact not only black abalone,

721
00:36:34.380 --> 00:36:37.770
but a variety of other intertidal species as well.

722
00:36:37.770 --> 00:36:41.850
Then if we look at February of 2019, the rocks are back.

723
00:36:41.850 --> 00:36:43.350
So that material's off,

724
00:36:43.350 --> 00:36:47.070
but again, still not much life on those rocks

725
00:36:47.070 --> 00:36:51.210
because they've been buried for multiple months.

726
00:36:51.210 --> 00:36:55.470
And then you look at March of 2019,

727
00:36:57.540 --> 00:36:59.940
you're starting to see some biology on the rocks

728
00:36:59.940 --> 00:37:00.773
that are getting darker.

729
00:37:00.773 --> 00:37:05.610
There's some algae on the lower line, lower elevations.

730
00:37:05.610 --> 00:37:10.020
And then in July, some of the sand's coming back,

731
00:37:10.020 --> 00:37:11.790
and you can see there's a sandy beach

732
00:37:11.790 --> 00:37:13.770
backed by the triangles.

733
00:37:13.770 --> 00:37:17.610
But the nearshore area still has some of the exposed rocks,

734
00:37:17.610 --> 00:37:20.703
and some of the algae that were growing on those rocks.

735
00:37:21.600 --> 00:37:23.700
And then in April of 2021,

736
00:37:23.700 --> 00:37:27.120
essentially all the sand is gone from the area

737
00:37:27.120 --> 00:37:28.410
that we've been looking at,

738
00:37:28.410 --> 00:37:31.170
and we've got a lot of rocks again.

739
00:37:31.170 --> 00:37:33.120
And some of those rocks are dark now,

740
00:37:33.120 --> 00:37:36.000
covered with algae that are taking advantage

741
00:37:36.000 --> 00:37:39.213
of all that new substrate for them to recruit onto.

742
00:37:40.110 --> 00:37:44.340
So there you have kind of a quick visual

743
00:37:44.340 --> 00:37:48.630
of how dynamic these systems are,

744
00:37:48.630 --> 00:37:53.040
how the ocean moves material, it moves not only sand,

745
00:37:53.040 --> 00:37:55.830
it can move rocks when the energy is high enough.

746
00:37:55.830 --> 00:38:00.243
It's a very dynamic system and is constantly changing.

747
00:38:01.080 --> 00:38:03.510
Oh sorry, I had one more, and that's it.

748
00:38:03.510 --> 00:38:08.510
Okay, so debris flow fans form fronts,

749
00:38:08.640 --> 00:38:10.233
say that seven times fast.

750
00:38:11.070 --> 00:38:13.773
So here's a shot from a particular site,

751
00:38:14.880 --> 00:38:15.990
and I want you to notice

752
00:38:15.990 --> 00:38:18.000
that there's some sand in the foreground,

753
00:38:18.000 --> 00:38:21.420
or some sort of gravel basically, not really sand.

754
00:38:21.420 --> 00:38:25.530
That wasn't there even a couple of weeks beforehand.

755
00:38:25.530 --> 00:38:28.110
That was all rocks.

756
00:38:28.110 --> 00:38:30.150
And you can look down

757
00:38:30.150 --> 00:38:32.730
towards that sort of square blocky rock

758
00:38:32.730 --> 00:38:34.410
that's on the horizon.

759
00:38:34.410 --> 00:38:35.880
And as you look at that shot,

760
00:38:35.880 --> 00:38:38.400
you can see there's some algae sticking up out of the water,

761
00:38:38.400 --> 00:38:39.930
some brown seaweed.

762
00:38:39.930 --> 00:38:41.550
And you can see there's some logs in there.

763
00:38:41.550 --> 00:38:42.930
You can see there's a lot of debris

764
00:38:42.930 --> 00:38:45.540
that's being carried down

765
00:38:45.540 --> 00:38:49.710
from where the material initially came in

766
00:38:49.710 --> 00:38:53.133
from a debris flow down a steep canyon.

767
00:38:54.180 --> 00:38:58.050
This is almost a half to a full kilometer

768
00:38:58.050 --> 00:39:01.560
down the coastline from one of those locations.

769
00:39:01.560 --> 00:39:04.680
And the material is starting to fill in.

770
00:39:04.680 --> 00:39:07.410
So now I'm gonna show you the second,

771
00:39:07.410 --> 00:39:09.450
basically the same shot,

772
00:39:09.450 --> 00:39:14.400
but just from a few, a month and a half later.

773
00:39:14.400 --> 00:39:19.400
And there's Wendy walking across, basically beach.

774
00:39:19.950 --> 00:39:23.280
And you can see that triangular rock in both shots

775
00:39:23.280 --> 00:39:25.380
next to the square rock.

776
00:39:25.380 --> 00:39:28.390
She would've been in sort of ankle deep water

777
00:39:29.370 --> 00:39:30.360
back in February.

778
00:39:30.360 --> 00:39:34.620
But now it's sand, and it's, there's no rocks.

779
00:39:34.620 --> 00:39:36.240
The algae's been buried,

780
00:39:36.240 --> 00:39:40.800
or it ripped off the rocks, sand blasted, so to speak.

781
00:39:40.800 --> 00:39:43.383
And most of the boulders are buried.

782
00:39:44.970 --> 00:39:46.860
This is happening two months

783
00:39:46.860 --> 00:39:50.223
after the atmospheric river event.

784
00:39:51.210 --> 00:39:53.430
So there's been no new rain.

785
00:39:53.430 --> 00:39:58.110
This is just now the ocean as part of its natural process

786
00:39:58.110 --> 00:39:59.430
of moving water,

787
00:39:59.430 --> 00:40:02.378
moving material down along the shore,

788
00:40:02.378 --> 00:40:05.760
a literal current,

789
00:40:05.760 --> 00:40:09.123
a literal cell that's moving material from north to south,

790
00:40:09.960 --> 00:40:12.693
is moving this material down along the coastline.

791
00:40:14.670 --> 00:40:18.450
This is an aerial shot basically of the same spot.

792
00:40:18.450 --> 00:40:23.450
This is taken by Nate and Wendy working with drones.

793
00:40:24.510 --> 00:40:29.400
And you can see in the upper shot in February, on the 7th,

794
00:40:29.400 --> 00:40:32.550
that red arrow, the two red arrows point to the same thing,

795
00:40:32.550 --> 00:40:33.960
same rock in both shots.

796
00:40:33.960 --> 00:40:36.390
And you can see that the sand's maybe

797
00:40:36.390 --> 00:40:39.600
not quite halfway across in the upper shot,

798
00:40:39.600 --> 00:40:41.370
and you can see there's a lot of driftwood there,

799
00:40:41.370 --> 00:40:43.680
but there's a lot of rocks and some tide pools,

800
00:40:43.680 --> 00:40:46.473
albeit kind of muddy looking tide pools.

801
00:40:47.670 --> 00:40:51.153
Two weeks later, buried.

802
00:40:52.440 --> 00:40:56.040
Just the sand has moved in, completely buried.

803
00:40:56.040 --> 00:40:58.203
Now it buries everything.

804
00:40:59.070 --> 00:41:02.550
So whatever was there is now under sand,

805
00:41:02.550 --> 00:41:04.860
and most of it dies.

806
00:41:04.860 --> 00:41:09.093
And that dramatically changes the intertidal.

807
00:41:11.010 --> 00:41:14.850
So, the next transition,

808
00:41:14.850 --> 00:41:19.260
this is a pretty picture, in my opinion, of black abalone.

809
00:41:19.260 --> 00:41:22.560
And so the black abalone is an endangered species.

810
00:41:22.560 --> 00:41:25.950
It's one of, it was the second marine invertebrate

811
00:41:25.950 --> 00:41:29.100
listed under the Endangered Species Act.

812
00:41:29.100 --> 00:41:32.220
And it's, the first one was the white abalone.

813
00:41:32.220 --> 00:41:36.060
And so this currently exists

814
00:41:36.060 --> 00:41:41.060
from sort of San Francisco ish Stinson Beach area

815
00:41:42.450 --> 00:41:45.270
south into Baja, California.

816
00:41:45.270 --> 00:41:50.270
It was very hard hit by a disease in the '80s and '90s

817
00:41:50.640 --> 00:41:53.070
that wiped out most of the populations

818
00:41:53.070 --> 00:41:54.600
in Southern California.

819
00:41:54.600 --> 00:41:57.330
There are some that are still on the Channel Islands.

820
00:41:57.330 --> 00:41:59.670
And then there's still a,

821
00:41:59.670 --> 00:42:03.630
what we would consider a healthy population

822
00:42:03.630 --> 00:42:05.130
in central California,

823
00:42:05.130 --> 00:42:09.630
although most of the black abalone have the disease,

824
00:42:09.630 --> 00:42:12.060
they're just not symptomatic.

825
00:42:12.060 --> 00:42:16.710
And so there's a great concern that they're, you know,

826
00:42:16.710 --> 00:42:19.680
any stress added onto them

827
00:42:19.680 --> 00:42:24.210
could cause them to be, to succumb to the disease.

828
00:42:24.210 --> 00:42:27.573
So, which is called withering foot syndrome.

829
00:42:28.740 --> 00:42:32.310
So black abalone come in a couple of varieties.

830
00:42:32.310 --> 00:42:33.780
This is one particular guy

831
00:42:33.780 --> 00:42:36.543
that was at one of our study sites we called Ruffles.

832
00:42:37.410 --> 00:42:40.590
I'd never, it's not common to see 'em with these ridges,

833
00:42:40.590 --> 00:42:43.050
but they do have a fair amount of variety

834
00:42:43.050 --> 00:42:46.590
in shell, shape, and color.

835
00:42:46.590 --> 00:42:49.620
Here's one that's very bleached out,

836
00:42:49.620 --> 00:42:52.080
has lost some of that color on it,

837
00:42:52.080 --> 00:42:55.380
and also has lots of other organisms living on it,

838
00:42:55.380 --> 00:42:58.440
including barnacles and limpets.

839
00:42:58.440 --> 00:43:02.730
They can also have a brown or rust color to them,

840
00:43:02.730 --> 00:43:06.300
and they can have their sort of typical black-blue color,

841
00:43:06.300 --> 00:43:08.160
or like in this example,

842
00:43:08.160 --> 00:43:08.993
it's got all three,

843
00:43:08.993 --> 00:43:11.430
kind of white, to the blue and black,

844
00:43:11.430 --> 00:43:13.890
and some streaks of brown.

