Dr. Brent Hughes takes us on a fascinating journey through California's coastal ecosystems, revealing the unexpected ways sea otters transform their environments. As an Associate Professor at Sonoma State University with a background spanning from the center of landlocked Kansas to the rugged Pacific coast, Hughes brings unique perspective to marine conservation.
The conversation explores how foundation species like kelp, seagrass, and salt marshes create the physical structure that supports entire ecosystems. Hughes shares his groundbreaking discovery that sea otters prevent coastal erosion by consuming burrowing shore crabs – research so significant it earned the cover of Nature magazine. These "crab condos" weaken marsh banks, but when otters remove the crabs, the marshes stabilize. It's a perfect example of how restoring natural food webs can solve environmental problems that human intervention struggles to fix.
California's sea otter population faces a precarious future, stalled at just 3,000 individuals despite historical numbers likely reaching 20,000-30,000. The culprit? What Hughes calls the "white shark gauntlet" preventing otters from expanding their range north or south of central California. His research suggests San Francisco Bay alone could support twice the state's current population, reveali
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (00:10):
Welcome to the Resilient Earth Podcast,
where we talk with speakers fromthe United States and around
the world about the criticalissues facing our planet and the
positive actions people aretaking, from the tiniest of
actions to the grandest ofgestures, so that we can
continue to thrive and survivefor generations to come.
(00:32):
Leigh Anne Lindsey, producerand host, along with co-hosts
and co-producers Scott and TreeMercer of Mendonoma Whale and
Seal Study, located on the SouthMendocino and North Sonoma
Coasts.
The music for this podcast isby Eric Allaman, an
(00:55):
international composer, pianistand writer living in the Sea
Ranch.
Discover more of his music,animations, ballet, stage and
film work at ericallaman.
com.
You can find Resilient Earth onSpotify, apple and Amazon
(01:18):
Podcasts, iheartradio, youtube,soundcloud and wherever you find
your podcasts.
(01:40):
On this last episode of Season 1, scott Mercer drives the
conversation with Dr Brent BHughes, associate Professor in
Marine Biology at Sonoma StateUniversity in Santa Rosa,
california.
He has a PhD from UC Santa Cruzand has co-authored numerous
abstracts, papers, technicalreports and books.
(02:02):
His research interests arecommunity ecology, marine
ecology, conservation, coastalecosystems and food webs.
Research in his lab seeks todetermine the processes that
affect the stability of coastalecosystems.
The research is focused oncoastal habitats like seagrass,
(02:24):
salt marsh and kelp, also knownas foundation species, which
provide valuable ecosystemservices, yet they are
threatened by human activities.
We'll get into thatconversation now.
I'm Leanne Lindsay.
Thank you for joining us inthis last episode of Season 1 on
Resilient Earth Radio andPodcast.
(02:45):
We'll be back with moreepisodes in the coming months.
With me today is Scott Mercerof the Mendenoma Whale and Seal
Study, and he's going to be ourhost today.
Dr. Brent Hughes (03:00):
Great.
Hi Scott, hi Brock, how are youDoing well, Thank you.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (03:06):
And Scott and his wife Teresa, or Tree
Mercer, are the co-creators ofthis show too.
They're co-producers, co-hosts,but normally I kind of run the
show.
But today, because Scott hasdone a lot of study on whales
but also seals and otters, and Ijust wanted to make sure that,
because of your vast experienceand all the papers you've
(03:27):
written from the coastlines upin British Columbia down to
Monterey, that Scott join us inasking you some of the top
questions.
But welcome to Resilient EarthRadio and Podcast.
Scott Mercer (03:41):
Thank you.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (03:42):
All right, Scott, all yours.
Scott Mercer (03:44):
Thank you, Professor Hughes.
A term that I found in yourmaterial that I was reading
yesterday was foundation species.
Just for people who aren'tfamiliar with that, could you
explain what that is?
I think I know what it is.
Could you explain what that is?
Dr. Brent Hughes (03:58):
Yeah, yeah, you could probably imagine what
it is A foundation species.
We typically kind of think ofthem as habitat forming species.
Now, a foundation speciesdoesn't have to be a habitat
forming species, but that'softentimes what we think about.
And in the ocean, especiallyhere in California, it's going
(04:19):
to be kelp, it's going to beseagrass or it's going to be
salt marshes.
Those are the foundationspecies of the ocean.
You know, if we move up to land, it's the redwoods, it's the
oaks in the grasses that formthe grasslands.
And so, a foundation species.
They're well known to createpositive species interactions.
(04:40):
So a lot of ecology, especiallyhistorically, has focused on
negative species interaction,like predator-prey, who-e2,
herbivores, diseases, parasites.
You know these are all negativethings, but my lab and a lot of
my research focuses on thepositive interactions that
result in functioning ecosystems.
(05:02):
At the foundation, the base ofit are these foundation species.
Scott Mercer (05:06):
Okay great Thanks.
So it's somewhat different thana keystone species, right yeah?
Dr. Brent Hughes (05:11):
yeah.
So if we think about ahabitat-forming species like
kelp ray or seagrass, you knowthat's a lot of biomass A
keystone species.
On the other hand, in anecosystem has a very low overall
biomass, but its effects to theecosystem are disproportionate
(05:34):
to its biomass.
Example a well-known keystoneIf you weighed everything in the
kelp forest, the sea otterwould be like 0.0001% of the
entire biomass of the kelpforest.
But its effects are huge andthat's a keystone.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (05:53):
Right, this is a good time too, scott and Dr
Hughes, just to let you knowwhere we are too.
We're just over on the coastfrom you.
Now, you're located near SonomaState University, is it?
Dr. Brent Hughes (06:07):
I'm a professor at Sonoma State
University.
You know we are 20 miles fromthe ocean, sonoma State.
We are in a coastal watershedthough, the Russian River
watershed, and you know youmight be like.
Well, why are they doing marinescience at Sonoma State?
Why are they doing marinescience at Sonoma State?
And what I tell students, assoon as they get into my marine
(06:28):
ecology class the first day, Ishow them a map in the proximity
of Sonoma State to all thesedifferent ecosystems.
So you know, within an hour Ican be at a kelp forest.
I can be at the biggest estuaryon the West Coast.
I can be at a tiny estuary onthe West Coast.
I can be in the RockyIntertidal.
I can be at a kelp forest.
I can be at the biggest estuaryon the West Coast.
I can be at a tiny estuary onthe West Coast.
(06:49):
I can be in the RockyIntertidal.
I can be at sand dunes, I canbe in the salt marsh.
So you know, it's the proximityto all these great ecosystems
that really makes the positionof, geographically, the position
of Sonoma State pretty unique.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (07:06):
And where I'm at too, is just right across
from you on the coast in theSea Ranch.
And we're right, you know.
Greater Fair Lawns is off ourcoast and Delmar Landing Marine
Preserve is right there, andthen Scott and Tree are up by
the Point Arena Lighthouse.
Dr. Brent Hughes (07:21):
Oh fun.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (07:22):
So they study the Mendocino and Sonoma
coasts and they studied the EastCoast as well for about 13, 14
years now, right, scott?
Scott Mercer (07:33):
We've been out here for our 14th year trying to
count gray whales.
Especially challenging thisyear with the decline in numbers
and the days that would go bywhen we used to have like let me
call it a whale stampede.
We'd just be looking atwhitecaps this winter, and the
spring hasn't been much better.
Dr. Brent Hughes (07:53):
A lot of mortalities of gray whales.
We have a few people studyingwhales at Sonoma State right now
.
I can't speak too much to thewhales since I'm not counting
them or studying them, but yeah,it seems kind of tragic.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (08:05):
Yeah, scott just brought on somebody from
the Marine Mammal Center down inSausalito and Josie Slothauk,
and so we just did an episode onthe gray whales and the whales
that have perished in the SanFrancisco Bay.
Scott, was it gray whales orhumpbacks?
Dr. Brent Hughes (08:22):
Oh, grays Grays.
Yeah, I've heard this, Ibelieve, from Josie I met really
recently.
This is, yeah, kind of where Iwas really alerted to the
mortality events of the graywhales and you know what's the
cause?
I think that's TBD.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (08:42):
Yeah, some of the emaciated whales too, and
then the vessel strikes.
But here in Sea Ranch there waseven a whale on the beach the
other day.
Oh really yeah.
Dr. Brent Hughes (08:52):
My lab works at Sea Ranch, and do you know
exactly where that?
Scott Mercer (08:57):
was?
Yeah, it was on a walk-on beachon Sea Ranch.
It washed in.
On Saturday Cal Academy came uphere.
They hadn't understood that thewhale was still free-floating.
It's wedged in some rocks inthere.
But they didn't come withwetsuits.
Apparently I didn't go downEnough.
People were down there and thephotos I saw.
(09:19):
I wouldn't call it immature.
That opens up too much footagefor what it might be.
But it was a, a young, theyounger humpback.
Sure it was floating on itsback but apparently fluke shots
weren't available it was kind ofkind of a mess yeah, it's.
Dr. Brent Hughes (09:36):
It's hard, maybe hard to idea if it's
flipped over.
Scott Mercer (09:40):
Yeah it was right upside down, with the ventral
pleats open and the sun beatingdown on the body.
Dr. Brent Hughes (09:46):
Oh yeah, and they deteriorate pretty fast, or
at least when they get beached.
I hear that.
Scott Mercer (09:52):
The tongue had already opened up like a small
blimp.
It made the whale look like ithad been beached.
Do you?
Dr. Brent Hughes (09:58):
know if any sharks were.
Well, not because of that whale.
Scott Mercer (10:03):
Well, it's funny, not funny, but the last time
humpback washed in was justnorth of us, just north of Point
Arena, but the beach right onthe it's right at Point Arena
and Sarah Grimes and my wife andI, Tria and I were down there
with Sarah on the beach it'sManchester Beach and we were
(10:25):
working around it and each timewe came down in the morning the
next day there'd be more bitemarks out of the area.
The whale was sort of in thewater, not in the water, yeah,
Like half and half.
Well, one day there were peopledown there and had their kids
in the water.
Dr. Brent Hughes (10:45):
Is it still around?
I mean, like these are actuallythings I'd like to know,
because you know we want toavoid, we dive and so we
actually want to avoid thoseareas when you have a dead whale
floating around.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (10:59):
Because of sharks.
Yeah, yeah exactly.
Dr. Brent Hughes (11:01):
We don't want to be near it.
So then we bite marks on ityeah, not the new one.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (11:07):
Well, scott and Tree were in actually a
documentary a couple of yearsback that a couple of Berkeley
students had created and it wascalled Washed Ashore, and data
has changed since then, but itwas a very good documentary on
what happens along our coastlinefrom Baja up to how far was it,
(11:29):
scott?
Was it all the way up toWashington State?
Scott Mercer (11:32):
The UME was yeah, the documentary stopped with us,
started in Baja and ended withus, the two of us sitting on a
cliff out there.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (11:41):
By the Point Arena Lighthouse right yeah
that's where it ended.
That made a big splash at theMendocino Film Festival.
Everybody cheered when they sawthe lighthouse Scott go ahead
with the questions that you'vegot about sea otters, because
this question does keep comingup in talks that you give Well
(12:01):
there's a question I wanted toask Dr Hughes for a moment here
when I was looking at yourwebsite last night.
Scott Mercer (12:04):
There's a question I wanted to ask Dr Hughes for a
moment here when I was lookingat your website last night.
There's a photo of you withclams You're kind of in the mud,
and then there's another onewhere it looks like you're
whispering to a shark.
What is that you're holding?
Dr. Brent Hughes (12:17):
So that clam one, that was a moment of
serendipity, kind of caught witha you know, a digital camera in
me.
It's a funny story.
That was from Alaska, southeastAlaska, prince of Wales Island.
We were working on a project upthere that was focused on sea
otter recovery and how it wouldimpact not only the ecosystems
(12:41):
but the people, specifically theindigenous communities, and for
me it was kind of my group.
We were really wanting to knowwell, what is the seagrass like
in areas where sea otters haverecovered versus not recovered,
and we made this discoveryaround 2013 or so in California
(13:04):
that sea otters, much like they,have these positive impacts to
kelp forests by consumingurchins.
They can also be hence the termkeystone.
We found that they could bekeystones in seagrass beds in
central California.
Now, that is specifically oneestuary, elkhorn Slough, which
(13:33):
is you know it's a significantestuary in Central California.
You know it has about 20,currently about 20 hectares of
seagrass, which is you know,it's a good amount for
California.
