John Largier
Description: John Largier is the Director of the Bodega Marine Lab and Professor of Coastal Oceanography at UC Davis. His work is deeply interdisciplinary, working with experts in ecology, policy, health, social science, engineering, and other fields – developing an “environmental oceanography” paradigm. Centered on water-borne transport in ocean environments, he has tackled issues that include marine protected areas, aquaculture, wastewater discharge, desalination, kelp forest loss, and coastal development. In this episode we talk about what upwelling is and how it impacts the California Coast, the movement of larvae, and how coastal environments are impacted by climate change. We try to take a holistic approach understanding oceanography and how environmental changes are impacting the community.
Websites:
Publications:
Restoration of Estuary Hydrological State with Freshwater Inflows
Comparing Marine and Terrestrial Ecosystems
Considerations in Estimating Larval Dispersal Distances from Oceanographic Data
Articles:
Show Notes:
[0:00:02] Introducing Professor John Largier and his passion for environmental science
[0:01:05] Finding a Passion for Oceanography
[0:04:13] From Academic to Real-World Impact: Writing Coastal Zone Management Policy
[0:08:30] The Impact of Water Movement on Nearshore Environments
[0:11:01] Large-scale upwelling and marine ecosystems
[0:14:30] Earth's Rotation and Gravity
[0:17:05] Temperature Variations and Fish Distribution
[0:20:00] The California current and other major ocean currents explained
[0:22:29] Impact of currents on transportation vessels and nutrient transportation
[0:25:11] The Drifting Life of Ocean Larvae
[0:27:02] Microplastics in the Ocean Food Web
[0:30:10] The Influence of Childhood on Career Choices
[0:30:36] The Ethic of Meaningful Science in South Africa
[0:33:00] Honesty and Communication in Science
[0:36:10] The Role of Science in Policy-Making
[0:41:34] Ongoing game of problem-solving and response
[0:42:42] Decline of Kelp Forests and its Impact
[0:46:34] Balancing Science and Policy for Environmental Management
[0:51:49] Graduate Students and Faculty Residency
[0:54:13] Being Better Stewards of the Ocean
Unedited AI Generated Transcript
Introducing Professor John Largier and his passion for environmental science
Brent:
[0:02] Welcome, Professor John Largier. Thank you for coming on today.
John:
[0:05] Yeah, well, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for the opportunity to talk to you and your audience about what I do. I find it fun. So hopefully you guys will find it interesting at least.
Brent:
[0:15] Definitely.
Keller:
[0:17] We'd love to start off by hearing a little bit more about your story.
How'd you get to Davis and what got you interested in environmental science, particularly in oceanography?
John:
[0:25] Yeah, how'd I get to… Well, so it's a long story, right? It's a long life.
So maybe just to tell a quick life story, I suppose. I grew up in South Africa, studied there in Cape Town, very similar climate to California.
You know, how did I get into oceanography? Because that's what I already studied.
I did physics and applied math undergrad.
And there's so many interesting things to study, really.
So I was not really born an academic or really thought I would land up being a professor. just found the world interesting and many opportunities.
Finding a Passion for Oceanography
[1:05] But I really enjoyed the ocean. So I spent a lot of time swimming and sailing and surfing and I realized I could combine math and ocean and that is kind of nice.
And then I really started realizing I could combine them for a benefit of understanding the environment and caring for it more.
So that's sort of how I got into oceanography, mixed together as a bunch of opportunities, and that's life.
There's some people who have career plans, they start when they're age five, and some of us just kind of enjoy life and we'd land up somewhere decent by spotting opportunity and goingwith it. So, then, I
[1:45] I got my PhD in South Africa and then I got a job, a position at Scripps Institution Oceanography, UC San Diego.
So I was in the faculty there for several years and then South Africa changed at the end of apartheid.
So my wife and I went back there for several years as the University of Cape Town and then back to San Diego.
So San Diego Scripps Institution is sort of one of the centers of ocean studies, oceanography in the world. So it was a really great place to be, really enjoyed it.
But when opportunity came up to come to Davis, the attraction was the strength of environmental science and ecology and the things I'd been working on and that really was motivated byliving in South Africa.
But the oceanography world is a little bit sort of earth science centric.
It is not, it has changed now, but back in the 1990s, I didn't feel like it was addressing the critical issues as much.
So that was a big draw of coming to Davis, that there was a strength here and there was also a great culture of collaboration and of working together to address problems.
And then I got the benefit of being based at Bodega Marine Lab, which is on the coast, between the ocean and the vineyards.
So it's sort of important in life as well. Yeah.
Brent:
[3:11] So did you say like Scripps had a more linear type of science where you just focus on oceanography and then Davis kind of applied that oceanography kind of what environmentaloceanography, correct?
John:
[3:24] Yeah, that's kind of the way I see it is that I do environmental oceanography.
So, as I say, everywhere has changed over my life.
Academia used to be more siloed. If you studied physical oceanography, the physics of the ocean, you studied that.
And so I was, you know, I think of.
Bit of helping the change in that I was interested in the physics and the biology and the chemistry.
Now we've really got much broader where we, you know, studies of socio-ecological systems.
So maybe we'll talk about it later on in terms of kelp forests on the north coast here of linking together the physics of the ocean together with the kelp forest, the biology, ecology, thechemistry, the oxygen, et cetera, and the people.
From Academic to Real-World Impact: Writing Coastal Zone Management Policy
[4:13] And so things have evolved a lot. But what I was pushing when I was in San Diego and why Davis was an attraction was applying all the skills we have from oceanography had beendeveloped over the last century, it's strong, valuable, applying them to the environmental problems.