845
00:43:13.890 --> 00:43:18.890
So black abalone normally are in nice rocky habitat.

846
00:43:20.100 --> 00:43:22.110
They're hard to find.

847
00:43:22.110 --> 00:43:27.090
So here's Wendy and Christie who are looking for them.

848
00:43:27.090 --> 00:43:30.720
They're awesome at finding black abalone.

849
00:43:30.720 --> 00:43:33.270
I'll look in a crack and I'll go, "Oh, I see three of them."

850
00:43:33.270 --> 00:43:35.550
And then they'll put their head in there,

851
00:43:35.550 --> 00:43:38.070
and go, "Oh no, there's actually 13 of them, Steve."

852
00:43:38.070 --> 00:43:41.760
And so they've got the knack for looking for them.

853
00:43:41.760 --> 00:43:46.650
Christie in particular's been doing work with UC Santa Cruz

854
00:43:46.650 --> 00:43:49.110
and the Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network

855
00:43:49.110 --> 00:43:52.200
for over 20 years,

856
00:43:52.200 --> 00:43:56.250
and has a great eye for seeing black abalone

857
00:43:56.250 --> 00:43:59.130
and all intertidal critters.

858
00:43:59.130 --> 00:44:01.680
This is a particular crack at one of the sites

859
00:44:01.680 --> 00:44:03.780
that had some black abalone it,

860
00:44:03.780 --> 00:44:07.590
but right where Wendy is, Wendy's on the right,

861
00:44:07.590 --> 00:44:11.070
we can see her ball cap as she's looking in.

862
00:44:11.070 --> 00:44:15.450
She's actually kneeling on a huge pile of sand.

863
00:44:15.450 --> 00:44:18.630
That pile of sand over the days and weeks,

864
00:44:18.630 --> 00:44:22.320
eventually was eroded away

865
00:44:22.320 --> 00:44:24.840
and moved out from that area,

866
00:44:24.840 --> 00:44:27.210
and actually we found black abalone

867
00:44:27.210 --> 00:44:31.080
that were in the crevice on the rock there.

868
00:44:31.080 --> 00:44:34.050
We don't know if they moved there

869
00:44:34.050 --> 00:44:35.880
as the habitat became available,

870
00:44:35.880 --> 00:44:39.600
or if they had just been buried in sand

871
00:44:39.600 --> 00:44:44.493
for three, four, five weeks and survived.

872
00:44:45.840 --> 00:44:48.270
And then when the sand moved away,

873
00:44:48.270 --> 00:44:49.720
they were just sitting there.

874
00:44:51.360 --> 00:44:53.910
We found out that the black abalone

875
00:44:53.910 --> 00:44:57.090
are a lot heartier than we thought.

876
00:44:57.090 --> 00:45:00.450
But given that, it's still tough to live

877
00:45:00.450 --> 00:45:02.460
when you're buried in rock.

878
00:45:02.460 --> 00:45:05.550
So this is not how a black abalone

879
00:45:05.550 --> 00:45:07.923
should be seen in the field.

880
00:45:09.240 --> 00:45:14.030
This is, sorry about that, my dog's attacking tissue box.

881
00:45:16.230 --> 00:45:19.890
This is a black abalone, that number one,

882
00:45:19.890 --> 00:45:23.760
has gone up into the intertidal

883
00:45:23.760 --> 00:45:26.050
to trying to escape a lot of this

884
00:45:27.180 --> 00:45:30.990
sort of scour and turbidity caused by waves

885
00:45:30.990 --> 00:45:32.910
in the lower intertidal.

886
00:45:32.910 --> 00:45:35.640
And here, it's buried by material.

887
00:45:35.640 --> 00:45:38.400
And so we saw that and then we would try digging them out

888
00:45:38.400 --> 00:45:41.133
and try rescue them.

889
00:45:41.970 --> 00:45:44.970
Here's another shot of one that I thought was dead,

890
00:45:44.970 --> 00:45:47.883
but it was actually alive, amazingly enough,

891
00:45:48.720 --> 00:45:51.180
that was again, buried in rock.

892
00:45:51.180 --> 00:45:55.350
It was attached to solid bedrock

893
00:45:55.350 --> 00:45:58.953
but was completely covered by gravel.

894
00:46:00.630 --> 00:46:05.630
And this not only affects the black abalone,

895
00:46:06.300 --> 00:46:08.970
but when we first went down to many of these sites

896
00:46:08.970 --> 00:46:12.660
the first few days after we had access,

897
00:46:12.660 --> 00:46:15.330
and actually for the first couple of weeks,

898
00:46:15.330 --> 00:46:19.560
it smelled like the worst kind of fish market

899
00:46:19.560 --> 00:46:20.520
you could ever go to.

900
00:46:20.520 --> 00:46:24.840
It was basically marine life all over the place,

901
00:46:24.840 --> 00:46:26.553
dead and dying.

902
00:46:28.290 --> 00:46:32.850
Limpets, mussels, urchins, sea stars, gumboot chitons,

903
00:46:32.850 --> 00:46:36.090
you name it, just about any type type of intertidal,

904
00:46:36.090 --> 00:46:41.090
and even subtidal organisms were smashed, and battered,

905
00:46:41.520 --> 00:46:45.570
and thrown up onto the beach.

906
00:46:45.570 --> 00:46:50.010
And it was really depressing.

907
00:46:50.010 --> 00:46:51.860
I had never seen something like that.

908
00:46:53.670 --> 00:46:57.120
So the debris flows, as you can imagine,

909
00:46:57.120 --> 00:47:01.710
damage organisms because of both the initial burial,

910
00:47:01.710 --> 00:47:03.963
you get buried, and you get crushed.

911
00:47:04.800 --> 00:47:08.070
But then even if you survive the burial and crushing,

912
00:47:08.070 --> 00:47:10.260
then there's the movement of the material

913
00:47:10.260 --> 00:47:15.260
with the water action, that then generates scour.

914
00:47:15.300 --> 00:47:19.320
So now you're getting sand blasted and rock blasted,

915
00:47:19.320 --> 00:47:22.080
and then the water turns brown,

916
00:47:22.080 --> 00:47:25.020
which means if you're a photosynthetic organism,

917
00:47:25.020 --> 00:47:26.760
like seaweeds,

918
00:47:26.760 --> 00:47:29.070
the algae that are at the base of the food chain

919
00:47:29.070 --> 00:47:30.960
that needs sunlight

920
00:47:30.960 --> 00:47:33.840
in order to grow and produce tissues

921
00:47:33.840 --> 00:47:35.700
that then everybody else is feeding,

922
00:47:35.700 --> 00:47:38.100
all the herbivores are feeding on,

923
00:47:38.100 --> 00:47:40.500
that base of the food web gets decimated,

924
00:47:40.500 --> 00:47:42.630
both because it's been buried and scoured,

925
00:47:42.630 --> 00:47:46.200
but now also even if it was able to survive all of that,

926
00:47:46.200 --> 00:47:47.520
the water is so murky

927
00:47:47.520 --> 00:47:51.183
that it's unable to photosynthesize adequately.

928
00:47:52.080 --> 00:47:56.340
And then on top of that, that's all that happens

929
00:47:56.340 --> 00:48:00.150
with that initial fan of the debris flow

930
00:48:00.150 --> 00:48:02.010
as it comes down the watershed,

931
00:48:02.010 --> 00:48:04.650
hits the intertidal and spreads out.

932
00:48:04.650 --> 00:48:09.650
Then the material starts getting moved again by the ocean

933
00:48:10.050 --> 00:48:12.240
with this longshore transport.

934
00:48:12.240 --> 00:48:15.930
So you not only have the initial impact zone,

935
00:48:15.930 --> 00:48:20.430
but you have these new impact zones on a weekly basis

936
00:48:20.430 --> 00:48:23.010
as it moves mostly down shore,

937
00:48:23.010 --> 00:48:25.173
but there is some shore movement too.

938
00:48:27.180 --> 00:48:30.420
So this was one of the more depressing things

939
00:48:30.420 --> 00:48:33.180
that we did was in one part of an area

940
00:48:33.180 --> 00:48:36.000
that had a beach that we could actually

941
00:48:36.000 --> 00:48:40.200
look for black abalone bodies.

942
00:48:40.200 --> 00:48:43.740
Now in some cases, you can see on this rock we've got,

943
00:48:43.740 --> 00:48:45.630
most of those are shells.

944
00:48:45.630 --> 00:48:48.000
Some of the shells are admittedly old.

945
00:48:48.000 --> 00:48:49.710
They'd been there, they were, you know,

946
00:48:49.710 --> 00:48:53.130
abalone that died of natural causes before the debris flow.

947
00:48:53.130 --> 00:48:54.300
But many of them were new,

948
00:48:54.300 --> 00:48:56.640
and you can see a couple of them that are upside down,

949
00:48:56.640 --> 00:48:57.930
those are dead abalone,

950
00:48:57.930 --> 00:48:58.770
even though there's still

951
00:48:58.770 --> 00:49:02.823
a lot of sort of flesh on the foot.

952
00:49:03.960 --> 00:49:06.870
They were no longer alive,

953
00:49:06.870 --> 00:49:11.870
and most of the shells had severe abrasion, cracks,

954
00:49:12.660 --> 00:49:15.423
things that would definitely kill black abalone.

955
00:49:16.350 --> 00:49:17.790
That's on April 30th.

956
00:49:17.790 --> 00:49:18.750
We then went back,

957
00:49:18.750 --> 00:49:22.080
so, and then we set these shells aside,

958
00:49:22.080 --> 00:49:24.150
and we went back the next day,

959
00:49:24.150 --> 00:49:27.300
and we found that many more again from the same exact,

960
00:49:27.300 --> 00:49:31.950
about there was a couple hundred meters of shoreline.

961
00:49:31.950 --> 00:49:36.570
And so just that overnight tidal cycle and wave action

962
00:49:36.570 --> 00:49:40.860
was exposing more of these black abalone

963
00:49:40.860 --> 00:49:43.830
that were in that incredible matrix of rocks,

964
00:49:43.830 --> 00:49:46.620
and sand, and boulders that we were walking on,

965
00:49:46.620 --> 00:49:48.390
that's constantly moving

966
00:49:48.390 --> 00:49:52.050
both in and offshore and down shore.