But in Southeast Alaska there'sabout 10,000 kilometers of
shoreline that are covered withseagrass, so it's a much bigger
area and the sea otters werejust expanding like crazy and we
(13:54):
started looking at the seagrassitself and saying like okay,
simple question do we see moreseagrass or healthier seagrass
in areas with sea otters versusnot sea otters?
That was kind of the workinghypothesis and the way it works,
the food web.
It's somewhat similar toCalifornia's food web in some
ways, but in some ways it'sdifferent.
(14:17):
And one big way that it'sdifferent is that they have in
Southeast Alaska the clams.
The clam populations are just,especially in the intertidal
zone, are just dense, and sothat picture that my grad
student at the time, jessicaSaavedra, took of me was I said
it was serendipity because weshowed up to our site to look at
(14:40):
our seagrass at this one sitethat had not really experienced
significant sea otter recoveryby that point and there was a
black bear on the beach and theprotocol is if there's a black
bear on the beach you can't getoff the boat to go do the work.
We have protocols to kind of tryto scare, spook the bear to get
(15:03):
off the beach so we can go doour work.
This bear was so stubborn so wewere just sitting there on the
boat and the tide went out andso the boat was literally high
and dry.
Eventually the bear left and wewere just stuck there.
So I just started.
I said, hey, jessica, let'sjust start digging in the mud
like we're a sea otter.
And so that was me digging inthe mud.
(15:25):
I kind of used the shovel, butreally I just used my hands.
Sea otters dig with their pawsto get these clams.
That's what I dug up and it wasjust like, oh my gosh, well,
look at all these clams, whichis really important for the
indigenous communities.
Right, they want to protectthose clams.
But what we found was that thegrass, the seagrass itself and
(15:46):
the clams kind of compete forspace in the mud.
Right, a nice, healthy seagrassbed will put on big, thick
rhizomes and all these roothairs, and so there's this
competition below ground.
And so what we found was thatby the sea otters removing all
these clams, it actuallystimulated more growth and
(16:10):
bigger biomass of the plants ofseagrass.
And so that was kind of the ahamoment, that kind of really
kind of helped us, guide us tofigure out well, what are they
doing in this ecosystem?
There are good things and thereare bad things, the bad being
the just almost wholesaleremoval of these clam beds, the
(16:33):
good being that you get biggerseagrass, which ends up
benefiting the fish.
That's the story behind that one, the shark one I don't know
what it is.
It's probably us doing leopardshark sampling in Drake's Estero
I believe that's where it camefrom.
I had a student, Alyssa Cooper,one of my first students, who
(16:55):
was interested in the roleestuaries play for supporting
leopard shark nurseries.
What we were finding is inCalifornia that the leopard
sharks yeah, they'll useestuaries as kind of nursery
grounds, and Drake's Estero inparticular, we think, is a major
(17:15):
nursery ground for leopardsharks.
And so Alyssa was just doingstudies.
And it's cool when you do theshark studies, you know these
leopard sharks are beautifulanimals.
I think they're the mostbeautiful animals on the planet
and so you catch them in a netand then we're trying to figure
out well, what are they eating?
You catch the shark, you flipit over, kind of like we were
(17:38):
just talking about the whale.
You know, if you flip the sharkover, it goes into a state of
what's called tonic immobility.
It basically falls asleep whenit's flipped over and this might
sound brutal and stuff.
But then we put in a hose andpump water through it.
It doesn't affect the animalbut it kind of forces it to
throw up and regurgitateeverything it just ate, and then
(18:00):
we collect that.
We collect its vomit, thenbring it back to the lab and
identify, well, what the heckwas this thing eating.
So we can we can actuallyfigure out what it was eating
without having to watch, youknow, and try to track.
That's really hard in a in avery turbid estuary.
So yeah, that was a from aleopard shark study, I believe
(18:21):
yeah, I was staring at that.
Scott Mercer (18:22):
It had a shark's face.
It it was the opposite, theother end.
I couldn't quite figure outwhat that was, but it was
clearly a shark face.
When I blew the picture up, youcould see the uh.
Look like I had a camouflageshirt.
I was curious as to what youwere holding there.
Dr. Brent Hughes (18:40):
Yeah, yeah, and it might've been like I my
waitaders.
I might have had my waders on,and they're camouflaged too, so
yeah.
Scott Mercer (18:49):
Everybody who's been to Alaska has a bear story
or a story that might have beena bear story.
Dr. Brent Hughes (18:59):
Luckily on this island there are no
grizzlies.
They're interesting black bearsstories.
You know we're always kind of.
They love being on the beaches.
You know, either they'reforaging there or whatever.
Yeah, we're often competing forspace on the beach with the
black bears in Alaska.
Scott Mercer (19:17):
I went kayak fishing around the Tikchik area.
Each night we went out.
There was eight interconnectedlakes in this Tikchik area.
Each night we went out, therewas eight interconnected lakes
in this Tikchik.
Well, it's Alaska's idea of astate park.
It's like a million and a halfacres from one end to the other,
so we had plenty of room tokayak around in.
(19:38):
And one night I went out fishingand I was pulling an Arctic
char into the boat, the kayak,and then I figured there wasn't
enough room for me in the char.
So I was paddling back into thebeach and throwing the char up
on the sand and then I realizedthat I was going to have to go
get it.
My party was back where we hadour tents, so there was really
(20:00):
nobody between me and where mygroup was friends that I brought
with me it was one of thefastest dashes I ever made to
pick up some trout off a beachGetting back to the kayak and
then we cleaned and cookedeverything back there.
Well, the next morning we wokeup and there were grizzly tracks
right up to the edge of ourtents and then it turned around.
I decided not to mess around.
(20:20):
I turned around and went backinto the woods.
So good.
Dr. Brent Hughes (20:29):
That's wild.
Oh, yeah, you know these.
Yeah, you spend enough time inthe outside, in nature, doing
these things.
You know you're gonna haveencounters every once in a while
and you know, luckily we haveall the safety protocols.
You know for what happens.
You know if there's a whiteshark spotted or a bear being
spotted, you know it's actuallygood to talk about this stuff
(20:49):
because then we can approachscience especially, you know,
for us a lot more safer.
And so, yeah, these are, youknow, good stories to share.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (21:01):
You mentioned too the Elkhorn Slough
down there just off.
It's in inland from MossLanding.
Dr. Brent Hughes (21:09):
Yeah, so it's just right.
It's the heart of Monterey Bay.
It's an interesting estuarybecause the mouth of the estuary
sits at the head of theMonterey Bay Submarine Canyon.
It's a great place because youcan study kind of deep sea
dynamics too.
I don't necessarily do that,but you can just pull in right
(21:29):
out of the harbor of MossLanding and you're in a canyon,
and so it's been great for notonly estuary studies just
because of the access, but alsoplaces like the Monterey Bay
Aquarium Research Institute, oneof the world leaders in deep
sea ecology.
Monterey Bay Aquarium ResearchInstitute one of the world
leaders in deep sea ecology yeah, just the benefit of having
(21:49):
that canyon sitting right thereis cool, and then you can even
look at how these ecosystems areconnected too.
A lot of what gets produced inElkhorn Slough, which is a very
nutrient-enriched ecosystem,actually makes its way down into
the canyon.
The connection here is, youknow all these row crops of like
(22:13):
lettuce and strawberries andBrussels sprouts they require a
lot of nutrients.
That ends up getting intoElkhorn Slough and it stimulates
a lot of algal blooms, of greenalgae in particular, and that
green algae ends up making itsway down to the canyon and
actually subsidizes invertebratecommunities down in the canyon.
So there's actually a linkagefrom the Salinas Valley
(22:34):
strawberry all the way down tothe canyon and in the deep sea
in the Monterey Canyon.
So there's these really neatecosystem connections there too
that you can study, and it'skind of a rare thing to be able
to do that.
Scott Mercer (22:48):
You know most people study the deep sea have
to go, you know, far away, andso it's cool when it's just you
know it's just right there yourdocumentary, the film Zach
Cliver, you met you sent me alink to it again and I had seen
it on one of the nature shows afew years ago.
The whole thing about ElkhornSlough was really new to me and
(23:11):
interesting, but what I foundkind of even funny to watch was
the crabs on the side of thebank.
So you talk a little bit aboutthat.
It reminded me of like theywere all living in high rises,
it seemed to be a bummer highrises.
Dr. Brent Hughes (23:24):
We call them crab condos and you know crabs
are a very natural part of, youknow, especially estuaries,
coastal systems.
If they're left unchecked bypredators they can be very
damaging to marshes and this wasreally well described on the
East Coast in New England, saltmarshes.
Scott Mercer (23:46):
Can I interrupt you for a second?
Yeah, if you don't mind.
What is the genus and speciesof these, since they're green?
Are they Carcinus manis?
Dr. Brent Hughes (23:57):
Yes, so there's a couple of crabs that
we've been studying in aroundthe marshes of Elkhorn Slough.
One is the European green crab,Carcinus manis, the other one,
which is a native crab, it's thestriped shore crab,
Pachygrapsis crassipes, and it'skind of like two different
stories.
(24:17):
The European green crab, atleast in Elkhorn Slough, don't
really use the marshes, they usekind of the areas just below
the salt marsh, and what wefound was that the sea otter
loves eating those Europeangreen crabs, which are these
really notorious invaders,especially on our coast.
(24:38):
We think the invasion startedin San Francisco Bay.
It made its way down to ElkhornSlough in the late 80s and it's
slowly been moving its way upthe coast and now these green
crabs are in Alaska, and thesegreen crabs are known to eat
other native crabs, nativespecies, oysters, so they have
kind of these really harmfuleffects that are not desirable.
(25:01):
What we found in Elkhorn Sloughis that the sea otters are
really good at keeping thosepopulation numbers down, and so
that was a big finding, becausewe've also been finding that in
places like Bolinas Lagoon, forexample, eradication by humans
is almost it doesn't work.
In fact sometimes it does theopposite effect.
(25:23):
You try to eradicate and youactually end up getting more
green crab.
This is another example ofrestoring a food web leads to
these positive benefits to theecosystem.
In this case it's invasionresistance.
Now these other crabs, thenative crabs, which are smaller
than green crabs, the stripedshore crab they do use the salt
(25:44):
marshes and they do burrow intothe salt marshes and into the
banks and create these crabcondos, which you know is
basically Swiss cheese, and theyeat the roots of the salt marsh
because that's where all thegood nutrients and sugars are,
and they destabilize the banks.
And so what we found as we'rechasing these sea otters around,
(26:08):
the big discovery was madewhere we found that they were
using salt marshes, they wereeating these crabs around salt
marshes, they were hauling outthe pups, the mothers were
putting their pups on the saltmarsh to rest while they would
go get the Pachygrapsis crabs,the striped shore crabs.
And over time what we found wasby them removing these shore
(26:32):
crabs, they started stabilizingthe banks.
And so in Elkhorn Sloughthere's been this big problem
with erosion.
Over the last 80 years or so,the banks of the estuary have
just been eroding away.
There was about 50% loss ofsalt marsh because of this
erosion.
The sea otters pretty muchstopped the erosion.
(26:54):
There's still a little bit oferosion happening, but by just
removing these crabs they wereable to really solidify those
banks and slow down to theerosion to the point where it
almost is non-existent.
That was a huge finding, notjust for the sea otter but
really all of nature, wherewe're thinking about eroding
systems and how predators canaffect the geomorphology of
(27:21):
aquatic ecosystems.
The big analogy here is thegray wolf reintroduction to
Yellowstone.
There's a lot of documentedpositive effects.
None of it was experimental.
So we were the first ones toreally experimentally test.
So we put cages out on thebanks to keep out sea otters of
(27:41):
certain areas to test thishypothesis that sea otters can
slow down erosion, and thatstudy took about 12 years but we
just published it last year inNature and it got the cover of
Nature, which was reallyexciting for us scientists.
Number one magazine there for usscientists.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (28:00):
Number one magazine there.
Dr. Brent Hughes (28:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's the top science publication
in the world, and so that endedup being another big discovery.
So it's basically, if you canconclude it, all what we've
found with the sea otter isexpect the unexpected, and
there's a long history with whywe're just now seeing them using
(28:24):
salt marshes.
It's because they've been in astate of recovery.
They were almost hunted toextinction in California To the
point, in the early 1900s it wasthought they were extinct until
about the 1910s, 1920s,something like that A population
of about 50 animals wasdiscovered off the Big Sur
coastline, and so since then ourpopulation of sea otters has
(28:47):
been expanding north and south,but it's been a slow expansion.
Ecology basically started in aperiod where a lot of animal
hunting was almost concludingbecause we had hunted almost all
the, especially the marinemammals.
We had hunted them all, and sowhen ecology started, it was
(29:10):
like all these populations ofmarine mammals were super duper
small, and then we thought, ohwell, this is just how it is,
this is the baseline and we werewrong.