And I felt that we weren't doing enough of that.
And one could have continued doing it from the center of oceanography, or you could do it by jumping back into immersing yourself in environmental issues, which I did a lot of back inSouth Africa, particularly in the late 90s after apartheid.
I was very involved in, or part of the team writing the new coastal zone management policy, which is not an academic exercise.
So trying to interface, what do we know about the ocean to make a better policy, to make a better world?
So, I guess I'm not a very focused academic, but somehow I survived.
Keller:
[5:10] That's good. And with regards to environments, could you walk us through a few of the different broad environments that are existing in the ocean?
John:
[5:18] Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, my perspective is more of an earth scientist than a biological scientist.
Scientist and so, I mean, my field is somewhere, what could I call it?
Maybe, you know, it dovetails into environmental engineering and I suppose my field is sort of environmental hydrodynamics.
So I'm interested in bodies of water. They could be rivers or lakes or ocean, but I work on the ocean.
And so some water bodies are shallower and there's fresh water and seawater interacting, and that's what I'd call an estuary.
So San Francisco Bay would be classic estuary, right from almost Sacramento, not quite, but from the Delta, there's some salt water getting that far in.
Brent:
[6:07] Wow.
John:
[6:07] Out to Golden Gate and out into the ocean. You will see fresh water up here at Bodega Bay or down at Half Moon Bay coming out of the Bay.
So that's the estuarine environment, estuary normally inside of Golden Gate.
Then another environment would be.
It's generally kind of called the nearshore, sometimes the surf zone, where waves are important.
So if we look out of the window here at Bodega Marine Lab, we see, you know, the water's not flat, it's not a lake, and the breaking waves are a very important part of pushing the wateraround and mixing it and doing stuff.
So estuaries, nearshore ocean, I suppose bays stand out, like Monterey Bay would be a classic one.
I mean, but these are not always well-defined words, but a part of the coastal waters that maybe a little bit more protected, but they're not enclosed quite like San Francisco Bay, moreopen.
There are lots of bays around the world. California coast is sort of not quite as embayed, I suppose, as some other areas.
[7:11] And then you get beyond that, you get into the, what we stand on the land, we'd see it as open ocean, but it's still coastal.
The water depth is not that deep. The continental shelf is probably how it's defined. No, mostly it's defined that way. And there's still effects of the land and the land runoff.
And then you get into the big ocean. The big ocean is so huge, you know, I don't think we can conceive of it unless you've maybe done an ocean crossing.
[7:40] You look out now and you see the horizon, maybe maybe it's five miles off there.
You know, something about 5,000 miles of ocean.
But even there, so then you're getting also into really deep water.
So you've got the ocean away from the land, but the surface ocean where everything's living is just a thin part of it, maybe 1,000 feet, you know.
But the ocean, you know, it's more like.
The 10, 20, 30,000 feet deep. So, there's an abyssal ocean, the deep ocean, which is, there are many categories and pieces of it.
So, I focus on the coast. I think, because I like to experience the ocean also, I think because that's where most people engage with it and are affected by it and impacted as well.
Brent:
[8:26] And then when you study the movement of water, is that most impactful on the
The Impact of Water Movement on Nearshore Environments
[8:30] near shore environments?
John:
[8:32] It's, you know, it's moving, It's moving, the whole ocean is moving, let's put it that way.
And so it's moving at different scales and different energy, the space scales, like the whole Pacific Ocean is going around in a big circle.
But then you might look at Horseshoe Cove here next to us, and the water's probably going around in a circle as well. But the one is going around that circle slowly, taking months, andthe other's going around in hours maybe.
Because the ocean is very different, or aquatic systems are very different to our intuition as terrestrial organisms.
It's constantly in motion, it's constantly carrying things. And I like to compare it with the blood circulation in the body, because it links everything.
So just like you could have a lung and a heart and a head, none of them would work unless the blood kind of circulated between them, carrying sort of good things towards that organ andbad things away from it, if you like.
So, yeah, the motion is critical everywhere. It tends to be a little bit more energetic.
Well, that's probably not true. It feels energetic because when the land is still, whereas in the middle of the ocean, it's all moving, you know.
So, like a wave in the middle of the ocean, it's not slamming against anything and there's a ship there, but it slams against the rocks because it's motionless.
Keller:
[10:00] And what is upwelling? How's that impacting bodega bed?
John:
[10:03] Yeah, that's the center, that's the most important thing in the world.
Mostly because I study it.
So the importance of upwelling is that it brings nutrients from depth and fertilizes the ocean.
But the process is around here, all along the West Coast, from British Columbia in winter down to mainland Mexico in summer, and most of the area all year round.
[10:33] And you get the same thing happening mid-latitude in South America, Peru, Chile, up to Ecuador a little bit, you know.
The coasts of Africa and Europe, et cetera. We have these winds that blow towards the equator here, they're northerly winds, and they blow for months on end.
And as they do, they push the surface water in that direction, but because of Coriolis, the earth is spinning, and the water, it turns and moves offshore, the surface water.
Large-scale upwelling and marine ecosystems
[11:01] And so that then results in bottom water coming up at the shoreline, upwelling of water.
So we'd need to draw some diagrams to really get into it, but you know, so you have small-scale upwelling maybe in a lake as well where the Coriolis is not involved, but this oceansystem, large-scale upwelling, you land up with a massive, basically a large marine ecosystem, you call it.
You know, as I say, runs from Canada to Mexico, and there's just this fountain of nutrients and fertilizer being brought into the sunlit layers, the euphotic zone, and you have a hugeamount of primary production, which then gets, that phytoplankton gets eaten up by zooplankton, by fish, fish by birds and whales and sharks and everything.