967
00:49:52.050 --> 00:49:53.910
And then in June,

968
00:49:53.910 --> 00:49:56.910
it finally started to kind of peter out somewhat,

969
00:49:56.910 --> 00:50:01.910
but we were still finding abalone that had been alive,

970
00:50:01.920 --> 00:50:04.260
that had survived the initial onslaught.

971
00:50:04.260 --> 00:50:07.530
But because of the movement and subsequent burial,

972
00:50:07.530 --> 00:50:11.550
in new areas were being killed anew,

973
00:50:11.550 --> 00:50:14.013
were being killed, you know, in new areas.

974
00:50:17.250 --> 00:50:20.913
Okay, palate cleanser, change of pace.

975
00:50:23.610 --> 00:50:25.980
So, reactions.

976
00:50:25.980 --> 00:50:27.213
So there's Wendy,

977
00:50:28.260 --> 00:50:33.183
and we were out doing this during the pandemic,

978
00:50:34.110 --> 00:50:36.750
often driving separately,

979
00:50:36.750 --> 00:50:40.920
sometimes driving all the way out through Highway 101,

980
00:50:40.920 --> 00:50:44.100
and coming up and in through Nacimiento, Ferguson Road,

981
00:50:44.100 --> 00:50:49.003
or driving all the way around down to Paso Robles,

982
00:50:50.340 --> 00:50:52.560
and then driving in and coming up from the south

983
00:50:52.560 --> 00:50:54.753
because the road was closed to the north,

984
00:50:55.710 --> 00:50:58.923
because of that Rat Creek slide and other things.

985
00:51:00.330 --> 00:51:02.520
But Wendy, as part of her dissertation,

986
00:51:02.520 --> 00:51:06.810
really looked at the effects of the fire

987
00:51:06.810 --> 00:51:09.510
on black abalone populations.

988
00:51:09.510 --> 00:51:13.860
And then as a part of this group effort

989
00:51:13.860 --> 00:51:15.690
to try and save black abalone

990
00:51:15.690 --> 00:51:17.250
from the ongoing threat

991
00:51:17.250 --> 00:51:20.730
of the subsequent movement of debris flow material,

992
00:51:20.730 --> 00:51:22.530
really started looking,

993
00:51:22.530 --> 00:51:27.120
or you know, looking into kind of the animal husbandry side,

994
00:51:27.120 --> 00:51:28.440
removing black abalone,

995
00:51:28.440 --> 00:51:31.530
which we had done for Mud Creek back in 2017,

996
00:51:31.530 --> 00:51:33.810
applying some of the lessons we learned there

997
00:51:33.810 --> 00:51:36.090
to the Dolan Fire,

998
00:51:36.090 --> 00:51:38.910
and then removing black abalone,

999
00:51:38.910 --> 00:51:41.730
bringing them back up to a laboratory facility

1000
00:51:41.730 --> 00:51:42.780
where they could be held,

1001
00:51:42.780 --> 00:51:47.707
and running fresh sea water and fed.

1002
00:51:49.140 --> 00:51:52.860
And then, you know, once it was determined

1003
00:51:52.860 --> 00:51:54.630
they were going to survive,

1004
00:51:54.630 --> 00:51:57.090
then think about tagging them

1005
00:51:57.090 --> 00:51:59.730
and then putting 'em out in another area in Big Sur

1006
00:51:59.730 --> 00:52:02.940
that wasn't impacted by these debris flows,

1007
00:52:02.940 --> 00:52:05.280
where there was good black abalone habitat,

1008
00:52:05.280 --> 00:52:08.130
there were existing black abalone populations,

1009
00:52:08.130 --> 00:52:11.190
and we thought we could add more black abalone

1010
00:52:11.190 --> 00:52:15.030
without adversely affecting the local population.

1011
00:52:15.030 --> 00:52:16.410
So here she's taking a picture

1012
00:52:16.410 --> 00:52:19.203
of one of the little abalone in a crack and a crevice.

1013
00:52:20.100 --> 00:52:22.830
Here's a shot, this is from a great article,

1014
00:52:22.830 --> 00:52:26.130
former undergraduate, Keenan Chan from UC Santa Cruz,

1015
00:52:26.130 --> 00:52:29.253
who's now phenomenal photographer, took these shots.

1016
00:52:30.870 --> 00:52:33.540
There's Wendy going in to sneak in

1017
00:52:33.540 --> 00:52:36.480
to get one of the abalone off of a rock

1018
00:52:36.480 --> 00:52:41.190
where it's not in a suitable habitat.

1019
00:52:41.190 --> 00:52:43.830
And then you see on the left, on the abalone,

1020
00:52:43.830 --> 00:52:46.020
one of the things we learned this time around,

1021
00:52:46.020 --> 00:52:48.450
it's a good idea to provide

1022
00:52:48.450 --> 00:52:52.800
these little flat pieces of plastic

1023
00:52:52.800 --> 00:52:55.830
that the black abalone will adhere to.

1024
00:52:55.830 --> 00:52:59.040
They're much happier adhering to something like a rock

1025
00:52:59.040 --> 00:53:02.850
as opposed to cloth, material, or mesh in a bag

1026
00:53:02.850 --> 00:53:05.283
that we used to do, we used to use.

1027
00:53:06.240 --> 00:53:10.440
So anyways, there was this concerted effort

1028
00:53:10.440 --> 00:53:15.440
to rescue black abalone from this debris flow area.

1029
00:53:16.890 --> 00:53:19.140
A couple hundred were rescued,

1030
00:53:19.140 --> 00:53:23.280
were kept in the laboratory facility,

1031
00:53:23.280 --> 00:53:26.010
maintained there for several weeks,

1032
00:53:26.010 --> 00:53:30.830
and then were returned to new places, but in Big Sur.

1033
00:53:32.040 --> 00:53:36.063
And we had a couple of members of the press with us,

1034
00:53:37.920 --> 00:53:40.350
the woman taking the photograph with the big cameras,

1035
00:53:40.350 --> 00:53:43.140
Erin Malsbury, if you guys may recognize her name

1036
00:53:43.140 --> 00:53:47.970
from local PBS radio.

1037
00:53:47.970 --> 00:53:52.970
And we had a print, a writer who came out,

1038
00:53:53.067 --> 00:53:55.500
and this was after the sun had come up.

1039
00:53:55.500 --> 00:53:59.460
We were actually down here with headlamps on

1040
00:53:59.460 --> 00:54:04.440
at like two hours before sunrise to work the tide.

1041
00:54:04.440 --> 00:54:07.023
And there's Nate with one of the abalone.

1042
00:54:07.860 --> 00:54:10.863
Here's Wendy handing one to him.

1043
00:54:11.880 --> 00:54:14.340
And these were all the abalone

1044
00:54:14.340 --> 00:54:16.950
that had been kept in a facility,

1045
00:54:16.950 --> 00:54:20.490
and now we're being put out into the field

1046
00:54:20.490 --> 00:54:22.710
where we monitored them for as long as we could

1047
00:54:22.710 --> 00:54:24.750
before they kind of snuck off

1048
00:54:24.750 --> 00:54:26.580
and hid in the nooks and crannies,

1049
00:54:26.580 --> 00:54:28.860
even where we couldn't find them anymore.

1050
00:54:28.860 --> 00:54:32.340
And integrating into the existing populations

1051
00:54:32.340 --> 00:54:35.580
of black abalone at this outplanning site.

1052
00:54:35.580 --> 00:54:38.070
And if you wanna learn more about this,

1053
00:54:38.070 --> 00:54:39.630
keep your eyes peeled.

1054
00:54:39.630 --> 00:54:41.550
Wendy, one of her dissertation chapters

1055
00:54:41.550 --> 00:54:44.850
is going to be a peer reviewed paper,

1056
00:54:44.850 --> 00:54:47.790
that can't remember if it's been submitted

1057
00:54:47.790 --> 00:54:50.280
or it's already in review, or it's about to be submitted,

1058
00:54:50.280 --> 00:54:51.870
but we'll call it, it's in review.

1059
00:54:51.870 --> 00:54:53.940
So six months to a year,

1060
00:54:53.940 --> 00:54:56.040
that paper should be out,

1061
00:54:56.040 --> 00:55:01.040
and I'm sure it'll be publicized on sanctuary websites,

1062
00:55:02.730 --> 00:55:05.910
since that's a really interesting story

1063
00:55:05.910 --> 00:55:07.860
about the work that they did,

1064
00:55:07.860 --> 00:55:09.240
about how the sediment

1065
00:55:09.240 --> 00:55:11.100
affects the black abalone populations.

1066
00:55:11.100 --> 00:55:13.470
And it's going to be a foundational paper

1067
00:55:13.470 --> 00:55:15.240
for us moving forward,

1068
00:55:15.240 --> 00:55:19.050
because these slides, debris flows and landslides

1069
00:55:19.050 --> 00:55:22.263
are gonna keep happening in the future.

1070
00:55:23.820 --> 00:55:26.760
Also, if you wanna find out some more resources

1071
00:55:26.760 --> 00:55:29.550
about not just black abalone,

1072
00:55:29.550 --> 00:55:31.440
but if you wanna learn more about black abalone

1073
00:55:31.440 --> 00:55:36.440
on the Sanctuary SIMoN website, sanctuarysimon.org,

1074
00:55:37.440 --> 00:55:39.570
you can look the, you know,

1075
00:55:39.570 --> 00:55:42.180
just type into the search function, black abalone,

1076
00:55:42.180 --> 00:55:44.070
you'll see some articles about it,

1077
00:55:44.070 --> 00:55:46.560
and you can find out more information about them.

1078
00:55:46.560 --> 00:55:49.290
You can look at photographs of black abalone,

1079
00:55:49.290 --> 00:55:50.820
or Big Sur coastline,

1080
00:55:50.820 --> 00:55:55.020
or your favorite birds, fishes, invertebrates.

1081
00:55:55.020 --> 00:55:57.330
And you can learn about those species.

1082
00:55:57.330 --> 00:56:00.180
We've got a couple hundred of them in a species database,

1083
00:56:00.180 --> 00:56:02.610
that's essentially like a natural history guide

1084
00:56:02.610 --> 00:56:04.230
to those organisms.

1085
00:56:04.230 --> 00:56:08.670
And we've also got a lot of information about things

1086
00:56:08.670 --> 00:56:11.463
that are happening in the sanctuary.