This is the baseline and wewere wrong Because as these
(29:35):
animals start expanding theirpopulations and there's
protected areas like ElkhornSlough where humans can't access
we're seeing they're reallyunraveling themselves and their
true what we call the nichebreadth, their ability to use
different ecosystems, theirability to use different
ecosystems.
There's been a period ofdiscovery over the last 15 years
, just kind of following theseanimals around and letting them
tell us what they're doing andwhat they're capable of doing,
and that's been, I think, reallyexciting.
Then you know, the conclusionwith the sea otter is expect the
(29:57):
unexpected and wherever they go, there's going to be change.
So for a scientist, if you'reguaranteed change, it's really
exciting because you know that'swhat we were really kind of
trying to figure out.
Well, what's driving change?
Either good or bad.
Scott Mercer (30:14):
Yeah good, back in 1974 or 5, I worked that Cal
Fish and at the time it was CalFish and Game Sea Otters
Population Survey and my stationwas out on Point Sur, which at
that time the Navy was in chargeof.
So I got out there about anhour early.
(30:34):
I was driven out there andbegan counting from the land and
then a couple of fish andwildlife people were going to
fly over and that was one of thetests on what you're missing or
how many you think you'reseeing with all the kelp
floating around.
But a few weeks later I got theconclusion of the survey.
(30:57):
Once the statisticians got done.
The population at that time wasa little over 1,500.
They come up with.
Well, what is it now?
I can't really get it.
Dr. Brent Hughes (31:06):
It's 3,000 in the entire state.
It's about doubled.
Scott Mercer (31:11):
And it was doubled in a lot of decades.
What?
Dr. Brent Hughes (31:13):
year was that, scott, about 74 or 5.
Yeah, so it's doubled sincethen.
So that's 50 years, yeah, andyou might be like yay, doubled.
But it sits at this thresholdof 3,000, where it's actually a
threshold.
That was kind of established bythe US Fish and Wildlife
Service, who manages the seaotter, and they established for
(31:38):
the Endangered Species Act thisthreshold of 3,000 animals.
The population has been stuckthere for at least 10 years, so
it's not necessarily growing,it's not going down, it's just
stuck at 3,000.
They need to go, either movenorth or south.
That's their only option Ateither end, which is Santa
(32:00):
Barbara and south of SanFrancisco, that's where the
range limit is north and south.
At both ends of those are verysignificant great white shark
populations.
We call it the white sharkgauntlet that the sea otters
just can't get past.
We will see sea otters pop up inSan Francisco or sometimes
(32:22):
Drake's, estero or Tomales Bay.
They usually are males, so thatdoesn't do anything for the
population and they'll stickaround, usually for a couple
weeks, and then they'll take off, knowing that there are no
mates here.
There might be plenty of foodbut no mates, and they'll try to
go, you know, swim back down.
(32:42):
Oftentimes these otters arecoming from, like Santa Cruz or
Monterey.
Some will make it back, a lotof them, don't, you know
probably because they get eatenby something or starved to death
or whatever it might be.
The problem is that you need atleast one female and a male to
expand the population.
That's been the big problem, weknow.
(33:03):
In San Francisco Bay alone,historically, there was probably
10,000 sea otters.
So just that one estuary, youknow, had tripled the amount of
sea otters that we currentlyhave in the entire state.
The true number, what we callthe carrying capacity, how many
sea otters could be supported inthe state, you know, is
probably 20,000 to 30,000 seaotters.
(33:24):
We're, you know, at the statewhere it's just, they're just
not really recovering.
The big risk for the sea otters, like if there's a big oil
spill or a big disease event,the population's still in kind
of jeopardy, and so therefore,it's listed under the Endangered
Species Act as threatened Notendangered, but threatened.
Scott Mercer (33:46):
Yeah, after what happened in Alaska with the
Exxon Valdez, just wipe out thispopulation along here very
quickly.
Dr. Brent Hughes (33:54):
Oh yeah, yeah, and that's the fear, at least
from the sea otter conservationperspective.
Scott Mercer (34:00):
Yeah, some of the stories I heard from the medical
people who worked with theotters who were soaked in oil
when they got them internally,when they did a necropsy on them
.
Dr. Brent Hughes (34:12):
They're just falling apart inside, yeah yeah,
yeah, the sea otter did notfare well and that was probably
I think it was basically thelast species to really start
recovering after that oil spill.
You know, it took 30 years orwhatever, and they might still
be recovering to some degree andso, yeah, that was devastating.
(34:35):
Really kind of highlighted howimpactful the oil spills can be,
for the oil spills can be.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (34:45):
I mean there's discussions right now in
our government to open up oildrilling off of Sea Ranch
Gualala Point Arena.
This whole coastline.
Dr. Brent Hughes (34:51):
Yeah, you know , I think the community, if the
community doesn't want that, youknow, the community really
needs to band together and voicetheir opinions.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (35:01):
Yeah, there was an open comment period there
for a while, until June 16th.
Dr. Brent Hughes (35:06):
Oh, really yeah Okay.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (35:07):
It wasn't widely, you know.
Dr. Brent Hughes (35:10):
I didn't even hear about this, I didn't even
know.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (35:12):
News announcement, nothing like that.
I mean.
I shared it on social media.
Richard Charter of the OceanFoundation had put together a
website where to go to sign upand report what you feel to the
government, but that closedalready June 16th, so we're
(35:33):
waiting to see what happens withthat.
But we can still do something,even though that comment period
has ended, and it's importantthat those that feel that we
should be extractive and goafter these limited resources,
the damage that it can cause tothe marine systems and fishing
(35:53):
and tourism along our coast.
Dr. Brent Hughes (35:57):
That's not good.
Yeah, it's hard, especiallywhen the kelp forests are
already struggling, reallystruggling.
There's a lot of differenttypes of communities in that
region, from fishing toresidential, to the indigenous
communities.
Yes, the Kishaya BanapomoIndians.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (36:18):
They're right here, they're all around
us the Kishaya.
Dr. Brent Hughes (36:21):
Yeah, and I don't think that would be
desirable for them, I wouldimagine.
Well, it happened before atotally different time.
You know, with the Point Reyesin the you know the 60s right,
there was that debate of turningit into a suburb of San
Francisco and the communityreally banded together to put a
stop to that and then they got anational park out of it.
(36:43):
Yeah, that's unfortunate.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (36:49):
Now, scott, you have brought up a couple of
times how reintroducing seaotters along the Mendocino,
sonoma Coast could be almostimpossible.
I wanted you to talk with DrBrent Hughes about that.
Scott Mercer (37:08):
Yeah, when I've given a talk here since two
years ago, suddenly I don't knowwho lit the match, but there
was all this talk here aboutbringing sea otters in and
people.
Well, it was before the abalonediving and so forth harvest
ended.
The divers, as you can imagine,were not too keen on the idea,
(37:29):
and other people were, and.
But just a matter of pointingout that there's no place for
the otters to go here, yeah,kind of put a high blush on that
.
Dr. Brent Hughes (37:42):
Yeah, right now, especially given the state
of the kelp forests, you wouldthink that or at least I do that
if you want to grow apopulation or put sea otters
somewhere where they're notcurrently, the estuaries are the
(38:04):
places to go.
The estuaries up here inNorthern California are a lot
more stable than the kelp forest.
They have a ton of food andhabitat and the most know sea
otter restoration program thathas existed for california has
been in the central coast inelkhorn slough.
(38:25):
When the monterey bay aquariumrehabilitates their sea otters
and puts them so, they takestranded juvenile sea otters
that lost their mom.
They get raised by a surrogatemother at the aquarium to learn
how to be a sea otter and eatand hunt and they get put back
in Elkhorn Slough and nowbecause of that, elkhorn Slough
(38:50):
has the highest concentration ofsea otters in the state of
California and there's nowpopulations in Elkhorn Slough
that have never seen a kelpforest.
They just stay in the state ofCalifornia and there's now
populations in Elkhorn Sloughthat have never seen a kelp
forest.
They just stay in the slough.
There's a lot of healthyecosystems, estuaries in
particular, like Drake's, estero.
We did some modeling work and,looking at Tomas Bay.
(39:11):
We found that those two systemscould support about 300 sea
otters.
We've done some modeling workfor San Francisco Bay this is
all published, by the way toofor San Francisco Bay, using the
current kind of habitatavailability, not the historic,
because a lot of things havechanged in the Bay we believe
that the San Francisco Bay couldsupport currently, in its
(39:34):
current state, about 5,000 to6,000 sea otters, which would
essentially triple thepopulation of california.
I totally agree.
You know, like the kelp forest,like I want to put a sea otter
out here in the kelp forestthere are, there's very little
kelp and all the urchins arestarving to death.
Um so, uh, you know the preywould be would not be all that
(39:57):
great, but in the estuary it's atotally different story.
Scott Mercer (40:00):
Yeah, when you were talking, I thought of the
Garcia River I don't know ifyou're familiar with that here
off of Point Arena.
Dr. Brent Hughes (40:08):
Yeah, a little bit.
Scott Mercer (40:10):
That seemed to be something positive you could say
about bringing sea otters backin the area, when you were
talking about elkhorn slew andhow I haven't done much trudging
or any trudging up and down um,that river bank.
Yeah, a couple of birdingfriends off and on, but um, you
know just how that compares.
And the other thing a few yearsago leanne was off to your
(40:34):
northwest.
There she, she, took herself ona birthday trip.
You went kayaking up one of therivers, I don't know was it the
Albion or one of those up north.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (40:43):
Oh, I was just about to say Big River up
by Mendocino.
Scott Mercer (40:47):
You wrote on Facebook or to me that you'd
seen a lot of sea otters up inthere and I said, no, I don't
think so.
Dr. Brent Hughes (40:52):
I said why they're river otters, river,
otters River otters, riverotters yeah, river otters can be
tricky, you know they could.
You know the river otter iscool and the river otter got a
really bad name too, becausethey should be, you know, river
slash, coastal otters orsomething.
Because river otters canbasically can feed on the same
(41:13):
exact things that sea otters canfeed on Mussels, clams, crabs.
But they're also unlike the seaotter, which is a horrible
fisher.
Sea otters are terrible atcatching fish, to the point
where fish are really not evenpart of their diet, but the
river otters are good atcatching fish.
So the river otter diet is justinsane.
(41:35):
It includes both terrestrial,aquatic, marine animals, but
there's distinctions between thetwo.
You know, the river otter isabout a third of the size of the
sea otter.
River otters also don't floaton their backs like the sea
otter, so a good telltale signif you think it's a sea otter,
(41:56):
you'll know if it ends upfloating on its back at some
point, because that's somethingthat the the river otters just
don't do and it's actually kindof fun to think about.
Well, you know, if sea ottersmade it up here, what would that
mean for the river otters?
You know, I don't think theywould be impacted at all,
because their diets are so broadthat they would just ship their
(42:16):
diets to whatever we saw.
Saw it with the leopard sharksin Elkhorn Slough.
The leopard sharks in the 70sand before the sea otters came
back to Elkhorn Slough, wereprimarily eating crabs.
They resurveyed the sharks.
To compare the 70s to the 1990s, which was about a decade and a
(42:37):
half after the otters came backto the estuary and the leopard
sharks were now eating allfatting keeper worms, which are,
these?
Just big worms that burrow intothe sediments but are a much
more difficult prey item to getthan, like a red rock crab or
something like that.
So the sea otters, yeah, theyare usually the dominant
(42:59):
predator when they move intotheir ecosystems and it causes
the food web to kind of totallychange, and I would imagine it'd
be the same for the riverotters too.
Yeah, absolutely.
Scott Mercer (43:11):
When Leanne put that on Facebook I think it was
I told her no and why.
But at the time I thought well,I'm pretty sure there isn't a
remnant population up here and Idon't think a couple have made
it up here.
But never say never.
Dr. Brent Hughes (43:31):
Well, you know , it was a couple years ago.
Two or three years ago a femaleshowed up in Drake's estero.
That was a tagged female,meaning the monterey bay
aquarium had tagged it and cameswam up from monterey and she
was in the estero for about twoweeks.
We had people watching her feed, forage on and and it was guess
(43:54):
what crab and it was reallyexciting because we're like,
okay, if she just stays thereand then a male shows up, then
that's the start of a population.
That was the first female thatwe've seen up here and the
females have a very small homerange.
They don't move very far fromwhere they're born.
It's usually, on average of,you know, less than six
(44:17):
kilometers they'll move in theirlifetime.
So they have a small home range.
The males, especially juveniles, will just swim wherever.