[11:55] So it's an incredibly bounteous region. I think the upwelling areas, although they're long, they're only maybe 1% of the surface of the earth, And but the fish, they, they assume it'slike 20% of the fish we catch come from that 1% area.
So yeah, very productive.
Keller:
[12:12] And that's all within the euphotic zone?
John:
[12:15] The, well, the primary production's happening in that euphotic zone, which is actually really shallow, can be, you know, 10 feet, maybe 100 feet.
But then the animal, well, the plankton that eats up that phytoplankton and might be deeper, and then the fish that eat the zooplankton are even deeper.
Yeah, so life will go down deeper than that. And actually, there's quite a bit of work now on the mesophotic zone where, It's quite an ecosystem sort of in the twilight zone, but themajority is happening right up near the surface.
Brent:
[12:55] And then, does the coastline have to be there for upwelling to occur?
John:
[12:58] Yeah, yeah, good one. For this wind-driven upwelling, it is true because you're pushing water offshore, and you cannot pull water out of the land, so it has to get pulled up frombelow. that's what creates it.
It does occur offshore if you have a shear zone, I suppose, where the wind's blowing really strongly in one place and weakly in another.
So you get that occurring somewhat. The one place it happens quite a lot is a different story with the winds along the equator and the Coriolis effect makes water turn to the right in theNorthern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere.
So the west winds, east winds, the trade winds that blow along the equator, they blow north and south, and they make the water north of the equator go north, and south of the equator go south. So again, you're creating a sort of a divergence that brings water underneath.
Quite a different upwelling situation.
Brent:
[14:13] Okay. And then when you talked about the water being pulled out because the earth is spinning, should people be thinking about the earth like as a landmass being spinning within like a a water ball in a way that makes up the oceans?
Earth's Rotation and Gravity
Brent:
[15:10] Because the reason I brought it up, we'll cut it, but the reason I brought it up was I heard about when the moon's pulling the tide, the tide's always there towards the moon and then the earth is spinning through.
John:
[15:21] Yeah, yeah, that is the way we talk about it, you're right.
Okay, yeah. But yeah, that you got this bulge of water and then the earth spins underneath, I mean, the earth spins underneath it, yeah, but all the water doesn't sit still, it's all spinning, butthat bulge is kept in place by the earth and the moon.
Yeah, you must have done an oceanography class.
Keller:
[15:42] And how should people think about the scale of the transportation of nutrition?
Like how broad is that movement?
John:
[15:51] Of that flux of nutrients?
Keller:
[15:52] Yeah.
John:
[15:54] It's, um, so the real coastal effect doesn't go out so far, maybe, you know, 10 miles.
But in the California current, there is both because of the increase in winds as you get offshore as well as a bunch of very large-scale eddies, the ocean is neutrified, if you like, throughupwelling.
The effect sort of extends a couple of hundred miles offshore.
But the really strongest upwelling, and if you could look at a satellite image of sea surface temperature, you'd see the cold water right at the coast, the coldest water, and then you'd seethese tendrils of cold water.
Extending offshore maybe not even 100 miles, but because the water doesn't warm up immediately and the nutrients are not used up immediately.
So like off here, the water's going south and around Point Reyes it tends to go offshore a bit and it'll easily get out 50 miles before it gets warm or the nutrients get used up.
So there's a broad band of productivity. Yeah.
Temperature Variations and Fish Distribution
Brent:
[17:05] So when the upwelling brings the cold water from the bottom, that's how you're able to track it because you'll see the ocean temperature be a lot colder as it stands out.
John:
[17:13] Yeah, it's pretty handy. There's a big temperature difference, which is- Like how many degrees? Which is why it's so cold here.
So the upwell, and the water here in summertime is typically 10 degrees centigrade, 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
So even in the middle of summer, the air temperature in nighttime is 50 Fahrenheit.
And even in a day like outside now, it's maybe 60 if you're lucky.
If the wind's blowing and it's upwelling. And then in the fall, the upwelling gets a bit weaker and the water gets a bit warmer and the air gets a bit warmer.
But if you went directly offshore, you know, a couple hundred miles, same latitude, the water would probably be, I should know this, right?
Maybe 20, more than 20 centigrade, so in the 70s, it's something like that, so a big difference.
And all that coolness is because there's water coming up all the time, so.
Brent:
[18:12] And then does that drive fish offshore to be in warmer waters, or is that dependent on the fish?
John:
[18:18] It depends on the fish, exactly, yeah. I mean, the fish like the food, so they tend to be in the cold water, which is interesting.
But there are, you know, if, depending on what the organism is, if you, trying to manage your temperature right, like a lot of the sharks, you know, spent their time, like I rememberworking with a colleague in the Galapagos, and the sharks would dive down into the cold water and go and feed and then come back and hang out in the warm water so that they couldkeep the heat budget going.
But most fish don't have that issue. Yeah.
Brent:
[18:56] And then when you talk about the California current, does that expand throughout the entire coastline of California down into Mexico and up north into Canada?
John:
[19:04] Yeah. Excuse me. It's the phrase used for that whole large marine ecosystem or that large, I mean, so I said earlier about the Pacific Ocean going around in a circle.
It's really the North Pacific Ocean. The South Pacific does the same thing, but the North Pacific is what we'd call a gyre or the subtropical gyre.
So the water's flowing eastward across to Asia along the equator, up past Japan, the Kuroshio, which is a fast current like the Gulf Stream, very like the Gulf Stream, across just south ofAlaska and then down the coast of the US.
And so it's in a clockwise direction.