1087
00:56:12.600 --> 00:56:16.860
That is sanctuarysimon.org.

1088
00:56:16.860 --> 00:56:19.230
So make sure you check that out.

1089
00:56:19.230 --> 00:56:22.290
And if you have a desire to have

1090
00:56:22.290 --> 00:56:25.260
some of that information at your fingertips 24/7,

1091
00:56:25.260 --> 00:56:27.300
because your phone is with you 24/7,

1092
00:56:27.300 --> 00:56:32.300
you can download the SeaPhoto app, SeaPhoto all one word.

1093
00:56:33.360 --> 00:56:36.270
It's free, it has much of the same information,

1094
00:56:36.270 --> 00:56:37.737
it's got pretty pictures of organisms,

1095
00:56:37.737 --> 00:56:40.950
and so this will help you identify bird species.

1096
00:56:40.950 --> 00:56:42.000
If you're a beachcomber

1097
00:56:42.000 --> 00:56:45.210
and wanna kind of understand some of the intertidal species.

1098
00:56:45.210 --> 00:56:47.730
We have over 500 species in the system,

1099
00:56:47.730 --> 00:56:49.470
lots of photographs,

1100
00:56:49.470 --> 00:56:51.570
and there's some natural history information

1101
00:56:51.570 --> 00:56:53.010
on them as well.

1102
00:56:53.010 --> 00:56:58.010
So, I encourage you to download that if you're interested.

1103
00:56:58.770 --> 00:57:03.770
SeaPhoto, all one word, on whatever platform you use.

1104
00:57:05.490 --> 00:57:08.883
And, that's it.

1105
00:57:09.720 --> 00:57:13.440
That was longer than 45 minutes, but less than an hour.

1106
00:57:13.440 --> 00:57:16.233
And I'm happy to take any questions,

1107
00:57:17.340 --> 00:57:19.560
and I hope some of you do have questions,

1108
00:57:19.560 --> 00:57:20.700
stuck around to the end.

1109
00:57:20.700 --> 00:57:22.260
So thanks again.

1110
00:57:22.260 --> 00:57:23.310
<v ->Yeah, thank you, Steve.</v>

1111
00:57:23.310 --> 00:57:26.310
That was super interesting.

1112
00:57:26.310 --> 00:57:28.440
If you have questions here tonight,

1113
00:57:28.440 --> 00:57:31.020
please pop those in the little question box.

1114
00:57:31.020 --> 00:57:33.330
You can find it on your control panel,

1115
00:57:33.330 --> 00:57:36.750
and I will shoot those your way, Steve.

1116
00:57:36.750 --> 00:57:39.390
The first question, well, I guess comment and question.

1117
00:57:39.390 --> 00:57:41.220
This is from Shipwreck Bob.

1118
00:57:41.220 --> 00:57:43.140
Great presentation, Steve.

1119
00:57:43.140 --> 00:57:44.700
Will there be future studies

1120
00:57:44.700 --> 00:57:46.710
of the black abalone populations

1121
00:57:46.710 --> 00:57:50.733
to the south of NBNMS and CHNMS that you know of?

1122
00:57:52.230 --> 00:57:54.003
<v ->I would assume so.</v>

1123
00:57:55.320 --> 00:57:59.880
Black abalone are obviously a species of interest

1124
00:57:59.880 --> 00:58:01.533
because they are endangered.

1125
00:58:03.630 --> 00:58:07.500
The further south you go, the more you get into areas

1126
00:58:07.500 --> 00:58:11.100
where the populations are still not recovering well

1127
00:58:11.100 --> 00:58:14.040
from withering foot syndrome.

1128
00:58:14.040 --> 00:58:19.040
And so there'll be fewer black abalone to study,

1129
00:58:20.070 --> 00:58:21.840
but that doesn't make it any less important.

1130
00:58:21.840 --> 00:58:23.790
In fact, at the margin

1131
00:58:23.790 --> 00:58:25.170
of where you're sort of transitioning

1132
00:58:25.170 --> 00:58:28.170
from the not so healthy

1133
00:58:28.170 --> 00:58:31.260
into what we consider the healthy populations,

1134
00:58:31.260 --> 00:58:33.450
there might be some really interesting insights gained

1135
00:58:33.450 --> 00:58:34.680
from doing work there.

1136
00:58:34.680 --> 00:58:38.070
And we know that we've actually seen black abalone

1137
00:58:38.070 --> 00:58:40.743
in places when they had the Refugio oil spill.

1138
00:58:42.420 --> 00:58:44.700
All the people who knew better

1139
00:58:44.700 --> 00:58:45.837
said there aren't black abalone there.

1140
00:58:45.837 --> 00:58:48.870
And one grad student decided to poke their head

1141
00:58:48.870 --> 00:58:50.910
into a rock and a crevice,

1142
00:58:50.910 --> 00:58:52.620
and actually found a black abalone there,

1143
00:58:52.620 --> 00:58:55.200
much to the chagrin of all the other experts.

1144
00:58:55.200 --> 00:58:57.750
So there's still a lot for us to learn,

1145
00:58:57.750 --> 00:59:00.570
and I expect that in Chumash,

1146
00:59:00.570 --> 00:59:03.090
that Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary,

1147
00:59:03.090 --> 00:59:04.350
that it's going to continue,

1148
00:59:04.350 --> 00:59:05.460
or it'll start up,

1149
00:59:05.460 --> 00:59:08.010
it'll continue work that's already been done

1150
00:59:08.010 --> 00:59:10.413
in our sanctuary and in other areas.

1151
00:59:11.400 --> 00:59:14.490
<v ->All right, I have a couple questions</v>

1152
00:59:14.490 --> 00:59:16.260
from one of our participants.

1153
00:59:16.260 --> 00:59:18.990
Has anyone looked into creating something

1154
00:59:18.990 --> 00:59:22.200
natural and harmless that can break down hydrophobic layer

1155
00:59:22.200 --> 00:59:24.483
that coats the soil after a fire?

1156
00:59:26.490 --> 00:59:31.490
<v ->I don't know, but I would imagine soil engineers</v>

1157
00:59:35.310 --> 00:59:37.233
are probably interested in that.

1158
00:59:39.039 --> 00:59:42.393
I'm not a soil engineer.

1159
00:59:43.800 --> 00:59:47.640
I did a lot of learning to give this presentation.

1160
00:59:47.640 --> 00:59:48.690
It's fascinating stuff,

1161
00:59:48.690 --> 00:59:51.660
but there's like a whole world there,

1162
00:59:51.660 --> 00:59:52.980
and I wouldn't be surprised

1163
00:59:52.980 --> 00:59:55.533
if somebody's thinking about that.

1164
00:59:57.270 --> 01:00:01.710
But there's also the concern of, when you have a fire,

1165
01:00:01.710 --> 01:00:06.270
there's oftentimes chemistries that are naturally occurring

1166
01:00:06.270 --> 01:00:07.710
that get mobilized,

1167
01:00:07.710 --> 01:00:12.270
and in high concentrations or increased concentrations

1168
01:00:12.270 --> 01:00:16.020
can pose threats to the biology of the system,

1169
01:00:16.020 --> 01:00:20.880
as well as the humans that are in the watershed.

1170
01:00:20.880 --> 01:00:25.880
As we add chemicals like fire retardant or fire suppressant,

1171
01:00:25.890 --> 01:00:29.700
and if fires go through areas that are habitated,

1172
01:00:29.700 --> 01:00:32.970
inhabited by people, so your house is gonna burn,

1173
01:00:32.970 --> 01:00:33.960
you have chemicals there,

1174
01:00:33.960 --> 01:00:36.090
you have materials that have chemicals in them.

1175
01:00:36.090 --> 01:00:37.680
There's a lot of concern

1176
01:00:37.680 --> 01:00:42.680
about fire mobilizing contaminants and pollutants

1177
01:00:43.800 --> 01:00:46.890
that then not only are transported by the water,

1178
01:00:46.890 --> 01:00:48.480
but stay in the water,

1179
01:00:48.480 --> 01:00:50.700
and get into our drinking water,

1180
01:00:50.700 --> 01:00:51.750
as well as the water

1181
01:00:51.750 --> 01:00:55.950
that all the other organisms on the planet use in that area.

1182
01:00:55.950 --> 01:00:59.250
So while it sounds interesting,

1183
01:00:59.250 --> 01:01:01.350
and I'm sure a chemist and an engineer

1184
01:01:01.350 --> 01:01:03.480
are working on something like that,

1185
01:01:03.480 --> 01:01:07.410
I wonder the policy application of it,

1186
01:01:07.410 --> 01:01:10.080
there's a whole ethical side of things,

1187
01:01:10.080 --> 01:01:14.100
and we have to make sure that the cure

1188
01:01:14.100 --> 01:01:19.100
isn't worse than the ailment, so to speak, the illness.

1189
01:01:22.994 --> 01:01:25.200
<v ->Oh, thank you, Steve.</v>

1190
01:01:25.200 --> 01:01:26.430
The next question is,

1191
01:01:26.430 --> 01:01:29.793
are there any positive benefits from a debris flow?

1192
01:01:31.800 --> 01:01:36.800
<v ->Well, I mean, if you were thinking about</v>

1193
01:01:36.930 --> 01:01:41.610
what happens anytime you have sediment transport,

1194
01:01:41.610 --> 01:01:44.220
that's new sediment coming into the system.

1195
01:01:44.220 --> 01:01:47.170
So if you had an area that was sediment starved

1196
01:01:48.090 --> 01:01:49.020
for whatever reason,

1197
01:01:49.020 --> 01:01:51.000
because we built a breakwater,

1198
01:01:51.000 --> 01:01:52.890
or we altered the, you know,

1199
01:01:52.890 --> 01:01:54.660
that sort of geography of a coastline

1200
01:01:54.660 --> 01:01:56.340
with a manmade structure,

1201
01:01:56.340 --> 01:02:01.140
or you know, like what happened in Central Monterey Bay

1202
01:02:01.140 --> 01:02:05.670
where sand mining was basically pulling out sand

1203
01:02:05.670 --> 01:02:08.370
that was then not moving further down shore,

1204
01:02:08.370 --> 01:02:10.650
and you had beaches disappearing,

1205
01:02:10.650 --> 01:02:12.090
and then, you know, hotels

1206
01:02:12.090 --> 01:02:13.980
that used to have a huge beach in front of them,

1207
01:02:13.980 --> 01:02:17.250
now had to put armor up so they didn't fall into the ocean.