It was really exciting therefor a minute and then we lost
the signal or the aquarium lostthe signal and I don't know
where she ever ended, but thatwas for two weeks.
(44:38):
It was a very exciting time atDrake's Estero.
Scott Mercer (44:41):
You get a merit badge for going across the bay.
Dr. Brent Hughes (44:44):
Yeah, she deserved one yeah.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (44:48):
Could you tell us just in these last few
minutes?
Here too, I'd like to know whatcourses you're teaching there
at Sonoma State University andwhat some of your plans are
going forward.
Dr. Brent Hughes (45:01):
Yeah, so Sonoma State.
I teach a variety of primarilyecology classes.
Currently I teach well.
This semester I'll teach anupper division ecology course.
In the spring I teach marineecology and then I teach a
variety of graduate courses,primarily in statistics and
(45:23):
coding.
Ecology is turned into a verystatistic-heavy field.
Making sure the students havethe tools that they need when
they go into the workforce isreally important, especially how
to manage data, how to analyzedata, things like that.
My courses are, especially whenI teach ecology.
They're heavily geared towardsgetting students into the field
(45:47):
and getting those experiences.
So experiential learningexperiences and what better
place to do it than the SonomaCounty and Marin County too?
I take my students.
All you know it's all aboutlearning the ecosystems and
natural history behind our localecosystems.
So it's a fabulous you knowopportunity for me to be able to
(46:09):
teach in an outdoor setting.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (46:11):
You should connect with Scott and Tree too,
I was thinking.
Dr. Brent Hughes (46:14):
That'd be great.
Yeah, no, we're always lookingfor people to connect with in
the field.
A lot of our trips, you know,we take to Point Reyes and to
the Sonoma Coast.
We, you know, we go to CarmetBeach to go to the Rocky
Intertidal.
We'll go up to Fort Ross tolearn about all our kelp forest
restoration work that we do upthere and marine mammals as well
(46:35):
.
So, yeah, it's all about kindof providing these experiences,
which is kind of how I getreally fired up about teaching.
Scott Mercer (46:43):
Yeah, absolutely, have you met Richard Charter.
I don't think so I don't think.
So he's in Bodega Bay, andwhat's the name of the group
he's with?
Leigh Anne Lindsey (46:55):
The Ocean Foundation.
He's a senior fellow there forabout 30 years oh geez.
Dr. Brent Hughes (47:00):
Okay, I should probably know him.
Scott Mercer (47:02):
He's a great community resource in politics
especially.
Dr. Brent Hughes (47:05):
Absolutely what's going on there yeah.
Scott Mercer (47:07):
Conservation ecology.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (47:09):
He's a force to be reckoned with that
Richard.
Charter.
Dr. Brent Hughes (47:14):
Well, I'll have to look him up for sure
We'll get you connected too.
Okay, that'd be great.
Yeah, I've worked with theocean foundation in the past on
various projects, but it's beena while, so, yeah, it would be
great to get connected with themwhat got you down this path?
Leigh Anne Lindsey (47:31):
I just wanted to understand more about
your background and who you areand how you ended up here.
Dr. Brent Hughes (47:38):
Well, I like to say I'm the most famous
marine ecologist from the stateof Kansas.
Scott Mercer (47:48):
From the Hall of Fame huh Middle of the country.
Dr. Brent Hughes (47:51):
I grew up in Kansas, Kansas City suburbs.
My mom is actually from a towncalled Lebanon, Kansas, which is
the geographic center of theUnited States.
You can't get further away froman ocean if you tried.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (48:04):
I heard about this.
Dr. Brent Hughes (48:05):
Yeah, I graduated from a college in the
Midwest called Truman StateUniversity, which is in Missouri
.
I got a bachelor's degree thereand in my final semester there
you know, there's all theseposters in the hallways kind of
advertising different coursesand I saw a course that was
(48:25):
offered by the University ofOregon at the Oregon Institute
of Marine Biology for summerpost-baccalaureate courses in
marine ecology and marine animalbehavior.
I'm like, well, I have nothingto do.
This sounds like fun.
I've only been to the, you know, spent, you know, maybe 10 days
total in the ocean, all on theEast Coast at beaches.
(48:47):
And so I drove out to Oregon inmy Jeep and got there and it was
, you know, the very first dayof class.
We went to the Rocky Intertidaland I thought I was on a
different planet and so I wasalready hooked.
And then I, you know, justtalked to my professors there.
(49:08):
I'm like asking them, like youcan get a job just counting
these things.
They're like, yeah, that's whatI do.
And then, right there, in aboutfive minutes, I knew that what
is what I wanted to do with therest of my life is marine
ecology, and so I had to moveback to midwest, save up some
money and then I moved back outand went uh enrolled at moss
(49:31):
landing marine labs for for mymaster's and then that led to a
ph at UC Santa Cruz and apostdoc at Duke and Friday
Harbor Labs in Washington, andthen eventually I got the job
offer at Sonoma State in 2018.
I've been in California since2021, primarily in Santa Cruz,
(49:55):
and then the last eight years orso I've been up here in Sonoma.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (50:01):
Thank you for that.
I was actually wondering aboutthose green crab.
You mentioned something abouthow eradication efforts
sometimes boomeranged.
How could that happen?
Dr. Brent Hughes (50:13):
You know I can't tell you the exact way it
happens because I wasn't a partof that study but a colleague of
mine named Ted Grosholtz who'skind of one of the green crab
marine invasion experts on ourcoast.
They wrote a big paper in theProceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences on it.
(50:35):
You would have to ask him aboutthe mechanism because I can't
just tell you off the top of myhead.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (50:40):
It's okay.
I just thought I was curious.
I was thinking really excited,no, I'm curious too.
Dr. Brent Hughes (50:45):
I don't know if it's like you know.
They get in the trap and thefemales release, you know, all
their eggs I have.
No, I'm not exactly sure whatthe mechanism is, but it was
surprising and it was like, dangwell, what's the solution now?
Leigh Anne Lindsey (50:59):
Because I was listening to Sheila Seamans.
She's the executive director ofthe Noyo Center for Marine
Science and she was saying howyou've got to try different
things because sometimes whatyou think might be a good
conservation or restorationtactic actually has the opposite
effect.
Dr. Brent Hughes (51:15):
Yeah, it happens, I'd heard that before.
Yeah, it happens.
And then so, modern dayconservation, it's all about
adaptive management, right?
So you have a goal it might berestoration, it might be, you
know, shoreline protection,whatever and you implement, you
know the plan, and then youassess and if it doesn't work,
(51:39):
then you go back to the drawingboard.
Yeah, so that's kind of a lotof how conservation?
Leigh Anne Lindsey (51:46):
works these days and ergo why statistics are
important.
Dr. Brent Hughes (51:49):
Exactly, since we can't count everything.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (51:55):
We're so dependent on statistics.
That's why, scott and Tree,what you guys do, you're
providing data all the time.
Scott Mercer (52:00):
Yeah, we're trying to provide data.
I was going to mention to Brentthat I'm from New Hampshire,
back in New England, so greencrabs there are about as popular
as athletes' foot.
Yeah, I grew up being told tocrush those when you see them.
But that's also the same groupof ancestors who thought pulling
legs off a starfish was goingto kill them.
(52:20):
Yeah, instead of a populationexplosion yeah, they can
fragment.
Dr. Brent Hughes (52:35):
Yeah, so the invasion first happened.
Yeah, obviously on the EastCoast and you know, moved west,
we think with oysters and yeah,so that you know the spread of
invaders is.
You know usually we think oflike boats and ballast water and
stuff like that.
But you know you can get it.
You know the aquarium trade youknow often could be a culprit
for invasions.
This case I believe it was thetransport of live oysters to the
(52:57):
west coast.
Scott Mercer (52:58):
Yeah, when the talk out here turned a few well,
it was the transport of liveoysters to the West Coast.
Yeah, when the talk out hereturned a few well, seven or
eight years ago, to crushingurchins, then I said, well, I
came from an area where pullingthis or that apart was supposed
to be a remedy too, and so youknow, find out first about that.
Yeah, hammers and smashingurchins, yeah.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (53:18):
These are the purple urchins.
Yeah, these are the purpleurchins you're talking about
correct?
Dr. Brent Hughes (53:21):
Yeah, they must be, and so we do kelp
forest restoration in Sonoma andManasino.
We work with the commercialurchin divers who are kind of
not working right now becausethere's really not a fishery
because of the kelp forestdecline.
Even though there's billions ofurchins, they're just basically
(53:42):
empty shells.
We have the commercial urchindivers basically hand harvest
these urchins.
We don't smash.
It's a very sensitive issue forsome of the indigenous
communities up here to smashnative animals, and so we have
the commercial urchin divershand harvest.
There was a big push to try tofatten them up after they're
(54:05):
harvested and try to sell themon the market.
It didn't quite work out.
So, you know, as we planned it,so a lot of the urchins will
get turned into compost For thecommunities we're working with.
There's a positive you knowaspect to that.
You know, of removing,wholesale removal of urchins.
We try to turn it into apositive thing.
(54:25):
So yeah, we don't smash, butthey do in Central California
and they do in SouthernCalifornia and elsewhere.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (54:33):
Well, they are up at Fort Bragg.
The Watermen's Alliance aredoing it in Casper Cove, yeah.
Dr. Brent Hughes (54:39):
Casper Cove is the one location in Northern
California where there issmashing happening and that's a
really community-driven effortthere.
Yeah, you know.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (54:50):
The indigenous are involved in that.
Dr. Brent Hughes (54:53):
Yeah, we kind of respect whatever they want.
You know they're our partnerson this stuff too, so we work
with them and their beliefsystems and we think it's a good
(55:15):
of success with our restoration, which is a really great thing,
because we spent several yearsagain failure going back to the
drawing board, failure goingback to the drawing.
So we went back to the drawingboard for about three years and
we've just now kind of figuredout really, you know, how to
(55:37):
restore kelp and we've just nowkind of figured out really, you
know how to restore kelp.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (55:39):
Well, I was just at the Sea Ranch Lodge and
looked out at Black Point and Iwas impressed to see this huge
kelp gathering just to the southof Black Point Beach, right
there.
Dr. Brent Hughes (56:02):
A place like Shell Beach and Sea Ranch.
That kelp forest has actuallybeen around since almost the
kelp forest big decline andthat's a really special site
because, for whatever reason,the kelp has remained intact.
So we have locations too acrossthe coast where we are seeing
persistent kelp beds.
So it's not total destruction,right.
There's still that 10% orwhatever.
That's kind of held on 5% yeah,maybe 5%.
(56:24):
We're seeing a little bit of arebound in the last year or two,
just natural recovery, whichhas been also great.
We hope that keeps on going.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (56:32):
Well, thank you Dr Brent Hughes from the
Sonoma State University,associate professor, who's
written tons of papers,abstracts, technical papers, and
you've been studying this forthe past two decades.
Thank you so much for joiningus today and our host, Scott
Mercer of Mendenoma Whale andSeal Study.
(56:55):
Any last words, Scott?
Scott Mercer (57:00):
Yeah, thank you for mentioning the fat ink
keeper worm, Eurecus cowpaw.
The name came back to me whenyou said that.
What I did for two years downthere was a feeding study
feeding ecology study when I wasa student of college in Marin,
and after sitting outside foreight to 10 hours at a time and
looking through a spotting scopewe'll be in the Coast Guard
jetty and one of the auditorscame up with a fat ink keeper
(57:23):
worm.
It was like watching thempulling it back, Pull it back
and it was stretch and stretch.
Sometimes it was snapped andhit him in the face.
And other times it wouldn't, theworm would win in the face, and
other times it wouldn't, theworm would win.
So that was a good memory,thinking of that.
Dr. Brent Hughes (57:46):
Yes, I've been able to observe lots of sea
otter foraging around ElkhornSlough on these fatty keeper
worms and it's always hilarious.
Scott Mercer (57:48):
Yeah Well, it was the sea otters actually that got
me from invertebrate zoology atCollege of Marin in San
Francisco State into marinemammals.
Oh, cool I'm so fascinated withthem.
I'd be sitting out there allday watching otters eat.
You just look beyond them andgray whales be migrating and
stella sea lions going the otherway.
It was a great time, learned alot out there.
Dr. Brent Hughes (58:11):
Thank you for coming.
It's like sitting on a rock foreight hours.
You learn a ton.
Scott Mercer (58:17):
Like don't do it.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (58:19):
Scott and Dr Brent Hughes.
Thank you so much for beingwith us here today on Resilient
Earth Radio and Podcast andagain we hope to connect with
you in the future, at least youand Scott and Tree.
Dr. Brent Hughes (58:34):
Yeah, absolutely.
This is fun.