In Southern Pacific, you have the same thing, but it's going anticlockwise because of the Coriolis. same thing, South Atlantic, North Atlantic, et cetera.
The California current and other major ocean currents explained
[20:00] So that southward arm of that gyre is the California current.
It would be flowing southward anyway and then the upwelling winds sort of help it speed it up nearer the shore.
And so yeah, so the California current really starts.
Washington state, maybe British Columbia shifts a little bit seasonally and then goes down, definitely down Baja, California and even extending down to mainland California more in thewintertime.
And then you have the equivalent in South America, the Humboldt current or the Peru current.
And then of Southern Africa, the Benguela current and of Northwest Africa, Europe, the canary current.
Brent:
[20:46] Okay.
John:
[20:47] And they're all, you know, big and broad and very productive.
Brent:
[20:51] And then do you have a general speed range for like the currents?
John:
[20:54] Yeah, this current is really slow. It's always disappointing when people hear it. You know, so like the Gulf Stream is what we'd call a Western boundary current business on the Westside of the ocean. It's narrow and fast.
And so is the Curacao and the Galdas of South Africa, Brazil, et cetera.
But the California current is very broad and shallow and slow.
So I think the number in my mind is from a drifter study done a couple of decades ago, average of like three centimeters a second, it's like an inch a second, really slow.
But those eddies I talked about beforehand, they're kind of buzzing around a lot faster.
So in a big circular like motions and they might be 10 centimeters a second, and like three, four times faster. So there's plenty of currents going.
[21:51] But the other thing is that's the color, that's that big, broad California current.
But if you come closer to the shore where the real active upwelling's happening, you get an upwelling jet, and that might be going, I said, three centimeters per second, and then I said 10centimeters per second for the eddies.
That upwelling jet quite easily 50 centimeters a second, maybe, we've seen it going 70, 80, almost a meter a second, which is like two knots.
If the wind's really hard, and that's a narrow current, so there's an actual active upwelling right near the shore, and then there's this broad California current going southward.
Impact of currents on transportation vessels and nutrient transportation
Keller:
[22:29] And do these currents drive the decisions by transportation vessels at all?
John:
[22:34] I don't believe so, yeah. I mean, I think.
More and more they have that information. Like we monitor surface currents with the HF radar out the window there, part of a California-wide system.
So they can see if there's a strong current.
But I think the cost of going around it is more than just going through it.
I do believe from, that in the really, the long persistent currents like the Igalis and the Gulf Stream and so on, that they might go a bit more inshore bit more offshore to avoid the real coreof it.
Yeah, but the ships are, you know, so I talked about that, this upwelling jet maybe being two knots, but typically one knot or weaker, and you know, ships are doing 10 knots or more.
And it's difficult to, California current's so broad, it's difficult to get out of it.
Whereas I say, say like the Gulf Stream could be quite narrow, maybe you could choose a route that's different.
Brent:
[23:32] And then do you know the knots of the Gulf Stream?
John:
[23:36] No, I don't, but it'll be like two knots probably, I guess, if you're in the core.
Keller:
[23:42] And with regards to the transportation of nutrients, does that also encompass the transportation of larvae?
John:
[23:48] Yeah, everything's moved by the water.
So those nutrients will come up to the surface, but everything's moved, but everything that uses everything's moved as well.
So, although the nutrients are moving, the phytoplankton's moving with it. So then leave me.
It's really irrelevant to them, they're in a moving frame of reference, you know, and they're just taking up those nutrients and drifting along, and then the zooplankton are drifting along andeating the phytoplankton, and then, you know, as you get to zooplankton and to fish, then they have a choice, they can just drift with the water or they can sort of swim against it, or what alot of the zooplankton, so little drifting animals are doing, is that they can swim weakly enough and they'll just, they will go down, like the krill is a classic one, And so they will migratevertically.
And so if you went down 100 meters, you're in a completely different water mass.
And if you do that over a few hours, you don't have to swim very fast.
[24:49] But way slower than if you try to swim against the current, for example.
So a lot of smaller animals tend to do that, going up and down.
Yeah, but the nutrients move with it and the plankton move with it and some fish allow themselves to be moved with it, and then the pollutants move with it, and whatever plastics wedropped in the ocean move with it.
The Drifting Life of Ocean Larvae
[25:12] Yeah, so everything. Larvae, I think, is what you're asking.
So, I mean, that's interesting. In the ocean, a lot of animals, and particularly all the invertebrates that live on the shore, you know, the mussels and barnacles and crab and whatever, they,you'd call them benthic.
They're sort of fixed in place. They're not drifting, they're not planktonic.
But then they will release their eggs and or larvae and they will drift, they'll be planktonic.
And some of them will drift for weeks on end.
Brent:
[25:41] Wow.
John:
[25:42] And it's sort of a, it's like seeds in the wind, I suppose is what you might think of.
Keller:
[25:46] But...
John:
[25:49] It's similar but different. And then you sort of hope that some are gonna come back and land on fertile ground, land in a good place where they can live a good life.
Keller:
[25:58] Yeah, and you kind of touched on it a little bit there with the plastics.
Could you expand on what that situation is?
John:
[26:04] Yeah, I mean, well, you probably know there are a lot of plastics going into the ocean and for a long time, we sort of thought about the big plastics, but a lot of them are so-calledmicroplastics, which would be plankton size, you know, so their food size.
And I think we, well, I know we still have a huge amount to learn about its impact, you know. So we, most people know about the garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
So these currents, wind-driven currents, and going down the coast of California and into that gyre, they tend to, floating material, if you lift it, and we've done this with GPS track devices,they will land up in the middle of the ocean, or at least some of it will, in that garbage patch is kind of a convergence zone as opposed to upwelling, which is a divergence, surfacedivergence.