1208
01:02:17.250 --> 01:02:19.170
I mean, sediment going in,

1209
01:02:19.170 --> 01:02:21.900
that's part of that sort of cycle.

1210
01:02:21.900 --> 01:02:26.610
But you know, it's a tough one

1211
01:02:26.610 --> 01:02:30.090
because it's very destructive to the biology

1212
01:02:30.090 --> 01:02:32.187
of the organisms in the intertidal

1213
01:02:32.187 --> 01:02:34.893
and the nearshore shallow subtidal.

1214
01:02:35.730 --> 01:02:39.576
But, as I kind of showed you in a lot of those pictures,

1215
01:02:39.576 --> 01:02:43.440
many of the species in those systems are really resilient.

1216
01:02:43.440 --> 01:02:45.660
So they can bounce back.

1217
01:02:45.660 --> 01:02:49.680
It may take a few years, but they can.

1218
01:02:49.680 --> 01:02:53.029
So I guess there's a benefit in terms of the sediment budget

1219
01:02:53.029 --> 01:02:56.430
if you're really into having sandy beaches.

1220
01:02:56.430 --> 01:03:01.203
But yeah, the biology takes a short term hard hit for sure.

1221
01:03:02.713 --> 01:03:04.620
<v ->And then another question is,</v>

1222
01:03:04.620 --> 01:03:07.650
what is the survival rate of the abalones

1223
01:03:07.650 --> 01:03:10.230
that were transported to the lab?

1224
01:03:10.230 --> 01:03:12.810
<v ->It was actually surprisingly high.</v>

1225
01:03:12.810 --> 01:03:16.590
Number one, most of the abalone that were targeted

1226
01:03:16.590 --> 01:03:18.603
looked healthy to start off with.

1227
01:03:19.440 --> 01:03:24.420
And then there's a very much an art

1228
01:03:24.420 --> 01:03:28.710
to removing an abalone.

1229
01:03:28.710 --> 01:03:31.050
And remember, these are endangered species,

1230
01:03:31.050 --> 01:03:35.340
so there's only a few people literally in the world

1231
01:03:35.340 --> 01:03:37.560
who are even allowed to do this.

1232
01:03:37.560 --> 01:03:41.610
So, you know, this is not for beginners.

1233
01:03:41.610 --> 01:03:44.130
Don't, you're not even allowed to touch black abalone

1234
01:03:44.130 --> 01:03:45.090
in the wild.

1235
01:03:45.090 --> 01:03:47.970
You're not allowed to possess black abalone shells.

1236
01:03:47.970 --> 01:03:50.370
So, you know, this is something that was done

1237
01:03:50.370 --> 01:03:53.310
with a lot of thought and a lot of care.

1238
01:03:53.310 --> 01:03:58.050
And those abalone made it back to the facility,

1239
01:03:58.050 --> 01:04:01.800
and were fed and maintained and did quite well.

1240
01:04:01.800 --> 01:04:03.210
I wanna say the mortality,

1241
01:04:03.210 --> 01:04:05.040
I don't remember off the top of my head,

1242
01:04:05.040 --> 01:04:08.340
but I wanna say it was like less than 10%,

1243
01:04:08.340 --> 01:04:11.070
and maybe even less than that.

1244
01:04:11.070 --> 01:04:12.780
And then a lot of the, so then,

1245
01:04:12.780 --> 01:04:17.780
and then those guys got returned to natural habitat,

1246
01:04:19.260 --> 01:04:23.280
not in the fire zone, but nearby.

1247
01:04:23.280 --> 01:04:26.190
And many of those guys did great.

1248
01:04:26.190 --> 01:04:27.930
I mean, they attached to the rocks,

1249
01:04:27.930 --> 01:04:30.333
we would see them for multiple weeks.

1250
01:04:31.350 --> 01:04:33.240
They had tags, so we know who they were,

1251
01:04:33.240 --> 01:04:34.890
so we knew we were seeing the same individuals

1252
01:04:34.890 --> 01:04:36.540
that seemed to be thriving.

1253
01:04:36.540 --> 01:04:40.980
And we rarely ever found a black abalone

1254
01:04:40.980 --> 01:04:44.160
that had subsequently died in the field.

1255
01:04:44.160 --> 01:04:46.170
So I mean, that doesn't mean that they didn't,

1256
01:04:46.170 --> 01:04:47.910
I mean, a lot of them we never saw again,

1257
01:04:47.910 --> 01:04:49.260
we don't know what happened with them,

1258
01:04:49.260 --> 01:04:51.420
but if you're an optimist,

1259
01:04:51.420 --> 01:04:53.220
they just moved into a crack or crevice.

1260
01:04:53.220 --> 01:04:55.420
We couldn't stick our head into and see 'em.

1261
01:04:56.490 --> 01:04:57.323
<v ->Awesome.</v>

1262
01:04:58.200 --> 01:05:00.570
How long does it take for black abalone

1263
01:05:00.570 --> 01:05:01.803
to reach maturity?

1264
01:05:03.180 --> 01:05:04.743
<v ->Oh, I should know that.</v>

1265
01:05:07.140 --> 01:05:10.260
I think they become first reproductive

1266
01:05:10.260 --> 01:05:15.150
at about 50 or 60 millimeters,

1267
01:05:15.150 --> 01:05:20.150
and I wanna say that's four to five years.

1268
01:05:21.120 --> 01:05:22.800
Don't quote me on that.

1269
01:05:22.800 --> 01:05:25.170
Google it, unfortunately.

1270
01:05:25.170 --> 01:05:28.800
But then there's a difference between becoming reproductive,

1271
01:05:28.800 --> 01:05:31.290
like you're producing eggs or sperm,

1272
01:05:31.290 --> 01:05:33.810
and then hitting a size

1273
01:05:33.810 --> 01:05:36.600
where you're producing high quality eggs and sperm

1274
01:05:36.600 --> 01:05:39.420
that have a higher chance of survivorship.

1275
01:05:39.420 --> 01:05:44.420
So yeah, it's the older, bigger females

1276
01:05:44.520 --> 01:05:49.520
that produce higher quality in general.

1277
01:05:49.770 --> 01:05:54.690
That's kind of like a general thing for marine systems.

1278
01:05:54.690 --> 01:05:57.150
Not always, but generally speaking.

1279
01:05:57.150 --> 01:06:02.150
So yeah, it's several years to get to the size

1280
01:06:03.300 --> 01:06:08.300
where they're likely contributing in a significant way

1281
01:06:08.460 --> 01:06:10.473
to the future generations.

1282
01:06:11.820 --> 01:06:12.653
<v ->Thank you.</v>

1283
01:06:13.710 --> 01:06:16.650
Are you looking into the effects of the Palisades Fire

1284
01:06:16.650 --> 01:06:19.350
on offshore habitat in Southern California?

1285
01:06:19.350 --> 01:06:21.090
Or do you know anyone who is?

1286
01:06:21.090 --> 01:06:22.440
<v ->I do not.</v>

1287
01:06:22.440 --> 01:06:24.420
I know that there's lots of people

1288
01:06:24.420 --> 01:06:28.590
who have in the past done,

1289
01:06:28.590 --> 01:06:30.270
particularly like USGS,

1290
01:06:30.270 --> 01:06:32.700
and I think the US Geological Survey,

1291
01:06:32.700 --> 01:06:34.683
and probably also the EPA,

1292
01:06:35.580 --> 01:06:39.180
that have looked at waterborne contaminants

1293
01:06:39.180 --> 01:06:41.640
from fires going into watersheds.

1294
01:06:41.640 --> 01:06:45.270
And then usually it kind of stops when it hits the ocean

1295
01:06:45.270 --> 01:06:50.270
because there's not great funding to do ocean monitoring

1296
01:06:51.690 --> 01:06:55.260
for water chemistry from, you know,

1297
01:06:55.260 --> 01:06:57.300
rivers, and streams, and the like.

1298
01:06:57.300 --> 01:06:58.890
It's much easier to just do the sampling

1299
01:06:58.890 --> 01:07:00.290
in the river and the stream.

1300
01:07:01.200 --> 01:07:03.450
But I would expect that there are people

1301
01:07:03.450 --> 01:07:06.570
who have instrumentation out there

1302
01:07:06.570 --> 01:07:09.960
that can pick up some of the chemical signatures

1303
01:07:09.960 --> 01:07:13.020
of things that are being transported

1304
01:07:13.020 --> 01:07:16.083
from land and fire zones into the ocean.

1305
01:07:17.130 --> 01:07:19.470
I just don't happen to know who they are.

1306
01:07:19.470 --> 01:07:21.240
But like probably in that,

1307
01:07:21.240 --> 01:07:23.337
in Southern California would be the SCCWRP,

1308
01:07:23.337 --> 01:07:28.337
the Southern California Water Research Program

1309
01:07:28.590 --> 01:07:29.423
or something like that,

1310
01:07:29.423 --> 01:07:32.043
SCCWRP, I think there's two Cs there.

1311
01:07:34.879 --> 01:07:39.000
<v ->How might debris flows affect other neighboring ecosystems</v>

1312
01:07:39.000 --> 01:07:41.160
like kelp forests?

1313
01:07:41.160 --> 01:07:41.993
<v ->Great.</v>

1314
01:07:41.993 --> 01:07:43.503
Yeah, so that's where I actually,

1315
01:07:44.550 --> 01:07:46.530
that's what I study, kelp forest.

1316
01:07:46.530 --> 01:07:50.940
So yes, so when we did work at Mud Creek,

1317
01:07:50.940 --> 01:07:53.760
and this material came in from the land,

1318
01:07:53.760 --> 01:07:55.680
went into the ocean,

1319
01:07:55.680 --> 01:07:58.920
we saw burial, you know,

1320
01:07:58.920 --> 01:08:02.460
in some cases, 10, 20, 30 centimeters deep,

1321
01:08:02.460 --> 01:08:04.160
you know, up to upwards of a foot,

1322
01:08:05.250 --> 01:08:07.860
a couple hundred meters away

1323
01:08:07.860 --> 01:08:12.000
from where the landslide was, out into, you know,

1324
01:08:12.000 --> 01:08:15.330
kind of what you might consider more open ocean,

1325
01:08:15.330 --> 01:08:17.790
but still on the slope.

1326
01:08:17.790 --> 01:08:22.770
And that burial contributes

1327
01:08:22.770 --> 01:08:24.870
similar to what's happening in the intertidal.