This is my first podcast ever,so thanks for letting me in, at
least you and Scott and Tree.
Yeah, absolutely.
This is fun this is my firstpodcast ever.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (58:59):
Thanks for listening to the Resilient Earth
podcast, where we talk aboutcritical issues and positive
actions for our planet.
Resilient Earth is produced byPlanet Centric Media, a 501c3
nonprofit, and Seastorm StudiosInc.
Located on the rugged NorthSonoma Coast of Northern
California.
Please support us bysubscribing or donating to our
(59:21):
cause.
Welcome to the Resilient Earth Podcast,
where we talk with speakers fromthe United States and around
the world about the criticalissues facing our planet and the
positive actions people aretaking, from the tiniest of
actions to the grandest ofgestures, so that we can
continue to thrive and survivefor generations to come.
(00:32):
Leigh Anne Lindsey, producerand host, along with co-hosts
and co-producers Scott and TreeMercer of Mendonoma Whale and
Seal Study, located on the SouthMendocino and North Sonoma
Coasts.
The music for this podcast isby Eric Allaman, an
(00:55):
international composer, pianistand writer living in the Sea
Ranch.
Discover more of his music,animations, ballet, stage and
film work at ericallaman.
com.
You can find Resilient Earth onSpotify, apple and Amazon
(01:18):
Podcasts, iheartradio, youtube,soundcloud and wherever you find
your podcasts.
(01:40):
On this last episode of Season 1, scott Mercer drives the
conversation with Dr Brent BHughes, associate Professor in
Marine Biology at Sonoma StateUniversity in Santa Rosa,
california.
He has a PhD from UC Santa Cruzand has co-authored numerous
abstracts, papers, technicalreports and books.
(02:02):
His research interests arecommunity ecology, marine
ecology, conservation, coastalecosystems and food webs.
Research in his lab seeks todetermine the processes that
affect the stability of coastalecosystems.
The research is focused oncoastal habitats like seagrass,
(02:24):
salt marsh and kelp, also knownas foundation species, which
provide valuable ecosystemservices, yet they are
threatened by human activities.
We'll get into thatconversation now.
I'm Leanne Lindsay.
Thank you for joining us inthis last episode of Season 1 on
Resilient Earth Radio andPodcast.
(02:45):
We'll be back with moreepisodes in the coming months.
With me today is Scott Mercerof the Mendenoma Whale and Seal
Study, and he's going to be ourhost today.
Dr. Brent Hughes (03:00):
Great.
Hi Scott, hi Brock, how are youDoing well, Thank you.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (03:06):
And Scott and his wife Teresa, or Tree
Mercer, are the co-creators ofthis show too.
They're co-producers, co-hosts,but normally I kind of run the
show.
But today, because Scott hasdone a lot of study on whales
but also seals and otters, and Ijust wanted to make sure that,
because of your vast experienceand all the papers you've
(03:27):
written from the coastlines upin British Columbia down to
Monterey, that Scott join us inasking you some of the top
questions.
But welcome to Resilient EarthRadio and Podcast.
Scott Mercer (03:41):
Thank you.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (03:42):
All right, Scott, all yours.
Scott Mercer (03:44):
Thank you, Professor Hughes.
A term that I found in yourmaterial that I was reading
yesterday was foundation species.
Just for people who aren'tfamiliar with that, could you
explain what that is?
I think I know what it is.
Could you explain what that is?
Dr. Brent Hughes (03:58):
Yeah, yeah, you could probably imagine what
it is A foundation species.
We typically kind of think ofthem as habitat forming species.
Now, a foundation speciesdoesn't have to be a habitat
forming species, but that'softentimes what we think about.
And in the ocean, especiallyhere in California, it's going
(04:19):
to be kelp, it's going to beseagrass or it's going to be
salt marshes.
Those are the foundationspecies of the ocean.
You know, if we move up to land, it's the redwoods, it's the
oaks in the grasses that formthe grasslands.
And so, a foundation species.
They're well known to createpositive species interactions.
(04:40):
So a lot of ecology, especiallyhistorically, has focused on
negative species interaction,like predator-prey, who-e2,
herbivores, diseases, parasites.
You know these are all negativethings, but my lab and a lot of
my research focuses on thepositive interactions that
result in functioning ecosystems.
(05:02):
At the foundation, the base ofit are these foundation species.
Scott Mercer (05:06):
Okay great Thanks.
So it's somewhat different thana keystone species, right yeah?
Dr. Brent Hughes (05:11):
yeah.
So if we think about ahabitat-forming species like
kelp ray or seagrass, you knowthat's a lot of biomass A
keystone species.
On the other hand, in anecosystem has a very low overall
biomass, but its effects to theecosystem are disproportionate
(05:34):
to its biomass.
Example a well-known keystoneIf you weighed everything in the
kelp forest, the sea otterwould be like 0.0001% of the
entire biomass of the kelpforest.
But its effects are huge andthat's a keystone.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (05:53):
Right, this is a good time too, scott and Dr
Hughes, just to let you knowwhere we are too.
We're just over on the coastfrom you.
Now, you're located near SonomaState University, is it?
Dr. Brent Hughes (06:07):
I'm a professor at Sonoma State
University.
You know we are 20 miles fromthe ocean, sonoma State.
We are in a coastal watershedthough, the Russian River
watershed, and you know youmight be like.
Well, why are they doing marinescience at Sonoma State?
Why are they doing marinescience at Sonoma State?
And what I tell students, assoon as they get into my marine
(06:28):
ecology class the first day, Ishow them a map in the proximity
of Sonoma State to all thesedifferent ecosystems.
So you know, within an hour Ican be at a kelp forest.
I can be at the biggest estuaryon the West Coast.
I can be at a tiny estuary onthe West Coast.
I can be in the RockyIntertidal.
I can be at a kelp forest.
I can be at the biggest estuaryon the West Coast.
I can be at a tiny estuary onthe West Coast.
(06:49):
I can be in the RockyIntertidal.
I can be at sand dunes, I canbe in the salt marsh.
So you know, it's the proximityto all these great ecosystems
that really makes the positionof, geographically, the position
of Sonoma State pretty unique.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (07:06):
And where I'm at too, is just right across
from you on the coast in theSea Ranch.
And we're right, you know.
Greater Fair Lawns is off ourcoast and Delmar Landing Marine
Preserve is right there, andthen Scott and Tree are up by
the Point Arena Lighthouse.
Dr. Brent Hughes (07:21):
Oh fun.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (07:22):
So they study the Mendocino and Sonoma
coasts and they studied the EastCoast as well for about 13, 14
years now, right, scott?
Scott Mercer (07:33):
We've been out here for our 14th year trying to
count gray whales.
Especially challenging thisyear with the decline in numbers
and the days that would go bywhen we used to have like let me
call it a whale stampede.
We'd just be looking atwhitecaps this winter, and the
spring hasn't been much better.
Dr. Brent Hughes (07:53):
A lot of mortalities of gray whales.
We have a few people studyingwhales at Sonoma State right now
.
I can't speak too much to thewhales since I'm not counting
them or studying them, but yeah,it seems kind of tragic.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (08:05):
Yeah, scott just brought on somebody from
the Marine Mammal Center down inSausalito and Josie Slothauk,
and so we just did an episode onthe gray whales and the whales
that have perished in the SanFrancisco Bay.
Scott, was it gray whales orhumpbacks?
Dr. Brent Hughes (08:22):
Oh, grays Grays.
Yeah, I've heard this, Ibelieve, from Josie I met really
recently.
This is, yeah, kind of where Iwas really alerted to the
mortality events of the graywhales and you know what's the
cause?
I think that's TBD.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (08:42):
Yeah, some of the emaciated whales too, and
then the vessel strikes.
But here in Sea Ranch there waseven a whale on the beach the
other day.
Oh really yeah.
Dr. Brent Hughes (08:52):
My lab works at Sea Ranch, and do you know
exactly where that?
Scott Mercer (08:57):
was?
Yeah, it was on a walk-on beachon Sea Ranch.
It washed in.
On Saturday Cal Academy came uphere.
They hadn't understood that thewhale was still free-floating.
It's wedged in some rocks inthere.
But they didn't come withwetsuits.
Apparently I didn't go downEnough.
People were down there and thephotos I saw.
(09:19):
I wouldn't call it immature.
That opens up too much footagefor what it might be.
But it was a, a young, theyounger humpback.
Sure it was floating on itsback but apparently fluke shots
weren't available it was kind ofkind of a mess yeah, it's.
Dr. Brent Hughes (09:36):
It's hard, maybe hard to idea if it's
flipped over.
Scott Mercer (09:40):
Yeah it was right upside down, with the ventral
pleats open and the sun beatingdown on the body.
Dr. Brent Hughes (09:46):
Oh yeah, and they deteriorate pretty fast, or
at least when they get beached.
I hear that.
Scott Mercer (09:52):
The tongue had already opened up like a small
blimp.
It made the whale look like ithad been beached.
Do you?
Dr. Brent Hughes (09:58):
know if any sharks were.
Well, not because of that whale.
Scott Mercer (10:03):
Well, it's funny, not funny, but the last time
humpback washed in was justnorth of us, just north of Point
Arena, but the beach right onthe it's right at Point Arena
and Sarah Grimes and my wife andI, Tria and I were down there
with Sarah on the beach it'sManchester Beach and we were
(10:25):
working around it and each timewe came down in the morning the
next day there'd be more bitemarks out of the area.
The whale was sort of in thewater, not in the water, yeah,
Like half and half.
Well, one day there were peopledown there and had their kids
in the water.
Dr. Brent Hughes (10:45):
Is it still around?
I mean, like these are actuallythings I'd like to know,
because you know we want toavoid, we dive and so we
actually want to avoid thoseareas when you have a dead whale
floating around.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (10:59):
Because of sharks.
Yeah, yeah exactly.
Dr. Brent Hughes (11:01):
We don't want to be near it.
So then we bite marks on ityeah, not the new one.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (11:07):
Well, scott and Tree were in actually a
documentary a couple of yearsback that a couple of Berkeley
students had created and it wascalled Washed Ashore, and data
has changed since then, but itwas a very good documentary on
what happens along our coastlinefrom Baja up to how far was it,
(11:29):
scott?
Was it all the way up toWashington State?
Scott Mercer (11:32):
The UME was yeah, the documentary stopped with us,
started in Baja and ended withus, the two of us sitting on a
cliff out there.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (11:41):
By the Point Arena Lighthouse right yeah
that's where it ended.
That made a big splash at theMendocino Film Festival.
Everybody cheered when they sawthe lighthouse Scott go ahead
with the questions that you'vegot about sea otters, because
this question does keep comingup in talks that you give Well
(12:01):
there's a question I wanted toask Dr Hughes for a moment here
when I was looking at yourwebsite last night.
Scott Mercer (12:04):
There's a question I wanted to ask Dr Hughes for a
moment here when I was lookingat your website last night.
There's a photo of you withclams You're kind of in the mud,
and then there's another onewhere it looks like you're
whispering to a shark.
What is that you're holding?
Dr. Brent Hughes (12:17):
So that clam one, that was a moment of
serendipity, kind of caught witha you know, a digital camera in
me.
It's a funny story.
That was from Alaska, southeastAlaska, prince of Wales Island.
We were working on a project upthere that was focused on sea
otter recovery and how it wouldimpact not only the ecosystems
(12:41):
but the people, specifically theindigenous communities, and for
me it was kind of my group.
We were really wanting to knowwell, what is the seagrass like
in areas where sea otters haverecovered versus not recovered,
and we made this discoveryaround 2013 or so in California
(13:04):
that sea otters, much like they,have these positive impacts to
kelp forests by consumingurchins.
They can also be hence the termkeystone.
We found that they could bekeystones in seagrass beds in
central California.
Now, that is specifically oneestuary, elkhorn Slough, which
(13:33):
is you know it's a significantestuary in Central California.
You know it has about 20,currently about 20 hectares of
seagrass, which is you know,it's a good amount for
California.
But in Southeast Alaska there'sabout 10,000 kilometers of
shoreline that are covered withseagrass, so it's a much bigger
area and the sea otters werejust expanding like crazy and we
(13:54):
started looking at the seagrassitself and saying like okay,
simple question do we see moreseagrass or healthier seagrass
in areas with sea otters versusnot sea otters?
That was kind of the workinghypothesis and the way it works,
the food web.
It's somewhat similar toCalifornia's food web in some
ways, but in some ways it'sdifferent.
(14:17):
And one big way that it'sdifferent is that they have in
Southeast Alaska the clams.