Microplastics in the Ocean Food Web
[27:02] And so you see a lot of debris out there and it's a real concern.
But what you, but we wouldn't accumulate, what I'm going at is we wouldn't accumulate plastic in the California coast because it gets advected away and because it's divergent.
But I told you earlier about how many fish are here and how active, if you like, how fast the ecosystem is.
So if they're microplastics in the right food size, they're being eaten up.
Maybe we're not seeing them and we think, oh, it's cool, but in actual fact, they might be going into the food web way more than out there in the middle of the ocean.
It's always fascinating. The middle of the ocean is a bit of a desert.
It looks beautiful, but that's not where the production is. It's all around the edge of the ocean, which looks more turbid and more murky.
That's a rich, productive ocean. So if you are going to have a garbage patch, where it is, is the best place.
Except if you're an albatross feeding there, or a shark swimming through there, or tuna or something like, yeah, not a good idea.
Brent:
[28:09] Definitely. And then with that garbage patch, is it underwater or partially underwater? Because I think I've heard about how only a fraction of it is visible on the surface orsomething like that.
John:
[28:21] Yeah, so I don't have the information that really, but there's actually quite a lot of work happening on exactly that question because the idea is that 90% of plastics are in float and sothat we, I mean, you won't see them all because they're very close to the density of water.
So they kind of float in inverted commas. They're near the surface, but there might be subsurface, but they're not sinking to the bottom.
But as people are looking at the bottom of the ocean, not so much the deep ocean, but coastal areas, they're finding more and more plastics.
So yeah, maybe they float in the beginning, but as they degrade or they get organisms growing on them or they started adhering to other particles, they're falling out into the ocean andlanding on the bed as well.
So, they're not seen, but they're probably having a lot of impact there. P.
Keller:
[29:11] Are there any international efforts to try to clean up the guy or is that kind of just a, it's an issue and we're not quite sure how to solve it yet?
John:
[29:18] MG Yeah, there are a lot of people puzzling over it.
I'm not aware of any, you know, sort of Montreal protocol or something like that, some way to handle it.
Yeah, so here in California and really many places around the world there's a big push for, if you want to call it emissions control.
You know, like let's not let the plastic get in the ocean.
So that's no different to cleaning it up, but, and it's not everywhere doing that.
But it's quite a challenge to collect all that plastic.
Brent:
[29:57] Yeah, and then when you talk about the prevention side of things, could you speak a bit more about your conservation efforts outside of academia, and especially in designingmarine protected zones.
The Influence of Childhood on Career Choices
John:
[30:10] Yeah, I mean, I talked earlier about the environmental oceanography and the essence of that is probably comes back to when I was a kid, if I was going to study science, I didn'twant to sort of fiddle while Rome burnt, living in apartheid South Africa, and most of my friends were plotting to overthrow the government.
The Ethic of Meaningful Science in South Africa
[30:36] So I wanted my science to be meaningful to society in the short term as well.
And I think it's maybe also was a strong ethic in South Africa in general.
[30:49] And so from early day I've always been engaged on the science, I'm giving a long answer because essentially what you land up with is do you become an advocate or do you try tobe the objective scientist, right?
And there's no such thing as a fully objective scientist, but there is the role of how would a scientist approach this problem?
And there are clearly issues that I feel that I care about and they motivate me to do the science. So really I'm not objective as to what issue I work on.
But so like working in marine protected areas and beach pollution and desalination and all these things I've worked on, I try and work with people towards science-based decisions.
And so I try not to be an advocate, even though I might have an opinion.
And as I say, there's no true objectivity, but you just keep trying to say, what's your expert opinion?
How can you help this issue by being an expert and pointing to things?
Which means sometimes you might have to, you know, pose things that you think are so-called good because as you learn the science, you realize, oh, yeah, maybe that human impact isnot as egregious as another human impact.
So, like, we live in an overcrowded world. The world is...
[32:17] I'm getting philosophical, but anyway, the world is impacted by humans, and that's not going to stop.
But we can reduce our impact by focusing on the things that really have the biggest impact.
And so that's where I try and put a lot of my science. So, for example, power plant cooling water, we did a study on that.
And our analysis, and I think we're right, is it does not entrain in quite as many larvae as people think it does, but the politics sort of had pushed it towards a decision already.
So right now, you cannot build a power plant with sucking in seawater to cool it.
Honesty and Communication in Science
[33:00] And so that I came to a conclusion is different to what I thought I wanted to come to, but then to honor that, to be true to yourself about that.
And so I'm not advocating for building of power plants, sucking in seawater for sure, but just to be honest about what you find.
And then if you find something that you feel is really critically important, to make sure other people know about it.
So communicating what your science is super important, advocating for a certain policy option is where you kind of cross the line. And for many of us, that's a real dilemma because wewant to do that.
But, so yeah, the marine protected areas, and most of these have served on a sort of science advisory board or have worked on the problem and the understanding that I'm gonna adviseyou on the science, but it's many decades since the scientists thought that they were solving the problem, because in the early days of my career, you'd figure out the science solution andthe scientists couldn't understand why the policy people didn't just listen to them because that is the answer, right?
But it's also the world of siloed thinking. So we were.
Studying one aspect of it. No, these are multidimensional problems.
Brent:
[34:18] So what have some of those findings been that have influenced how we design a marine protected zone?
John:
[34:25] Yeah, so in my context, probably the most pertinent thing is if you're gonna, is the spacing of the marine protected areas.