1328
01:08:24.870 --> 01:08:29.870
It contributes to direct burial, scouring,

1329
01:08:30.480 --> 01:08:33.510
and also that increased turbidity.

1330
01:08:33.510 --> 01:08:36.660
And so in some areas, particularly in Big Sur,

1331
01:08:36.660 --> 01:08:38.697
if you go along and you're driving along that coastline

1332
01:08:38.697 --> 01:08:40.320
and you start looking down,

1333
01:08:40.320 --> 01:08:42.417
or you pull over and you take a picture,

1334
01:08:42.417 --> 01:08:43.920
and you see one of those areas

1335
01:08:43.920 --> 01:08:46.110
where the water is not the deep blue,

1336
01:08:46.110 --> 01:08:50.760
but instead it's kind of that aqua kind of lighter blue,

1337
01:08:50.760 --> 01:08:53.340
kind of watery blue, milky blue kind of color,

1338
01:08:53.340 --> 01:08:57.603
or brown, if it's been right after a rain,

1339
01:08:58.500 --> 01:09:02.260
that turbid water usually does not have any kelp in it,

1340
01:09:02.260 --> 01:09:04.110
or it won't have any kelp in it

1341
01:09:04.110 --> 01:09:06.330
that has a surface canopy for very long

1342
01:09:06.330 --> 01:09:10.950
because the light levels really drop in those situations.

1343
01:09:10.950 --> 01:09:13.920
And things like giant kelp, which form a canopy,

1344
01:09:13.920 --> 01:09:16.740
which is the one that we see most often,

1345
01:09:16.740 --> 01:09:21.740
that doesn't do well in lower light conditions.

1346
01:09:22.740 --> 01:09:25.860
Whereas the understory kelp that you may see

1347
01:09:25.860 --> 01:09:26.940
when they wash up,

1348
01:09:26.940 --> 01:09:29.730
they look kind of like a little palm tree.

1349
01:09:29.730 --> 01:09:31.290
And actually, if you broke 'em,

1350
01:09:31.290 --> 01:09:33.150
you could actually count the rings on those,

1351
01:09:33.150 --> 01:09:35.640
that's the winged kelp,

1352
01:09:35.640 --> 01:09:38.460
or the California kelp, California,

1353
01:09:38.460 --> 01:09:40.080
and some other species,

1354
01:09:40.080 --> 01:09:43.980
those are subcanopy, and they are shade-adapted species.

1355
01:09:43.980 --> 01:09:47.250
They do well in those murky water,

1356
01:09:47.250 --> 01:09:49.200
or they don't, I shouldn't say they do well,

1357
01:09:49.200 --> 01:09:51.330
they can survive in those murky waters.

1358
01:09:51.330 --> 01:09:52.353
And so that was one of the things

1359
01:09:52.353 --> 01:09:54.630
that when we went out to Mud Creek

1360
01:09:54.630 --> 01:09:57.990
and went diving right off the slide itself,

1361
01:09:57.990 --> 01:10:02.990
we found areas that had no canopy-forming kelp,

1362
01:10:03.000 --> 01:10:04.890
so nothing at the surface,

1363
01:10:04.890 --> 01:10:07.170
but when you drop below, there was a whole forest

1364
01:10:07.170 --> 01:10:08.700
of this subcanopy kelp

1365
01:10:08.700 --> 01:10:12.810
that was literally sticking up out of the sand.

1366
01:10:12.810 --> 01:10:15.090
So it'd be, it looked like this photo I have right now

1367
01:10:15.090 --> 01:10:17.370
where I'm taking a picture, I'm in sand,

1368
01:10:17.370 --> 01:10:19.080
but then popping up out of the sand

1369
01:10:19.080 --> 01:10:22.630
were all these, looks like little kind of trees almost

1370
01:10:23.730 --> 01:10:24.780
that were buried.

1371
01:10:24.780 --> 01:10:27.540
But they were, you know, the photosynthetic parts,

1372
01:10:27.540 --> 01:10:31.080
the blades were up on top, and so they were doing okay,

1373
01:10:31.080 --> 01:10:34.193
and they hadn't had enough scour yet to abrade

1374
01:10:35.189 --> 01:10:38.130
the holdfast that keeps them in place,

1375
01:10:38.130 --> 01:10:39.630
and then would cause them

1376
01:10:39.630 --> 01:10:43.380
to ultimately become detached from the bedrock.

1377
01:10:43.380 --> 01:10:45.360
So yeah, the kelp forest

1378
01:10:45.360 --> 01:10:49.157
definitely gets impacted by that sediment.

1379
01:10:49.157 --> 01:10:50.850
And that's one of the things

1380
01:10:50.850 --> 01:10:52.590
that's an ongoing issue in Big Sur

1381
01:10:52.590 --> 01:10:56.520
is landslides occur naturally, right?

1382
01:10:56.520 --> 01:10:58.530
Landslides happen.

1383
01:10:58.530 --> 01:11:01.950
It's then when we have engineering solutions on top of that,

1384
01:11:01.950 --> 01:11:04.860
that add more material into the system,

1385
01:11:04.860 --> 01:11:07.950
that can really change the magnitude

1386
01:11:07.950 --> 01:11:09.540
of the impact of the landslide,

1387
01:11:09.540 --> 01:11:11.760
because you have what mother nature put in,

1388
01:11:11.760 --> 01:11:13.830
and then you have what humans put in.

1389
01:11:13.830 --> 01:11:17.310
And that sometimes can be even as much if not greater

1390
01:11:17.310 --> 01:11:18.143
than what was there.

1391
01:11:18.143 --> 01:11:21.390
And that can have effects up and down the coast

1392
01:11:21.390 --> 01:11:24.360
as those plumes spread and dissipate.

1393
01:11:24.360 --> 01:11:27.420
In some areas, the sediment remains.

1394
01:11:27.420 --> 01:11:30.360
You know, McWay Falls, one of the most famous spots

1395
01:11:30.360 --> 01:11:33.690
in the Big Sur coastlines on all the postcards,

1396
01:11:33.690 --> 01:11:37.740
if you were there prior to the '83 El Nino,

1397
01:11:37.740 --> 01:11:41.580
that waterfall fell into the ocean.

1398
01:11:41.580 --> 01:11:42.830
There was no beach there.

1399
01:11:43.680 --> 01:11:48.663
But once the McWay slide happened in that '82/'83 El Nino,

1400
01:11:49.710 --> 01:11:54.300
that cove filled up with sand from the landslide,

1401
01:11:54.300 --> 01:11:57.540
and it's been 40 years,

1402
01:11:57.540 --> 01:12:01.650
and it still has not been kind of washed out.

1403
01:12:01.650 --> 01:12:06.360
So now you see that waterfall spilling onto a sandy beach.

1404
01:12:06.360 --> 01:12:09.723
So some changes are multi-decade old.

1405
01:12:10.890 --> 01:12:13.920
<v ->Thank you.</v>
<v ->And, yeah.</v>

1406
01:12:13.920 --> 01:12:16.050
<v ->The next question we have is,</v>

1407
01:12:16.050 --> 01:12:19.200
do the coastal areas in the picture you showed earlier

1408
01:12:19.200 --> 01:12:20.460
with all the arrows,

1409
01:12:20.460 --> 01:12:21.600
do they ever reach a time

1410
01:12:21.600 --> 01:12:23.700
where they will just stay the same?

1411
01:12:23.700 --> 01:12:24.722
<v ->No.</v>

1412
01:12:24.722 --> 01:12:26.310
(Steve laughing)

1413
01:12:26.310 --> 01:12:27.990
It's dynamic, right?

1414
01:12:27.990 --> 01:12:30.750
So the natural process is sand,

1415
01:12:30.750 --> 01:12:33.450
and you know, sort of sandy, you know,

1416
01:12:33.450 --> 01:12:36.390
smaller material is moving inshore and offshore

1417
01:12:36.390 --> 01:12:37.293
all the time.

1418
01:12:38.220 --> 01:12:43.220
What's this periodic pulse of non-normal sand

1419
01:12:44.250 --> 01:12:47.610
is a landslide or a debris flow,

1420
01:12:47.610 --> 01:12:50.520
and then that is both moving in and offshore,

1421
01:12:50.520 --> 01:12:54.420
and now there's so much of it, it moves down shore.

1422
01:12:54.420 --> 01:12:59.340
So even if you're in a system that had no landslides,

1423
01:12:59.340 --> 01:13:02.250
like we put a big metal mesh over everything

1424
01:13:02.250 --> 01:13:04.440
and just said, you can't move,

1425
01:13:04.440 --> 01:13:06.810
you'd still get sand moving in and out,

1426
01:13:06.810 --> 01:13:09.360
and moving down the shore,

1427
01:13:09.360 --> 01:13:12.750
because of that literal cell that I was talking about,

1428
01:13:12.750 --> 01:13:16.050
those longshore occurrence.

1429
01:13:16.050 --> 01:13:17.820
So it's a dynamic system,

1430
01:13:17.820 --> 01:13:22.820
it's just how hard does it impact the intertidal?

1431
01:13:23.040 --> 01:13:26.370
It's really bad when you have a landslide or debris flow.

1432
01:13:26.370 --> 01:13:28.200
But under normal circumstances,

1433
01:13:28.200 --> 01:13:29.670
seasonal movement of sediment

1434
01:13:29.670 --> 01:13:32.553
doesn't cause those dramatic changes.

1435
01:13:34.170 --> 01:13:35.010
<v ->All righty.</v>

1436
01:13:35.010 --> 01:13:38.850
What publicly available data sets do you know of

1437
01:13:38.850 --> 01:13:43.707
that exist to, and relating to wildfire debris flow

1438
01:13:43.707 --> 01:13:46.860
and other potential impacts on coastal ecosystems?

1439
01:13:46.860 --> 01:13:47.820
<v ->It's amazing.</v>

1440
01:13:47.820 --> 01:13:49.560
There's a lot of 'em, there's a whole thing.

1441
01:13:49.560 --> 01:13:50.610
If you go to USGS,

1442
01:13:50.610 --> 01:13:54.903
they have a whole debris flow mapping like app.

1443
01:13:55.890 --> 01:13:59.670
If you, I was surprised, as I was trying to find some,

1444
01:13:59.670 --> 01:14:01.710
you know, I was using graphics

1445
01:14:01.710 --> 01:14:03.900
that were made by fire agencies,

1446
01:14:03.900 --> 01:14:07.230
made by the US Geological Survey, made by others.