The clam populations are just,especially in the intertidal
zone, are just dense, and sothat picture that my grad
student at the time, jessicaSaavedra, took of me was I said
it was serendipity because weshowed up to our site to look at
(14:40):
our seagrass at this one sitethat had not really experienced
significant sea otter recoveryby that point and there was a
black bear on the beach and theprotocol is if there's a black
bear on the beach you can't getoff the boat to go do the work.
We have protocols to kind of tryto scare, spook the bear to get
(15:03):
off the beach so we can go doour work.
This bear was so stubborn so wewere just sitting there on the
boat and the tide went out andso the boat was literally high
and dry.
Eventually the bear left and wewere just stuck there.
So I just started.
I said, hey, jessica, let'sjust start digging in the mud
like we're a sea otter.
And so that was me digging inthe mud.
(15:25):
I kind of used the shovel, butreally I just used my hands.
Sea otters dig with their pawsto get these clams.
That's what I dug up and it wasjust like, oh my gosh, well,
look at all these clams, whichis really important for the
indigenous communities.
Right, they want to protectthose clams.
But what we found was that thegrass, the seagrass itself and
(15:46):
the clams kind of compete forspace in the mud.
Right, a nice, healthy seagrassbed will put on big, thick
rhizomes and all these roothairs, and so there's this
competition below ground.
And so what we found was thatby the sea otters removing all
these clams, it actuallystimulated more growth and
(16:10):
bigger biomass of the plants ofseagrass.
And so that was kind of the ahamoment, that kind of really
kind of helped us, guide us tofigure out well, what are they
doing in this ecosystem?
There are good things and thereare bad things, the bad being
the just almost wholesaleremoval of these clam beds, the
(16:33):
good being that you get biggerseagrass, which ends up
benefiting the fish.
That's the story behind that one, the shark one I don't know
what it is.
It's probably us doing leopardshark sampling in Drake's Estero
I believe that's where it camefrom.
I had a student, Alyssa Cooper,one of my first students, who
(16:55):
was interested in the roleestuaries play for supporting
leopard shark nurseries.
What we were finding is inCalifornia that the leopard
sharks yeah, they'll useestuaries as kind of nursery
grounds, and Drake's Estero inparticular, we think, is a major
(17:15):
nursery ground for leopardsharks.
And so Alyssa was just doingstudies.
And it's cool when you do theshark studies, you know these
leopard sharks are beautifulanimals.
I think they're the mostbeautiful animals on the planet
and so you catch them in a netand then we're trying to figure
out well, what are they eating?
You catch the shark, you flipit over, kind of like we were
(17:38):
just talking about the whale.
You know, if you flip the sharkover, it goes into a state of
what's called tonic immobility.
It basically falls asleep whenit's flipped over and this might
sound brutal and stuff.
But then we put in a hose andpump water through it.
It doesn't affect the animalbut it kind of forces it to
throw up and regurgitateeverything it just ate, and then
(18:00):
we collect that.
We collect its vomit, thenbring it back to the lab and
identify, well, what the heckwas this thing eating.
So we can we can actuallyfigure out what it was eating
without having to watch, youknow, and try to track.
That's really hard in a in avery turbid estuary.
So yeah, that was a from aleopard shark study, I believe
(18:21):
yeah, I was staring at that.
Scott Mercer (18:22):
It had a shark's face.
It it was the opposite, theother end.
I couldn't quite figure outwhat that was, but it was
clearly a shark face.
When I blew the picture up, youcould see the uh.
Look like I had a camouflageshirt.
I was curious as to what youwere holding there.
Dr. Brent Hughes (18:40):
Yeah, yeah, and it might've been like I my
waitaders.
I might have had my waders on,and they're camouflaged too, so
yeah.
Scott Mercer (18:49):
Everybody who's been to Alaska has a bear story
or a story that might have beena bear story.
Dr. Brent Hughes (18:59):
Luckily on this island there are no
grizzlies.
They're interesting black bearsstories.
You know we're always kind of.
They love being on the beaches.
You know, either they'reforaging there or whatever.
Yeah, we're often competing forspace on the beach with the
black bears in Alaska.
Scott Mercer (19:17):
I went kayak fishing around the Tikchik area.
Each night we went out.
There was eight interconnectedlakes in this Tikchik area.
Each night we went out, therewas eight interconnected lakes
in this Tikchik.
Well, it's Alaska's idea of astate park.
It's like a million and a halfacres from one end to the other,
so we had plenty of room tokayak around in.
(19:38):
And one night I went out fishingand I was pulling an Arctic
char into the boat, the kayak,and then I figured there wasn't
enough room for me in the char.
So I was paddling back into thebeach and throwing the char up
on the sand and then I realizedthat I was going to have to go
get it.
My party was back where we hadour tents, so there was really
(20:00):
nobody between me and where mygroup was friends that I brought
with me it was one of thefastest dashes I ever made to
pick up some trout off a beachGetting back to the kayak and
then we cleaned and cookedeverything back there.
Well, the next morning we wokeup and there were grizzly tracks
right up to the edge of ourtents and then it turned around.
I decided not to mess around.
(20:20):
I turned around and went backinto the woods.
So good.
Dr. Brent Hughes (20:29):
That's wild.
Oh, yeah, you know these.
Yeah, you spend enough time inthe outside, in nature, doing
these things.
You know you're gonna haveencounters every once in a while
and you know, luckily we haveall the safety protocols.
You know for what happens.
You know if there's a whiteshark spotted or a bear being
spotted, you know it's actuallygood to talk about this stuff
(20:49):
because then we can approachscience especially, you know,
for us a lot more safer.
And so, yeah, these are, youknow, good stories to share.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (21:01):
You mentioned too the Elkhorn Slough
down there just off.
It's in inland from MossLanding.
Dr. Brent Hughes (21:09):
Yeah, so it's just right.
It's the heart of Monterey Bay.
It's an interesting estuarybecause the mouth of the estuary
sits at the head of theMonterey Bay Submarine Canyon.
It's a great place because youcan study kind of deep sea
dynamics too.
I don't necessarily do that,but you can just pull in right
(21:29):
out of the harbor of MossLanding and you're in a canyon,
and so it's been great for notonly estuary studies just
because of the access, but alsoplaces like the Monterey Bay
Aquarium Research Institute, oneof the world leaders in deep
sea ecology.
Monterey Bay Aquarium ResearchInstitute one of the world
leaders in deep sea ecology yeah, just the benefit of having
(21:49):
that canyon sitting right thereis cool, and then you can even
look at how these ecosystems areconnected too.
A lot of what gets produced inElkhorn Slough, which is a very
nutrient-enriched ecosystem,actually makes its way down into
the canyon.
The connection here is, youknow all these row crops of like
(22:13):
lettuce and strawberries andBrussels sprouts they require a
lot of nutrients.
That ends up getting intoElkhorn Slough and it stimulates
a lot of algal blooms, of greenalgae in particular, and that
green algae ends up making itsway down to the canyon and
actually subsidizes invertebratecommunities down in the canyon.
So there's actually a linkagefrom the Salinas Valley
(22:34):
strawberry all the way down tothe canyon and in the deep sea
in the Monterey Canyon.
So there's these really neatecosystem connections there too
that you can study, and it'skind of a rare thing to be able
to do that.
Scott Mercer (22:48):
You know most people study the deep sea have
to go, you know, far away, andso it's cool when it's just you
know it's just right there yourdocumentary, the film Zach
Cliver, you met you sent me alink to it again and I had seen
it on one of the nature shows afew years ago.
The whole thing about ElkhornSlough was really new to me and
(23:11):
interesting, but what I foundkind of even funny to watch was
the crabs on the side of thebank.
So you talk a little bit aboutthat.
It reminded me of like theywere all living in high rises,
it seemed to be a bummer highrises.
Dr. Brent Hughes (23:24):
We call them crab condos and you know crabs
are a very natural part of, youknow, especially estuaries,
coastal systems.
If they're left unchecked bypredators they can be very
damaging to marshes and this wasreally well described on the
East Coast in New England, saltmarshes.
Scott Mercer (23:46):
Can I interrupt you for a second?
Yeah, if you don't mind.
What is the genus and speciesof these, since they're green?
Are they Carcinus manis?
Dr. Brent Hughes (23:57):
Yes, so there's a couple of crabs that
we've been studying in aroundthe marshes of Elkhorn Slough.
One is the European green crab,Carcinus manis, the other one,
which is a native crab, it's thestriped shore crab,
Pachygrapsis crassipes, and it'skind of like two different
stories.
(24:17):
The European green crab, atleast in Elkhorn Slough, don't
really use the marshes, they usekind of the areas just below
the salt marsh, and what wefound was that the sea otter
loves eating those Europeangreen crabs, which are these
really notorious invaders,especially on our coast.
(24:38):
We think the invasion startedin San Francisco Bay.
It made its way down to ElkhornSlough in the late 80s and it's
slowly been moving its way upthe coast and now these green
crabs are in Alaska, and thesegreen crabs are known to eat
other native crabs, nativespecies, oysters, so they have
kind of these really harmfuleffects that are not desirable.
(25:01):
What we found in Elkhorn Sloughis that the sea otters are
really good at keeping thosepopulation numbers down, and so
that was a big finding, becausewe've also been finding that in
places like Bolinas Lagoon, forexample, eradication by humans
is almost it doesn't work.
In fact sometimes it does theopposite effect.
(25:23):
You try to eradicate and youactually end up getting more
green crab.
This is another example ofrestoring a food web leads to
these positive benefits to theecosystem.
In this case it's invasionresistance.
Now these other crabs, thenative crabs, which are smaller
than green crabs, the stripedshore crab they do use the salt
(25:44):
marshes and they do burrow intothe salt marshes and into the
banks and create these crabcondos, which you know is
basically Swiss cheese, and theyeat the roots of the salt marsh
because that's where all thegood nutrients and sugars are,
and they destabilize the banks.
And so what we found as we'rechasing these sea otters around,
(26:08):
the big discovery was madewhere we found that they were
using salt marshes, they wereeating these crabs around salt
marshes, they were hauling outthe pups, the mothers were
putting their pups on the saltmarsh to rest while they would
go get the Pachygrapsis crabs,the striped shore crabs.
And over time what we found wasby them removing these shore
(26:32):
crabs, they started stabilizingthe banks.
And so in Elkhorn Sloughthere's been this big problem
with erosion.
Over the last 80 years or so,the banks of the estuary have
just been eroding away.
There was about 50% loss ofsalt marsh because of this
erosion.
The sea otters pretty muchstopped the erosion.
(26:54):
There's still a little bit oferosion happening, but by just
removing these crabs they wereable to really solidify those
banks and slow down to theerosion to the point where it
almost is non-existent.
That was a huge finding, notjust for the sea otter but
really all of nature, wherewe're thinking about eroding
systems and how predators canaffect the geomorphology of
(27:21):
aquatic ecosystems.
The big analogy here is thegray wolf reintroduction to
Yellowstone.
There's a lot of documentedpositive effects.
None of it was experimental.
So we were the first ones toreally experimentally test.
So we put cages out on thebanks to keep out sea otters of
(27:41):
certain areas to test thishypothesis that sea otters can
slow down erosion, and thatstudy took about 12 years but we
just published it last year inNature and it got the cover of
Nature, which was reallyexciting for us scientists.
Number one magazine there for usscientists.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (28:00):
Number one magazine there.
Dr. Brent Hughes (28:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's the top science publication
in the world, and so that endedup being another big discovery.
So it's basically, if you canconclude it, all what we've
found with the sea otter isexpect the unexpected, and
there's a long history with whywe're just now seeing them using
(28:24):
salt marshes.
It's because they've been in astate of recovery.
They were almost hunted toextinction in California To the
point, in the early 1900s it wasthought they were extinct until
about the 1910s, 1920s,something like that A population
of about 50 animals wasdiscovered off the Big Sur
coastline, and so since then ourpopulation of sea otters has
(28:47):
been expanding north and south,but it's been a slow expansion.
Ecology basically started in aperiod where a lot of animal
hunting was almost concludingbecause we had hunted almost all
the, especially the marinemammals.
We had hunted them all, and sowhen ecology started, it was
(29:10):
like all these populations ofmarine mammals were super duper
small, and then we thought, ohwell, this is just how it is,
this is the baseline and we werewrong.
This is the baseline and wewere wrong Because as these
(29:35):
animals start expanding theirpopulations and there's
protected areas like ElkhornSlough where humans can't access
we're seeing they're reallyunraveling themselves and their
true what we call the nichebreadth, their ability to use
different ecosystems, theirability to use different
ecosystems.
There's been a period ofdiscovery over the last 15 years
, just kind of following theseanimals around and letting them
tell us what they're doing andwhat they're capable of doing,
and that's been, I think, reallyexciting.