So if you're gonna have a reserve, it is, if it's part of a network of reserves, it has much more value.
So we talked earlier about larval dispersal or the transport of larvae.
So if there are mussels living on one rock and they release larvae, then they either have to come back to that rock or they have to land on another rock.
[34:59] But there's not just mussels because there are rockfish as well and there are barnacles and other organisms.
And so what you want to figure out is the disposal distance, how far are these larvae likely to go in the time that they're in the plankton?
And that's different for every organism and it depends on what behavior they have in terms of vertical migration and the season, is it the upwelling season or the rainy season?
And trying to get an idea of the different spacings that would be optimal And then how, you know, what sort of spacing might give you what size of each protected area and what spacingwould give you the most bang for your buck in terms of the number of species that would benefit from it.
So that sounds like a super theoretical thing and in the end you don't design it, but you kind of look at the designs people are coming up with and say, you know, there's way too big a gapbetween these two, you know.
So it's that travel distance between reserves is a big thing of an example of what I worked on as part of that.
The Role of Science in Policy-Making
Brent:
[36:10] That's fascinating.
Keller:
[36:11] And you mentioned how earlier in your career, the government didn't do a great job of listening to the scientists.
Could you talk about how that may have changed to where you are now, as well as where the United States stands in an international scale of listening to their scientific advisors whenmaking policy?
John:
[36:29] Yeah, yeah, so I, um.
There's always been a dialogue between science and governments, I guess, so I'm not sure that they listened less, but perhaps almost the scientists were more arrogant about their topic asbeing like, we figured out the science, you should do this now.
But clearly there are some governments that didn't use a lot of science in making decisions, but maybe people were more intuitive, you know, sort of more traditional ecologicalknowledge.
Definitely back in time, people were much more in touch with the environment and I think cultures that had more elder-oriented decision-making, you know, it was just sort of baked inthere.
But there was a period, yeah, where, or maybe some places and some governments which which haven't really used science to make decisions, and still are.
And it waxes and wanes, right? Because, I mean, in our country, right, the lobby pressure is really strong. And so, science is just one aspect of it.
I missed the second part of what you're asking there.
Keller:
[37:48] I was asking more on, like, within the global scale, does the U.S.
Do a good job of here, like working with their scientists to try to make the best policy? Yeah.
Yeah, this is a broad stroke.
John:
[38:01] Yeah, yeah. I mean, our culture is kind of a science-based culture.
So yeah, I think we do well in that way, but we're also a huge country, you know? So definitely in smaller countries, I think there's a more direct connection between science and.
[38:19] Politicians, at least that's my experience in South Africa, both in apartheid South Africa and post-apartheid South Africa, that I would land up in discussions with people who arenot scientists much more than I do here.
And here, scientists tend to speak to scientists. This is a way broad comment, right?
And so all the science policy interaction tends to happen in a very structured way.
And there are lots of forums and processes, both at the state level, local level, federal level, to ensure that the agencies do as much as they can based on science.
So the, and I guess there's, you know, the two parts of government as well, aren't there?
There's, if you like the executive branch or the sort of the career government who really are probably really good at that. And then there's the political part of government, the elected, whoare really balancing so many different things.
And sometimes some of those people don't always seem to care a lot about the science.
But I've never done their job. It must be pretty difficult to keep everybody happy.
Brent:
[39:32] Certainly. And it just seems that the more the general public can become a bit more aware, at maybe a high level of what is actually happening in the environment. Right.
Like that would be a lot more helpful to push the politics towards listening a little bit more.
John:
[39:49] It is interesting that, because I talked earlier about trying not to be an advocate and trying to always be skeptical, even of my own opinions.
And in the environmental realm, as the world has become more environmentally conscious and sensitive and caring and all the rest of it, There is some...
[40:12] Sometimes the environmental interests speak sort of, people get excited about an idea and can push and advocate and sometimes go beyond the science we have, let's put it that way.
So sometimes I feel like the science we're doing is as much to guide the environmental movement as it is to guide the people who want to screw the environment.
And so the one, you know, we'd like to think are well-intentioned and the other, I'm not sure. they're well-intentioned in a different way maybe.
It's true. But yeah, it's quite interesting how that's evolved.
So, you know, and climate change has been really interesting because there was a period, it's a little bit better now where it's all doom and gloom, because people, can't you believe me, theclimate's changing, we've been telling you for decades.
And so they kind of upped the ante all the time and started claiming things that we didn't really have the science basis for it.
It probably is right, could be right, But you know, you really, as a scientist, you sort of got to know, is this, you know, when you say this is due to climate change, you can't just say it, youactually have to have some, yeah, some reasons for it, data theories, models, whatever, some basis for it. So it's interesting.
Brent:
[41:27] Do you think we're getting more objective with the projections then?
Ongoing game of problem-solving and response
John:
[41:34] Yeah, not sure. Yeah, I mean, this is an ongoing game, all of the problems that are developing sort of as one's thinking them out, then people are responding and different interestgroups are responding.
And yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's the aim.
Brent:
[41:54] Yeah, because I feel like if people took that approach, like you talked about with the power plants next to the ocean, you want him to believe that it's impacting, but oh, it actuallywasn't impacting as much as you thought.
If there was more of that discussion of, here's the open science as it changes, I think it would be a lot less polarizing and we could actually get somewhere and be like, hey, here's the mostimpactful policy that we could possibly have, let's implement that.
And then on that note, how has the policy around protecting our kelp forest in California, how effective has that been?
John:
[42:34] Yeah, so I mean, I suppose in many ways There's not a lot of policy.