1447
01:14:07.230 --> 01:14:10.920
There's entire fields of science that, you know,

1448
01:14:10.920 --> 01:14:15.120
look into fires, look into atmospheric rivers

1449
01:14:15.120 --> 01:14:16.830
and look into debris flows.

1450
01:14:16.830 --> 01:14:20.550
So I would just google debris flow,

1451
01:14:20.550 --> 01:14:22.560
and like mapping in Google,

1452
01:14:22.560 --> 01:14:24.810
and you're gonna find a whole bunch of resources

1453
01:14:24.810 --> 01:14:25.683
really quick.

1454
01:14:26.670 --> 01:14:27.633
<v ->Thank you, Steve.</v>

1455
01:14:28.620 --> 01:14:31.650
Do we understand a maximum time length,

1456
01:14:31.650 --> 01:14:35.460
or an idea of how long debris flows impacts

1457
01:14:35.460 --> 01:14:37.830
linger in coastal ecosystems?

1458
01:14:37.830 --> 01:14:40.260
<v ->No, not in central California,</v>

1459
01:14:40.260 --> 01:14:44.610
but that's part of what Wendy's paper is going to address.

1460
01:14:44.610 --> 01:14:47.970
And I wish, I mean if I had my,

1461
01:14:47.970 --> 01:14:49.440
if I could wave a magic wand

1462
01:14:49.440 --> 01:14:52.080
and keep going back down to some of those study sites

1463
01:14:52.080 --> 01:14:52.913
we went to,

1464
01:14:52.913 --> 01:14:56.580
I'd love to keep visiting them

1465
01:14:56.580 --> 01:15:00.810
and collecting information on how those systems

1466
01:15:00.810 --> 01:15:02.520
are responding now

1467
01:15:02.520 --> 01:15:06.360
four years after the atmospheric river.

1468
01:15:06.360 --> 01:15:11.360
And then, you know, by the time I retire, you know,

1469
01:15:11.520 --> 01:15:12.600
maybe 10 years after.

1470
01:15:12.600 --> 01:15:15.930
I mean, that would be amazing.

1471
01:15:15.930 --> 01:15:20.930
Unfortunately, there's not funding for that, number one.

1472
01:15:22.710 --> 01:15:27.710
And number two, accessing these locations is very tricky,

1473
01:15:30.900 --> 01:15:34.780
and oftentimes is accessing

1474
01:15:35.790 --> 01:15:37.920
with the permission of landowners.

1475
01:15:37.920 --> 01:15:42.480
And you know, that's, you have to be respectful of people,

1476
01:15:42.480 --> 01:15:45.570
and you know, some people spend a lot of money

1477
01:15:45.570 --> 01:15:49.950
to have an incredible home in the Big Sur area

1478
01:15:49.950 --> 01:15:52.920
and don't want some biologists tromping through

1479
01:15:52.920 --> 01:15:54.300
on a regular basis.

1480
01:15:54.300 --> 01:15:55.133
So I get that.

1481
01:15:55.133 --> 01:15:57.510
But it would be amazing to be able to revisit

1482
01:15:57.510 --> 01:16:00.510
some of those sites, and track how that's happening.

1483
01:16:00.510 --> 01:16:04.683
Some of that is being done with drones,

1484
01:16:05.700 --> 01:16:07.200
but I think there's a lot to be said

1485
01:16:07.200 --> 01:16:09.690
about being literally on the ground,

1486
01:16:09.690 --> 01:16:13.353
and seeing the kind of biology and the reactions,

1487
01:16:14.280 --> 01:16:16.200
'cause sometimes you need to get your nose

1488
01:16:16.200 --> 01:16:18.870
right up next to a rock in order to see something,

1489
01:16:18.870 --> 01:16:19.740
or under a rock.

1490
01:16:19.740 --> 01:16:21.330
And the drones don't capture that.

1491
01:16:21.330 --> 01:16:22.680
They capture where the sediment is,

1492
01:16:22.680 --> 01:16:24.000
but they don't show you what's happening

1493
01:16:24.000 --> 01:16:25.400
on with the biology, really.

1494
01:16:27.150 --> 01:16:30.660
<v ->What is the cause of withering foot syndrome?</v>

1495
01:16:30.660 --> 01:16:32.250
How prevalent is it today,

1496
01:16:32.250 --> 01:16:35.373
and are all species of abalone in California affected?

1497
01:16:36.210 --> 01:16:41.210
<v ->So it's a rickettsial-like bacterium.</v>

1498
01:16:47.370 --> 01:16:51.123
It's like, so it means it's like a rickets disease,

1499
01:16:53.610 --> 01:16:58.610
and it's, as far as I know, is in black abalone.

1500
01:17:00.300 --> 01:17:04.110
I can't remember if it's in any of the other species.

1501
01:17:04.110 --> 01:17:05.343
I don't remember that.

1502
01:17:06.330 --> 01:17:08.400
If it is, it's at low levels.

1503
01:17:08.400 --> 01:17:11.580
It definitely hit black abalone very hard.

1504
01:17:11.580 --> 01:17:13.740
They have been able to speciate it,

1505
01:17:13.740 --> 01:17:18.243
because you have to be able to replicate it.

1506
01:17:19.170 --> 01:17:22.020
And so speciating these things is really difficult.

1507
01:17:22.020 --> 01:17:27.020
So it's called like xeno something, candidatus,

1508
01:17:27.900 --> 01:17:28.860
some Latin something

1509
01:17:28.860 --> 01:17:32.010
that basically means it's still just,

1510
01:17:32.010 --> 01:17:33.240
they think it's this genus.

1511
01:17:33.240 --> 01:17:35.670
But they know what the, you know,

1512
01:17:35.670 --> 01:17:39.690
they could infect black abalone with it.

1513
01:17:39.690 --> 01:17:41.190
So they know basically what it is,

1514
01:17:41.190 --> 01:17:42.270
but they just haven't been able

1515
01:17:42.270 --> 01:17:44.820
to replicate it in a laboratory

1516
01:17:44.820 --> 01:17:46.980
in order to give it a name.

1517
01:17:46.980 --> 01:17:50.910
In terms of, there's other abalone species

1518
01:17:50.910 --> 01:17:53.730
that rarely occur in the intertidal.

1519
01:17:53.730 --> 01:17:56.940
So red abalone, we did occasionally see in the intertidal,

1520
01:17:56.940 --> 01:18:00.930
but most of the other species of abalone are subtidal.

1521
01:18:00.930 --> 01:18:04.470
So in our neck of the woods, we have red abalone,

1522
01:18:04.470 --> 01:18:08.610
we have flat abalone and we have pinto abalone.

1523
01:18:08.610 --> 01:18:12.060
And when you go further south into the Santa Barbara area

1524
01:18:12.060 --> 01:18:13.770
and Southern California,

1525
01:18:13.770 --> 01:18:17.460
you can pick up green abalone and pink abalone.

1526
01:18:17.460 --> 01:18:20.223
In the deep waters, the endangered white abalone.

1527
01:18:22.020 --> 01:18:26.573
Most of the current abalone populations for all species

1528
01:18:28.530 --> 01:18:31.203
have declined dramatically.

1529
01:18:32.370 --> 01:18:35.973
Mainly the presumption is from harvesting.

1530
01:18:36.810 --> 01:18:38.310
So we used to have fisheries,

1531
01:18:38.310 --> 01:18:39.900
used to have commercial fisheries,

1532
01:18:39.900 --> 01:18:41.400
we used to have recreational fisheries,

1533
01:18:41.400 --> 01:18:44.310
and eventually all of those were sort of shut down,

1534
01:18:44.310 --> 01:18:48.240
except for red abalone up in the north coast.

1535
01:18:48.240 --> 01:18:51.540
And then we had the kelp decline,

1536
01:18:51.540 --> 01:18:54.870
and the subsequent loss of red abalone

1537
01:18:54.870 --> 01:18:56.490
along the north coast of California.

1538
01:18:56.490 --> 01:18:58.410
And so that's fishing,

1539
01:18:58.410 --> 01:19:02.730
fishery has been suspended indefinitely, I think.

1540
01:19:02.730 --> 01:19:06.750
So, but it's really the black abalone in the intertidal

1541
01:19:06.750 --> 01:19:11.200
that were hard hit by that rickettsia-like disease,

1542
01:19:12.120 --> 01:19:17.120
which basically, the way it works is they eat algae, right?

1543
01:19:18.510 --> 01:19:20.040
They're herbivores, they're like cows,

1544
01:19:20.040 --> 01:19:21.900
so they're just eating a bunch of algae.

1545
01:19:21.900 --> 01:19:25.170
But the lining on their gut is unable to absorb it.

1546
01:19:25.170 --> 01:19:27.090
So they basically start to starve,

1547
01:19:27.090 --> 01:19:29.760
which is why they're called withering, they're shrinking.

1548
01:19:29.760 --> 01:19:32.280
'Cause even though they're eating, they're not ingest,

1549
01:19:32.280 --> 01:19:34.680
they're not incorporating any of it through their gut,

1550
01:19:34.680 --> 01:19:36.510
and it just passes through them.

1551
01:19:36.510 --> 01:19:38.400
And so they just, their foot starts to shrink

1552
01:19:38.400 --> 01:19:40.200
and shrink their muscle.

1553
01:19:40.200 --> 01:19:42.420
It atrophies, and then they fall off the rock,

1554
01:19:42.420 --> 01:19:45.370
and then something else either eats them, or they just die.

1555
01:19:46.530 --> 01:19:47.940
<v ->Thank you, Steve.</v>

1556
01:19:47.940 --> 01:19:52.413
Are these debris events recorded in the abalone shells?

1557
01:19:54.930 --> 01:19:58.257
<v ->Abalone damage is definitely recorded in shells.</v>

1558
01:19:58.257 --> 01:19:59.310
And so you could see,

1559
01:19:59.310 --> 01:20:01.438
like even in some of the pictures I had,

1560
01:20:01.438 --> 01:20:05.553
you could see where there was old damage that gets repaired.

1561
01:20:06.720 --> 01:20:10.050
Now the problem is, you can see damage,

1562
01:20:10.050 --> 01:20:12.870
you can't tell who made the damage or what.

1563
01:20:12.870 --> 01:20:15.810
Was that a cabezon that bit it?