Then you know, the conclusionwith the sea otter is expect the
(29:57):
unexpected and wherever they go, there's going to be change.
So for a scientist, if you'reguaranteed change, it's really
exciting because you know that'swhat we were really kind of
trying to figure out.
Well, what's driving change?
Either good or bad.
Scott Mercer (30:14):
Yeah good, back in 1974 or 5, I worked that Cal
Fish and at the time it was CalFish and Game Sea Otters
Population Survey and my stationwas out on Point Sur, which at
that time the Navy was in chargeof.
So I got out there about anhour early.
(30:34):
I was driven out there andbegan counting from the land and
then a couple of fish andwildlife people were going to
fly over and that was one of thetests on what you're missing or
how many you think you'reseeing with all the kelp
floating around.
But a few weeks later I got theconclusion of the survey.
(30:57):
Once the statisticians got done.
The population at that time wasa little over 1,500.
They come up with.
Well, what is it now?
I can't really get it.
Dr. Brent Hughes (31:06):
It's 3,000 in the entire state.
It's about doubled.
Scott Mercer (31:11):
And it was doubled in a lot of decades.
What?
Dr. Brent Hughes (31:13):
year was that, scott, about 74 or 5.
Yeah, so it's doubled sincethen.
So that's 50 years, yeah, andyou might be like yay, doubled.
But it sits at this thresholdof 3,000, where it's actually a
threshold.
That was kind of established bythe US Fish and Wildlife
Service, who manages the seaotter, and they established for
(31:38):
the Endangered Species Act thisthreshold of 3,000 animals.
The population has been stuckthere for at least 10 years, so
it's not necessarily growing,it's not going down, it's just
stuck at 3,000.
They need to go, either movenorth or south.
That's their only option Ateither end, which is Santa
(32:00):
Barbara and south of SanFrancisco, that's where the
range limit is north and south.
At both ends of those are verysignificant great white shark
populations.
We call it the white sharkgauntlet that the sea otters
just can't get past.
We will see sea otters pop up inSan Francisco or sometimes
(32:22):
Drake's, estero or Tomales Bay.
They usually are males, so thatdoesn't do anything for the
population and they'll stickaround, usually for a couple
weeks, and then they'll take off, knowing that there are no
mates here.
There might be plenty of foodbut no mates, and they'll try to
go, you know, swim back down.
(32:42):
Oftentimes these otters arecoming from, like Santa Cruz or
Monterey.
Some will make it back, a lotof them, don't, you know
probably because they get eatenby something or starved to death
or whatever it might be.
The problem is that you need atleast one female and a male to
expand the population.
That's been the big problem, weknow.
(33:03):
In San Francisco Bay alone,historically, there was probably
10,000 sea otters.
So just that one estuary, youknow, had tripled the amount of
sea otters that we currentlyhave in the entire state.
The true number, what we callthe carrying capacity, how many
sea otters could be supported inthe state, you know, is
probably 20,000 to 30,000 seaotters.
(33:24):
We're, you know, at the statewhere it's just, they're just
not really recovering.
The big risk for the sea otters, like if there's a big oil
spill or a big disease event,the population's still in kind
of jeopardy, and so therefore,it's listed under the Endangered
Species Act as threatened Notendangered, but threatened.
Scott Mercer (33:46):
Yeah, after what happened in Alaska with the
Exxon Valdez, just wipe out thispopulation along here very
quickly.
Dr. Brent Hughes (33:54):
Oh yeah, yeah, and that's the fear, at least
from the sea otter conservationperspective.
Scott Mercer (34:00):
Yeah, some of the stories I heard from the medical
people who worked with theotters who were soaked in oil
when they got them internally,when they did a necropsy on them
.
Dr. Brent Hughes (34:12):
They're just falling apart inside, yeah yeah,
yeah, the sea otter did notfare well and that was probably
I think it was basically thelast species to really start
recovering after that oil spill.
You know, it took 30 years orwhatever, and they might still
be recovering to some degree andso, yeah, that was devastating.
(34:35):
Really kind of highlighted howimpactful the oil spills can be,
for the oil spills can be.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (34:45):
I mean there's discussions right now in
our government to open up oildrilling off of Sea Ranch
Gualala Point Arena.
This whole coastline.
Dr. Brent Hughes (34:51):
Yeah, you know , I think the community, if the
community doesn't want that, youknow, the community really
needs to band together and voicetheir opinions.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (35:01):
Yeah, there was an open comment period there
for a while, until June 16th.
Dr. Brent Hughes (35:06):
Oh, really yeah Okay.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (35:07):
It wasn't widely, you know.
Dr. Brent Hughes (35:10):
I didn't even hear about this, I didn't even
know.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (35:12):
News announcement, nothing like that.
I mean.
I shared it on social media.
Richard Charter of the OceanFoundation had put together a
website where to go to sign upand report what you feel to the
government, but that closedalready June 16th, so we're
(35:33):
waiting to see what happens withthat.
But we can still do something,even though that comment period
has ended, and it's importantthat those that feel that we
should be extractive and goafter these limited resources,
the damage that it can cause tothe marine systems and fishing
(35:53):
and tourism along our coast.
Dr. Brent Hughes (35:57):
That's not good.
Yeah, it's hard, especiallywhen the kelp forests are
already struggling, reallystruggling.
There's a lot of differenttypes of communities in that
region, from fishing toresidential, to the indigenous
communities.
Yes, the Kishaya BanapomoIndians.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (36:18):
They're right here, they're all around
us the Kishaya.
Dr. Brent Hughes (36:21):
Yeah, and I don't think that would be
desirable for them, I wouldimagine.
Well, it happened before atotally different time.
You know, with the Point Reyesin the you know the 60s right,
there was that debate of turningit into a suburb of San
Francisco and the communityreally banded together to put a
stop to that and then they got anational park out of it.
(36:43):
Yeah, that's unfortunate.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (36:49):
Now, scott, you have brought up a couple of
times how reintroducing seaotters along the Mendocino,
sonoma Coast could be almostimpossible.
I wanted you to talk with DrBrent Hughes about that.
Scott Mercer (37:08):
Yeah, when I've given a talk here since two
years ago, suddenly I don't knowwho lit the match, but there
was all this talk here aboutbringing sea otters in and
people.
Well, it was before the abalonediving and so forth harvest
ended.
The divers, as you can imagine,were not too keen on the idea,
(37:29):
and other people were, and.
But just a matter of pointingout that there's no place for
the otters to go here, yeah,kind of put a high blush on that
.
Dr. Brent Hughes (37:42):
Yeah, right now, especially given the state
of the kelp forests, you wouldthink that or at least I do that
if you want to grow apopulation or put sea otters
somewhere where they're notcurrently, the estuaries are the
(38:04):
places to go.
The estuaries up here inNorthern California are a lot
more stable than the kelp forest.
They have a ton of food andhabitat and the most know sea
otter restoration program thathas existed for california has
been in the central coast inelkhorn slough.
(38:25):
When the monterey bay aquariumrehabilitates their sea otters
and puts them so, they takestranded juvenile sea otters
that lost their mom.
They get raised by a surrogatemother at the aquarium to learn
how to be a sea otter and eatand hunt and they get put back
in Elkhorn Slough and nowbecause of that, elkhorn Slough
(38:50):
has the highest concentration ofsea otters in the state of
California and there's nowpopulations in Elkhorn Slough
that have never seen a kelpforest.
They just stay in the state ofCalifornia and there's now
populations in Elkhorn Sloughthat have never seen a kelp
forest.
They just stay in the slough.
There's a lot of healthyecosystems, estuaries in
particular, like Drake's, estero.
We did some modeling work and,looking at Tomas Bay.
(39:11):
We found that those two systemscould support about 300 sea
otters.
We've done some modeling workfor San Francisco Bay this is
all published, by the way toofor San Francisco Bay, using the
current kind of habitatavailability, not the historic,
because a lot of things havechanged in the Bay we believe
that the San Francisco Bay couldsupport currently, in its
(39:34):
current state, about 5,000 to6,000 sea otters, which would
essentially triple thepopulation of california.
I totally agree.
You know, like the kelp forest,like I want to put a sea otter
out here in the kelp forestthere are, there's very little
kelp and all the urchins arestarving to death.
Um so, uh, you know the preywould be would not be all that
(39:57):
great, but in the estuary it's atotally different story.
Scott Mercer (40:00):
Yeah, when you were talking, I thought of the
Garcia River I don't know ifyou're familiar with that here
off of Point Arena.
Dr. Brent Hughes (40:08):
Yeah, a little bit.
Scott Mercer (40:10):
That seemed to be something positive you could say
about bringing sea otters backin the area, when you were
talking about elkhorn slew andhow I haven't done much trudging
or any trudging up and down um,that river bank.
Yeah, a couple of birdingfriends off and on, but um, you
know just how that compares.
And the other thing a few yearsago leanne was off to your
(40:34):
northwest.
There she, she, took herself ona birthday trip.
You went kayaking up one of therivers, I don't know was it the
Albion or one of those up north.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (40:43):
Oh, I was just about to say Big River up
by Mendocino.
Scott Mercer (40:47):
You wrote on Facebook or to me that you'd
seen a lot of sea otters up inthere and I said, no, I don't
think so.
Dr. Brent Hughes (40:52):
I said why they're river otters, river,
otters River otters, riverotters yeah, river otters can be
tricky, you know they could.
You know the river otter iscool and the river otter got a
really bad name too, becausethey should be, you know, river
slash, coastal otters orsomething.
Because river otters canbasically can feed on the same
(41:13):
exact things that sea otters canfeed on Mussels, clams, crabs.
But they're also unlike the seaotter, which is a horrible
fisher.
Sea otters are terrible atcatching fish, to the point
where fish are really not evenpart of their diet, but the
river otters are good atcatching fish.
So the river otter diet is justinsane.
(41:35):
It includes both terrestrial,aquatic, marine animals, but
there's distinctions between thetwo.
You know, the river otter isabout a third of the size of the
sea otter.
River otters also don't floaton their backs like the sea
otter, so a good telltale signif you think it's a sea otter,
(41:56):
you'll know if it ends upfloating on its back at some
point, because that's somethingthat the the river otters just
don't do and it's actually kindof fun to think about.
Well, you know, if sea ottersmade it up here, what would that
mean for the river otters?
You know, I don't think theywould be impacted at all,
because their diets are so broadthat they would just ship their
(42:16):
diets to whatever we saw.
Saw it with the leopard sharksin Elkhorn Slough.
The leopard sharks in the 70sand before the sea otters came
back to Elkhorn Slough, wereprimarily eating crabs.
They resurveyed the sharks.
To compare the 70s to the 1990s, which was about a decade and a
(42:37):
half after the otters came backto the estuary and the leopard
sharks were now eating allfatting keeper worms, which are,
these?
Just big worms that burrow intothe sediments but are a much
more difficult prey item to getthan, like a red rock crab or
something like that.
So the sea otters, yeah, theyare usually the dominant
(42:59):
predator when they move intotheir ecosystems and it causes
the food web to kind of totallychange, and I would imagine it'd
be the same for the riverotters too.
Yeah, absolutely.
Scott Mercer (43:11):
When Leanne put that on Facebook I think it was
I told her no and why.
But at the time I thought well,I'm pretty sure there isn't a
remnant population up here and Idon't think a couple have made
it up here.
But never say never.
Dr. Brent Hughes (43:31):
Well, you know , it was a couple years ago.
Two or three years ago a femaleshowed up in Drake's estero.
That was a tagged female,meaning the monterey bay
aquarium had tagged it and cameswam up from monterey and she
was in the estero for about twoweeks.
We had people watching her feed, forage on and and it was guess
(43:54):
what crab and it was reallyexciting because we're like,
okay, if she just stays thereand then a male shows up, then
that's the start of a population.
That was the first female thatwe've seen up here and the
females have a very small homerange.
They don't move very far fromwhere they're born.
It's usually, on average of,you know, less than six
(44:17):
kilometers they'll move in theirlifetime.
So they have a small home range.
The males, especially juveniles, will just swim wherever.
It was really exciting therefor a minute and then we lost
the signal or the aquarium lostthe signal and I don't know
where she ever ended, but thatwas for two weeks.
(44:38):
It was a very exciting time atDrake's Estero.
Scott Mercer (44:41):
You get a merit badge for going across the bay.
Dr. Brent Hughes (44:44):
Yeah, she deserved one yeah.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (44:48):
Could you tell us just in these last few
minutes?
Here too, I'd like to know whatcourses you're teaching there
at Sonoma State University andwhat some of your plans are
going forward.
Dr. Brent Hughes (45:01):
Yeah, so Sonoma State.