Decline of Kelp Forests and its Impact
[42:42] There's a lot of policy around fishing and overfishing, of course, you know, so, for example, abalone or even urchin fishing, whatever, they've been a lot of policy, well-thought-outpolicy about how many can you catch and, you know, how can you catch them and so on.
But in terms of the kelp forest itself, so, I think you're aware that we've lost like like 90% of our kelp forests in the last decade in California, so in particularly 2014 and 15, the same sortof weather system gave us a long drought in 13, 14, 15, made the ocean very warm, and that warm water kind of capped over the upwelling so you didn't get this nice upwelled watercoming, and it happened at just the same time as, a few other things like sea star wasting.
Sea stars, often called starfish, a disease went through them and they eat urchins, which will become clear in a moment.
[43:48] And a few different things happened at the same time, let's say, and we lost a lot of the kelp forests and they haven't bounced back.
And the kelp forest is like a forest. Like if you walk in a redwood forest or any forest, you'll see lots of birds flying around and you'll see understory and you'll see animals and so on. Sothe kelp forest is the same thing.
It's an incredible habitat. And so.
I'm trying to think if there's any policy that directly relates to kelp.
I mean, you can't go and just cut it down.
[44:18] So I guess there is a policy in that way, but it's a lot of a died back due to sort of natural causes, if you like, although anomalous, it hasn't happened in 100 years or 200 years.
So now the question is, well, how to make it come back? And this is a the socio-ecological system approach?
[44:43] Like what is most important to people and what's important to the communities that live alongside the kelp forest and who use it or catch fish, dive for urchin or something in thatplace?
And how does it relate to climate change? Was that warm event, would it have happened without climate change or is it just something that happens every few centuries by luck or badluck?
And what about that disease that killed the sea star? Trying to figure it all out. And then what management actions can you take?
For example, so why it's not bouncing back is because the urchin are eating the baby kelp plants before they can grow.
Whereas if there's lots of kelp and not too many urchins, they just eat the broken bits of kelp that fall off, if you like, like leaf litter almost.
But there's this explosion of purple urchins and not much kelp, so then they shift into the mode where they all climb up the kelp and eat the whole plant. And now it's like, and even asbaby plants, they can all just eat them.
So it's pretty sad, but the management approaches there, rather than policy approaches, you know, where maybe, some people just wanna go and smash all the urchins.
And so that's being done in an experimental way, just seems rather violent.
And the other approach is, I don't know, maybe it's just as violent is to catch those urchins and bring them.
[46:11] Here in the Marine Lab, there's some experiments happening like that, and fatten them up so that you can then sell the uni, so you know, sort of create a fishery out of it.
Because all those urchins out there, the thousands, the millions of them, they're all kind of starving.
And then the so-called zombie urchin, a starving urchin can just exist like that for years with almost no food, and as soon as the kelp comes back, it starts eating again.
Balancing Science and Policy for Environmental Management
[46:34] It's fascinating. But so that's, you know, there's a management response, but what policy response could you put in place to prevent this or to, so this is a good example of, youknow, trying to develop some science before you develop a policy. Yeah.
But you can't sit around forever developing, waiting for scientists to, you know, get the final answer.
And we're well known for navel gazing, you know. What is it?
Paralysis or analysis? I keep thinking, oh, well, hold on, we'll get it.
You know, you need to act at the same time, so. Yeah.
Brent:
[47:14] Yeah.
Keller:
[47:14] That's super interesting. I was talking to someone in Monterey about this uterine thing a couple months ago, so.
Yeah, good to know a little bit more about it.
John:
[47:23] It's, yeah, classic, you know, complex environmental problem, and then you bring humans into it equally so. Yeah. Yeah.
Brent:
[47:31] Especially when our systems are not dynamic enough to adjust as the information comes in.
John:
[47:36] Right. Right. Exactly.
Keller:
[47:37] And then stepping out a little bit, could you talk about at a broad level the research going on at the Bodega Marine Laboratory and how it is truly interdisciplinary.
John:
[47:48] Yeah, so probably, this is a fun conversation. We don't want to talk forever.
There's a lot happening here.
There are, it depends how you count it, 10 or 12 research groups, and each research group's doing something different.
So each group is led by a faculty member, although only eight of those are UC Davis, and then there are researchers who are through the California Department of Fish and Wildlife or theNational Marine Sanctuary.
And each group really has a different focus. Some people are studying shellfish pathology and disease in oysters, and some, like I am studying ocean plumbing, if you like, how does thewater move in and out of the bay or working ratio of estuary and things.
And then some are working on fissure, on toxicology, pollutant effects and others, and microbials, a lot of microbial ecology questions.
The world's full of microbes that we hardly know about. So very exciting research.
[49:03] Climate change and deoxygenation of the ocean, acidification of the ocean, many different topics.
What's really cool though is that you know, we're in different academic departments, even different colleges on campus.
So if we were on campus, we would talk to each other occasionally, whereas here, we're sort of all in the same place and our students all talk with each other.
And so it's a very rich environment for cross-fertilization of ideas.
And so a really great place for cross-disciplinary or more than just multiple disciplines, integrative studies between the disciplines, still kind of in the biophysical world, primarily.
And we do actually connect a lot with.
Colleagues who are on campus who are in the social science, economic sciences, policy sciences.
But here, the people who are based here are doing, either they're doing field work, you know, and that's why we're here.
You can walk out the door and put your toe in the ocean, or they're doing laboratory work on seaward organisms.
So we bring the ocean into the laboratory, basically, you know, big pipe brings it, goes through a bunch of tanks, and in tanks, people are doing You have a pipe that goes from the oceaninto here. Yeah, yeah, big pipes.