1564
01:20:15.810 --> 01:20:18.090
Was it a sea otter that started pounding on it

1565
01:20:18.090 --> 01:20:20.190
and then got scared and dropped it?

1566
01:20:20.190 --> 01:20:21.810
Was it a rock smashing it?

1567
01:20:21.810 --> 01:20:22.800
What was it?

1568
01:20:22.800 --> 01:20:23.633
We don't know.

1569
01:20:23.633 --> 01:20:25.830
All we can see is that it was,

1570
01:20:25.830 --> 01:20:28.800
there was damage to the shell, and it was fixed.

1571
01:20:28.800 --> 01:20:32.370
And you could probably, if you did,

1572
01:20:32.370 --> 01:20:35.823
if you had some really good isotopic analysis,

1573
01:20:38.130 --> 01:20:39.870
you could probably figure out

1574
01:20:39.870 --> 01:20:43.620
from little fragments of the shell when that was.

1575
01:20:43.620 --> 01:20:45.393
But that's super expensive.

1576
01:20:46.950 --> 01:20:49.750
Be interesting science, but no one's gonna pay for that.

1577
01:20:50.610 --> 01:20:54.783
<v ->And this is, we got, how do you tag an abalone?</v>

1578
01:20:56.640 --> 01:20:57.811
<v ->It's very difficult.</v>

1579
01:20:57.811 --> 01:21:00.060
(Steve laughing)

1580
01:21:00.060 --> 01:21:01.140
There's multiple ways,

1581
01:21:01.140 --> 01:21:04.140
but basically what you do

1582
01:21:04.140 --> 01:21:08.790
is you dry and slightly clean the shell

1583
01:21:08.790 --> 01:21:13.790
so that there's not some film of either bacteria, or algae,

1584
01:21:13.980 --> 01:21:16.170
or something already on the shell.

1585
01:21:16.170 --> 01:21:18.840
And then there's a couple of different epoxies

1586
01:21:18.840 --> 01:21:20.430
that are put onto the shell,

1587
01:21:20.430 --> 01:21:24.060
and then usually there's a very small tag

1588
01:21:24.060 --> 01:21:26.793
that goes into that clear epoxy.

1589
01:21:27.750 --> 01:21:32.610
Sometimes they're tagged by putting colored epoxy

1590
01:21:32.610 --> 01:21:36.180
just to say that it was a captured individual,

1591
01:21:36.180 --> 01:21:38.370
you won't know who it is,

1592
01:21:38.370 --> 01:21:41.070
but you can tell it that it was captured,

1593
01:21:41.070 --> 01:21:43.680
versus another abalone nearby

1594
01:21:43.680 --> 01:21:46.020
that might be native to that location,

1595
01:21:46.020 --> 01:21:48.660
as opposed to one that was captured, tagged,

1596
01:21:48.660 --> 01:21:50.820
and then put in that area.

1597
01:21:50.820 --> 01:21:53.520
So some of them, you can tell the individual

1598
01:21:53.520 --> 01:21:54.690
based on the coding,

1599
01:21:54.690 --> 01:21:58.710
and some of them you can just tell that they're not a local,

1600
01:21:58.710 --> 01:22:00.960
they were a translocated one.

1601
01:22:00.960 --> 01:22:03.600
But people have used nail polish,

1602
01:22:03.600 --> 01:22:04.920
we've used dremmel tools

1603
01:22:04.920 --> 01:22:09.210
to cut through the shell a little bit

1604
01:22:09.210 --> 01:22:11.610
into kind of a lower layer,

1605
01:22:11.610 --> 01:22:12.930
and then using epoxy there.

1606
01:22:12.930 --> 01:22:14.373
There's a variety of ways.

1607
01:22:15.810 --> 01:22:20.010
<v ->All right, and I have one more question for you today.</v>

1608
01:22:20.010 --> 01:22:20.940
<v ->A lot of questions.</v>

1609
01:22:20.940 --> 01:22:22.213
This is great.

1610
01:22:22.213 --> 01:22:23.046
<v ->I know.</v>

1611
01:22:23.046 --> 01:22:24.333
You're real popular here tonight.

1612
01:22:25.290 --> 01:22:29.250
What is the life expectancy slash reproductive life cycle

1613
01:22:29.250 --> 01:22:30.573
of a black abalone?

1614
01:22:33.360 --> 01:22:35.553
<v ->Oh, life expectancy.</v>

1615
01:22:36.960 --> 01:22:40.113
I wanna say it's on the order of 20 plus years.

1616
01:22:44.280 --> 01:22:45.900
Sorry, say it, repeat it.

1617
01:22:45.900 --> 01:22:48.143
It's lifecycle and what else?

1618
01:22:48.143 --> 01:22:51.243
<v ->Life expectancy and reproductive cycle.</v>

1619
01:22:52.470 --> 01:22:56.850
<v ->Yeah, so in terms of reproduction,</v>

1620
01:22:56.850 --> 01:22:59.190
the bummer with them, they're broadcast spawners,

1621
01:22:59.190 --> 01:23:02.970
so they just release gametes into the water column,

1622
01:23:02.970 --> 01:23:06.480
which means in order to have successful spawning,

1623
01:23:06.480 --> 01:23:08.370
they need to be really close to one another,

1624
01:23:08.370 --> 01:23:11.590
like within less than a meter

1625
01:23:12.720 --> 01:23:14.640
to really increase the likelihood

1626
01:23:14.640 --> 01:23:17.970
of spawning simultaneously,

1627
01:23:17.970 --> 01:23:22.783
or close enough that the water movement doesn't move either,

1628
01:23:24.990 --> 01:23:28.420
you know, one, you know, the males gametes or the females

1629
01:23:29.370 --> 01:23:32.070
out of the water before the other one spawns.

1630
01:23:32.070 --> 01:23:34.980
I'm not sure exactly what triggers spawning.

1631
01:23:34.980 --> 01:23:36.870
I know that if they're damaged, they'll do that,

1632
01:23:36.870 --> 01:23:38.010
but you don't wanna do that.

1633
01:23:38.010 --> 01:23:40.800
But I don't know what environmental cue

1634
01:23:40.800 --> 01:23:42.930
causes them to spawn.

1635
01:23:42.930 --> 01:23:44.880
It's been very difficult.

1636
01:23:44.880 --> 01:23:47.550
If not, it's almost been impossible

1637
01:23:47.550 --> 01:23:50.700
to get black abalone to spawn in the laboratory,

1638
01:23:50.700 --> 01:23:53.820
which is why we don't have a captive breeding program.

1639
01:23:53.820 --> 01:23:57.030
White abalone, yes, they've been able to do that.

1640
01:23:57.030 --> 01:24:00.240
Red abalone, they have commercial abalone farms

1641
01:24:00.240 --> 01:24:01.410
where they do that.

1642
01:24:01.410 --> 01:24:04.500
Other abalone throughout the world, no problem.

1643
01:24:04.500 --> 01:24:06.870
Black abalone, problem.

1644
01:24:06.870 --> 01:24:11.400
It's been really difficult to make any headway there,

1645
01:24:11.400 --> 01:24:13.710
and that's something that's of interest

1646
01:24:13.710 --> 01:24:16.260
as part of the recovery plan,

1647
01:24:16.260 --> 01:24:17.790
'cause, you know, if you're listed

1648
01:24:17.790 --> 01:24:19.800
as either a threatened or endangered species,

1649
01:24:19.800 --> 01:24:22.113
there's also a recovery plan that goes with that

1650
01:24:22.113 --> 01:24:26.250
that tries to get them delisted or down listed.

1651
01:24:26.250 --> 01:24:31.250
And so that's something that people are interested in,

1652
01:24:31.320 --> 01:24:36.320
but it has so far been a very tough hurdle to overcome.

1653
01:24:38.730 --> 01:24:39.570
<v ->Thank you, Steve.</v>

1654
01:24:39.570 --> 01:24:41.250
And I know some of y'all,

1655
01:24:41.250 --> 01:24:42.690
you all really quite came through

1656
01:24:42.690 --> 01:24:45.360
with our questions here tonight,

1657
01:24:45.360 --> 01:24:48.930
but unfortunately I will have to wrap things up.

1658
01:24:48.930 --> 01:24:50.610
Thank you again, Steve, for sharing.

1659
01:24:50.610 --> 01:24:53.340
I did wanna let everybody know

1660
01:24:53.340 --> 01:24:56.580
that we are having two more lectures

1661
01:24:56.580 --> 01:24:59.820
in this Discover Your Sanctuary Speaker Series.

1662
01:24:59.820 --> 01:25:01.080
If you haven't heard about them

1663
01:25:01.080 --> 01:25:04.170
or registered already, I'm gonna drop my email in the chat.

1664
01:25:04.170 --> 01:25:05.760
If you are interested

1665
01:25:05.760 --> 01:25:07.560
in getting the registration links for those,

1666
01:25:07.560 --> 01:25:11.130
they'll be on Wednesday, April 16th.

1667
01:25:11.130 --> 01:25:13.470
Our superintendent, Dr. Lisa Wooninck,

1668
01:25:13.470 --> 01:25:16.200
will be talking about iconic kelp forests.

1669
01:25:16.200 --> 01:25:17.940
And on Wednesday, April 30th,

1670
01:25:17.940 --> 01:25:20.940
Sean Hastings of Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary

1671
01:25:20.940 --> 01:25:24.183
will be talking about the Blue Whales, Blue Skies Program.

1672
01:25:25.020 --> 01:25:27.150
I also am letting you all know

1673
01:25:27.150 --> 01:25:29.250
that there will be a short survey

1674
01:25:29.250 --> 01:25:30.840
as soon as this presentation ends.

1675
01:25:30.840 --> 01:25:33.780
We'd really appreciate any feedback that you have,

1676
01:25:33.780 --> 01:25:34.892
and this is a great chance

1677
01:25:34.892 --> 01:25:37.110
for you to let us know of any topics

1678
01:25:37.110 --> 01:25:40.320
you may be interested in hearing about in the future.

1679
01:25:40.320 --> 01:25:43.020
I hope to see you at our next two lectures.

1680
01:25:43.020 --> 01:25:45.870
And again, thank you, Steve, for presenting here tonight.

1681
01:25:45.870 --> 01:25:48.753
I hope everybody has a great rest of your evening.

1682
01:25:51.210 --> 01:25:52.263
Bye, everybody.