I teach a variety of primarilyecology classes.
Currently I teach well.
This semester I'll teach anupper division ecology course.
In the spring I teach marineecology and then I teach a
variety of graduate courses,primarily in statistics and
(45:23):
coding.
Ecology is turned into a verystatistic-heavy field.
Making sure the students havethe tools that they need when
they go into the workforce isreally important, especially how
to manage data, how to analyzedata, things like that.
My courses are, especially whenI teach ecology.
They're heavily geared towardsgetting students into the field
(45:47):
and getting those experiences.
So experiential learningexperiences and what better
place to do it than the SonomaCounty and Marin County too?
I take my students.
All you know it's all aboutlearning the ecosystems and
natural history behind our localecosystems.
So it's a fabulous you knowopportunity for me to be able to
(46:09):
teach in an outdoor setting.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (46:11):
You should connect with Scott and Tree too,
I was thinking.
Dr. Brent Hughes (46:14):
That'd be great.
Yeah, no, we're always lookingfor people to connect with in
the field.
A lot of our trips, you know,we take to Point Reyes and to
the Sonoma Coast.
We, you know, we go to CarmetBeach to go to the Rocky
Intertidal.
We'll go up to Fort Ross tolearn about all our kelp forest
restoration work that we do upthere and marine mammals as well
(46:35):
.
So, yeah, it's all about kindof providing these experiences,
which is kind of how I getreally fired up about teaching.
Scott Mercer (46:43):
Yeah, absolutely, have you met Richard Charter.
I don't think so I don't think.
So he's in Bodega Bay, andwhat's the name of the group
he's with?
Leigh Anne Lindsey (46:55):
The Ocean Foundation.
He's a senior fellow there forabout 30 years oh geez.
Dr. Brent Hughes (47:00):
Okay, I should probably know him.
Scott Mercer (47:02):
He's a great community resource in politics
especially.
Dr. Brent Hughes (47:05):
Absolutely what's going on there yeah.
Scott Mercer (47:07):
Conservation ecology.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (47:09):
He's a force to be reckoned with that
Richard.
Charter.
Dr. Brent Hughes (47:14):
Well, I'll have to look him up for sure
We'll get you connected too.
Okay, that'd be great.
Yeah, I've worked with theocean foundation in the past on
various projects, but it's beena while, so, yeah, it would be
great to get connected with themwhat got you down this path?
Leigh Anne Lindsey (47:31):
I just wanted to understand more about
your background and who you areand how you ended up here.
Dr. Brent Hughes (47:38):
Well, I like to say I'm the most famous
marine ecologist from the stateof Kansas.
Scott Mercer (47:48):
From the Hall of Fame huh Middle of the country.
Dr. Brent Hughes (47:51):
I grew up in Kansas, Kansas City suburbs.
My mom is actually from a towncalled Lebanon, Kansas, which is
the geographic center of theUnited States.
You can't get further away froman ocean if you tried.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (48:04):
I heard about this.
Dr. Brent Hughes (48:05):
Yeah, I graduated from a college in the
Midwest called Truman StateUniversity, which is in Missouri
.
I got a bachelor's degree thereand in my final semester there
you know, there's all theseposters in the hallways kind of
advertising different coursesand I saw a course that was
(48:25):
offered by the University ofOregon at the Oregon Institute
of Marine Biology for summerpost-baccalaureate courses in
marine ecology and marine animalbehavior.
I'm like, well, I have nothingto do.
This sounds like fun.
I've only been to the, you know, spent, you know, maybe 10 days
total in the ocean, all on theEast Coast at beaches.
(48:47):
And so I drove out to Oregon inmy Jeep and got there and it was
, you know, the very first dayof class.
We went to the Rocky Intertidaland I thought I was on a
different planet and so I wasalready hooked.
And then I, you know, justtalked to my professors there.
(49:08):
I'm like asking them, like youcan get a job just counting
these things.
They're like, yeah, that's whatI do.
And then, right there, in aboutfive minutes, I knew that what
is what I wanted to do with therest of my life is marine
ecology, and so I had to moveback to midwest, save up some
money and then I moved back outand went uh enrolled at moss
(49:31):
landing marine labs for for mymaster's and then that led to a
ph at UC Santa Cruz and apostdoc at Duke and Friday
Harbor Labs in Washington, andthen eventually I got the job
offer at Sonoma State in 2018.
I've been in California since2021, primarily in Santa Cruz,
(49:55):
and then the last eight years orso I've been up here in Sonoma.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (50:01):
Thank you for that.
I was actually wondering aboutthose green crab.
You mentioned something abouthow eradication efforts
sometimes boomeranged.
How could that happen?
Dr. Brent Hughes (50:13):
You know I can't tell you the exact way it
happens because I wasn't a partof that study but a colleague of
mine named Ted Grosholtz who'skind of one of the green crab
marine invasion experts on ourcoast.
They wrote a big paper in theProceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences on it.
(50:35):
You would have to ask him aboutthe mechanism because I can't
just tell you off the top of myhead.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (50:40):
It's okay.
I just thought I was curious.
I was thinking really excited,no, I'm curious too.
Dr. Brent Hughes (50:45):
I don't know if it's like you know.
They get in the trap and thefemales release, you know, all
their eggs I have.
No, I'm not exactly sure whatthe mechanism is, but it was
surprising and it was like, dangwell, what's the solution now?
Leigh Anne Lindsey (50:59):
Because I was listening to Sheila Seamans.
She's the executive director ofthe Noyo Center for Marine
Science and she was saying howyou've got to try different
things because sometimes whatyou think might be a good
conservation or restorationtactic actually has the opposite
effect.
Dr. Brent Hughes (51:15):
Yeah, it happens, I'd heard that before.
Yeah, it happens.
And then so, modern dayconservation, it's all about
adaptive management, right?
So you have a goal it might berestoration, it might be, you
know, shoreline protection,whatever and you implement, you
know the plan, and then youassess and if it doesn't work,
(51:39):
then you go back to the drawingboard.
Yeah, so that's kind of a lotof how conservation?
Leigh Anne Lindsey (51:46):
works these days and ergo why statistics are
important.
Dr. Brent Hughes (51:49):
Exactly, since we can't count everything.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (51:55):
We're so dependent on statistics.
That's why, scott and Tree,what you guys do, you're
providing data all the time.
Scott Mercer (52:00):
Yeah, we're trying to provide data.
I was going to mention to Brentthat I'm from New Hampshire,
back in New England, so greencrabs there are about as popular
as athletes' foot.
Yeah, I grew up being told tocrush those when you see them.
But that's also the same groupof ancestors who thought pulling
legs off a starfish was goingto kill them.
(52:20):
Yeah, instead of a populationexplosion yeah, they can
fragment.
Dr. Brent Hughes (52:35):
Yeah, so the invasion first happened.
Yeah, obviously on the EastCoast and you know, moved west,
we think with oysters and yeah,so that you know the spread of
invaders is.
You know usually we think oflike boats and ballast water and
stuff like that.
But you know you can get it.
You know the aquarium trade youknow often could be a culprit
for invasions.
This case I believe it was thetransport of live oysters to the
(52:57):
west coast.
Scott Mercer (52:58):
Yeah, when the talk out here turned a few well,
it was the transport of liveoysters to the West Coast.
Yeah, when the talk out hereturned a few well, seven or
eight years ago, to crushingurchins, then I said, well, I
came from an area where pullingthis or that apart was supposed
to be a remedy too, and so youknow, find out first about that.
Yeah, hammers and smashingurchins, yeah.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (53:18):
These are the purple urchins.
Yeah, these are the purpleurchins you're talking about
correct?
Dr. Brent Hughes (53:21):
Yeah, they must be, and so we do kelp
forest restoration in Sonoma andManasino.
We work with the commercialurchin divers who are kind of
not working right now becausethere's really not a fishery
because of the kelp forestdecline.
Even though there's billions ofurchins, they're just basically
(53:42):
empty shells.
We have the commercial urchindivers basically hand harvest
these urchins.
We don't smash.
It's a very sensitive issue forsome of the indigenous
communities up here to smashnative animals, and so we have
the commercial urchin divershand harvest.
There was a big push to try tofatten them up after they're
(54:05):
harvested and try to sell themon the market.
It didn't quite work out.
So, you know, as we planned it,so a lot of the urchins will
get turned into compost For thecommunities we're working with.
There's a positive you knowaspect to that.
You know, of removing,wholesale removal of urchins.
We try to turn it into apositive thing.
(54:25):
So yeah, we don't smash, butthey do in Central California
and they do in SouthernCalifornia and elsewhere.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (54:33):
Well, they are up at Fort Bragg.
The Watermen's Alliance aredoing it in Casper Cove, yeah.
Dr. Brent Hughes (54:39):
Casper Cove is the one location in Northern
California where there issmashing happening and that's a
really community-driven effortthere.
Yeah, you know.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (54:50):
The indigenous are involved in that.
Dr. Brent Hughes (54:53):
Yeah, we kind of respect whatever they want.
You know they're our partnerson this stuff too, so we work
with them and their beliefsystems and we think it's a good
(55:15):
of success with our restoration, which is a really great thing,
because we spent several yearsagain failure going back to the
drawing board, failure goingback to the drawing.
So we went back to the drawingboard for about three years and
we've just now kind of figuredout really, you know, how to
(55:37):
restore kelp and we've just nowkind of figured out really, you
know how to restore kelp.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (55:39):
Well, I was just at the Sea Ranch Lodge and
looked out at Black Point and Iwas impressed to see this huge
kelp gathering just to the southof Black Point Beach, right
there.
Dr. Brent Hughes (56:02):
A place like Shell Beach and Sea Ranch.
That kelp forest has actuallybeen around since almost the
kelp forest big decline andthat's a really special site
because, for whatever reason,the kelp has remained intact.
So we have locations too acrossthe coast where we are seeing
persistent kelp beds.
So it's not total destruction,right.
There's still that 10% orwhatever.
That's kind of held on 5% yeah,maybe 5%.
(56:24):
We're seeing a little bit of arebound in the last year or two,
just natural recovery, whichhas been also great.
We hope that keeps on going.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (56:32):
Well, thank you Dr Brent Hughes from the
Sonoma State University,associate professor, who's
written tons of papers,abstracts, technical papers, and
you've been studying this forthe past two decades.
Thank you so much for joiningus today and our host, Scott
Mercer of Mendenoma Whale andSeal Study.
(56:55):
Any last words, Scott?
Scott Mercer (57:00):
Yeah, thank you for mentioning the fat ink
keeper worm, Eurecus cowpaw.
The name came back to me whenyou said that.
What I did for two years downthere was a feeding study
feeding ecology study when I wasa student of college in Marin,
and after sitting outside foreight to 10 hours at a time and
looking through a spotting scopewe'll be in the Coast Guard
jetty and one of the auditorscame up with a fat ink keeper
(57:23):
worm.
It was like watching thempulling it back, Pull it back
and it was stretch and stretch.
Sometimes it was snapped andhit him in the face.
And other times it wouldn't, theworm would win in the face, and
other times it wouldn't, theworm would win.
So that was a good memory,thinking of that.
Dr. Brent Hughes (57:46):
Yes, I've been able to observe lots of sea
otter foraging around ElkhornSlough on these fatty keeper
worms and it's always hilarious.
Scott Mercer (57:48):
Yeah Well, it was the sea otters actually that got
me from invertebrate zoology atCollege of Marin in San
Francisco State into marinemammals.
Oh, cool I'm so fascinated withthem.
I'd be sitting out there allday watching otters eat.
You just look beyond them andgray whales be migrating and
stella sea lions going the otherway.
It was a great time, learned alot out there.
Dr. Brent Hughes (58:11):
Thank you for coming.
It's like sitting on a rock foreight hours.
You learn a ton.
Scott Mercer (58:17):
Like don't do it.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (58:19):
Scott and Dr Brent Hughes.
Thank you so much for beingwith us here today on Resilient
Earth Radio and Podcast andagain we hope to connect with
you in the future, at least youand Scott and Tree.
Dr. Brent Hughes (58:34):
Yeah, absolutely.
This is fun.
This is my first podcast ever,so thanks for letting me in, at
least you and Scott and Tree.
Yeah, absolutely.
This is fun this is my firstpodcast ever.
Leigh Anne Lindsey (58:59):
Thanks for listening to the Resilient Earth
podcast, where we talk aboutcritical issues and positive
actions for our planet.
Resilient Earth is produced byPlanet Centric Media, a 501c3
nonprofit, and Seastorm StudiosInc.
Located on the rugged NorthSonoma Coast of Northern
California.
Please support us bysubscribing or donating to our
(59:21):
cause.
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