Brent:
[50:18] That's awesome.
John:
[50:19] Yeah, and then it goes a bunch of, a lot of little pipes.
Brent:
[50:21] Yeah.
John:
[50:21] You know, so in a lot of our labs, you can turn the faucet on and get seawater out of it.
Brent:
[50:27] That's amazing.
John:
[50:28] Yeah, but then the big tanks, I think you saw the display tanks coming in with rockfish in them.
And smaller tanks, like I talked about, the urchin work, they're keeping a bunch of urchins in tanks.
And then experimental tanks, you know, where the carbon dioxide levels are raised like ocean acidification or the water's warmer than it used to be and seeing how.
So, yeah, people are either doing that kind of work where they need this on-demand seawater system or they're doing field-based work.
And the field-based work actually is, you know, could be on the rocky shore out there, could be on the beach, could be in the Bodega Harbor, which is an estuarine, you know, felt marsh,seagrass, could be out on a boat, so we have boats that go offshore.
And then we situate it in the Bodega Marine Reserve, which is one of the University of California reserves.
And so some people out here are actually studying the coastal prairie red vegetation, or like the nematodes or beetles that live in it.
In the marine lab, we tend to be marine scientists, but the reserve has a lot of visiting scientists who do that kind of work as well.
So that's the cool thing is, yeah, it's this integration of what we get up to.
Brent:
[51:46] And then how can students get involved here?
Graduate Students and Faculty Residency
John:
[51:49] Yeah, so the, I mean...
There's quite a lot of graduate students who will be resident out here.
They might do a year of coursework in Davis, and then they will live here.
And so probably two-thirds, let's say, of the students who work for faculty, for us who are resident here, will be resident here as well.
And then a number of students who are advisors on campus will also end up being resident here because of the work they're doing.
[52:22] So they're probably twice as many faculty, as many faculty on campus who use the lab a lot as those who are resident here.
And then undergraduate, the primary way is through the classes.
So in the summer quarter, we have the two summer sessions.
One could look online if you're interested in doing this.
And we really focus on experiential education. Of course, you're studying the ocean, it's right there.
You could look out the window, but you can also go and include in the classroom the fact that we'd go out on a boat or go onto the rocks.
So there tend to be smaller classes, 20, maybe 30 at the max, sometimes less than 20.
And then you're seeing your professor every day, even if you're not in class, so you're seeing them in the corridor.
Because most students are on residence for that, people get to know each other well. It's a really incredible experience it seems like for everybody.
Next year we're planning to have a fall quarter as well.
So we'll have a bunch of new classes and I'm just trying to organize this so it fits in with the curricula for students, you know, so it's not disruptive, but actually.
Brent:
[53:37] It advances them.
John:
[53:38] Yeah, so you're not taking extra time. So particularly for the marine and coastal sciences major, they were trying to have it so it would be an option that's going to be as easy asbeing on campus.
Brent:
[53:51] That's amazing.
John:
[53:52] Yeah, so those are the two primary ways. There are some undergraduate students who have get involved in research, research internships or, or, you know, different ways.
I wish we could have more. We're trying to create more and more opportunities for that because that's, yeah, that's a great experience as well.
Brent:
[54:12] Certainly.
Being Better Stewards of the Ocean
Keller:
[54:13] That's all very amazing. We'll make sure to link to all of that.
And then as we wrap up, one final question. How can we be better stewards to the ocean?
John:
[54:21] How can we be better stewards? Yeah, that's a really good one.
I mean, at two levels, right? At the individual level, a lot of it is about pollution.
Don't, make sure you, the storm drains always like this, goes downstream, lands up in the ocean.
So wherever you're disposing of things, and if you're on a boat or near the ocean, just be aware of where things land up.
But then a lot of it's happening at the societal level of how we altering things.
[55:03] Yes, no, I should have a quick answer, right? I mean, so if you think about how the ocean is being impacted, we overfished.
So don't, you know, if you're gonna eat fish, eat fish that you know are sustainably caught.
If you're catching fish, know that you're catching in a sustainable way, which is, if it's permitted fishing in California, that's gonna be, we've polluted the ocean, so be aware of polluting theenvironment in general.
The climate change issues is a big one, but that's really, the conundrum there is that it's a global thing, but the ocean's getting affected by that.
The oceans, the coastal ocean's affected a lot by the changes in water as well, so we dewatered a lot of the rivers, and so the estuaries are different to what they used to be, well, SanFrancisco Bay and the Delta and the Delta smelt and all the rest of them. And that's exactly an example of that.
But the lack of fresh water probably has an impact throughout the Bay.
And even as I say, that fresh water, you'll see it up and down the coast.
That work hasn't been done, but I know from other rivers working a little bit in the Zambezi and Mozambique, for example, you know, the damming of the Zambezi had a huge effect onnot only the ecosystem, but the shrimp fishery or prawn fishery offshore.
[56:29] So there are myriad ways. So don't waste water. Yeah, that'll help the ocean as well.
And turn things on the other really big impacts on the ocean.
You know, the power, you ever talked about the power plant issue, that's maybe a little moot now.
So there are, be a conscious person as to, you know, and tread lightly.
So it's the same as most environments.
And then be active. I mean, if you're not, you don't have to do science to help us understand and develop the right approaches to the ocean.
So a lot of ocean is happening at a societal level through governance because our villages are not out in the ocean.
Brent:
[57:17] Yeah, certainly.
Keller:
[57:19] Well, it's been wonderful. Thank you very much for your time.
John:
[57:21] Thanks, Keller. Thanks, Brent. Thank you.