Taking Action in the Salton Sea

With AGU coming up, I was invited to give a little talk at the Untold Stories of Science Policy session on Wednesday Dec. 11, 11:33-11:40 AM. It's a mix of the personal and professional. Here's what I plan to say:

                I grew up in coastal California, which really isn’t that bad, air and water quality is decent for a major metropolitan area, despite the occasional sewage spill here and there you could surf and spend time in the water, head up to the mountains or desert a short drive away, no big deal. I’d go to national forests and parks, places that are protected wilderness. My dad would take me out to abandoned places, like old ghost towns. For me this was like an imaginary escape, taking me back in time. It wouldn’t be until much later that I realized many of these towns suffered from serious environmental problems, like acid mine drainage, damaged ecosystems, and public health issues. Ignorance is bliss, right?

In high school I remember reading articles about places that were environmental disasters, piqued my interest. Places like Centralia, PA or Chernobyl. One of these was the Salton Sea. I pictured it as place of urban decay, environmental degradation, and paradoxically, beauty, much like these other abandoned landscapes. I’d seen some of the famous photography done out there that painted the Salton Sea as a fallen postmodernist paradise. Little did I know about what was lying beneath that thin veneer of romanticism.

As I progressed in my education, I became more aware and knowledgeable of the both regional and global environmental problems. Of course, climate change, which, like many people in the audience I’m sure, I was frustrated that elected officials didn’t take (and still don’t) take seriously. The more local issues, like drought and air pollution, that affected California. I didn’t incorporate these into my research. I’m not the political type, I don’t want to endlessly argue in online forums, like Facebook, and just refused to directly engage in that nasty discourse. Then Trump happened, and I changed my tune.

My PhD dissertation was about human activities on ecosystems, but not directly applied to something like a policy outcome. Near the end of my time as a graduate student I decided I should really do a better job of reaching out to a public audience.  I saw in my email inbox a new “Science 2 Policy” certificate course at UCR, that promised to help with science communication and reaching policymakers. I learned later that this is a first of its kind program to directly engage grad students with the government, of which the instructors have pointed all kinds of student led efforts to the right people in the legislative and executive branches at the state and national levels. Mostly boiling your science down to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and cut out all that jargon to get at what’s really important.

Map of the Salton Sea

I didn’t see an easy application of my PhD work, so I opted for a side project that my Advisor Marilyn Fogel had taken up: the Salton Sea. It was through this that I learned about some issues I hadn’t been aware of: the lost fight over water rights resulting in an increase to the exposed shoreline sediments causing a massive public health crisis due to air pollution, affecting fish and wildlife on top of significant pollution from agricultural and sewage runoff. The deeply impoverished region of southeastern CA, the poorest in the wealthiest state in the union, with a large population of undocumented people that work the fields of the Imperial Valley (worth over $2 billion). One of my professors in anthropology described parts of America as “the 3^rd world in the 1^st world”. The Salton Sea is one of them. And importantly, I learned of the public’s distrust of state’s promises to fix the crisis, which remain unfulfilled. With my advisor Marilyn, the S2P instructors Susan Hackwood and Doug Brown, and the S2P president William Ota on board this led to a few efforts at UCR.

Shots from the Hackathon

First – the Hackathon and the collaboration between the EDGE Institute and the S2P program at UCR– This is an effort to group grad students in a room over two days to address policy questions. On the Salton Sea, we were asked by the SSA about the feasibility of a biogas facility for energy and revenue generation. Short story, probably not worth the effort. We also found major issues with the state’s 10 year SSMP, which is already 4 years behind schedule in terms of implementation. We plan to embed a student in the SSA’s office to offer science-based inputs. We’re also developing the document further into a pamphlet to distribute to policymakers and their staff, while forming a collaboration with other scientists around the campus to write a policy memo on the scientific status of the Salton Sea.

Photo of a real hearing in the CA senate

Second – The Mock Hearing – Very few people in science (especially students), as it turns out, have little indication about what goes on before assembly members and senators actually send a proposed law to a vote. Working with the theater dept. on campus, we filmed a scripted mock hearing adapted from transcripts to show the formal (and sometimes informal) aspects when hearing concerns of the public, lobbyists and lawmakers, from the wrangling and grandstanding that goes on. Laws aren’t decided in peer review as we know it.

Google street photo of the Boys & Girls Club in Mecca - Where we meet with community members

 

                Lastly – Community Engagement –While assessing the environmental and problems that are present in the Salton Sea, we need to keep in mind that those who are ultimately most affected by these issues are those that live and work by the sea 24/7 – A relatively poor and underrepresented population including migrants and Native American groups. Many of the people who live here speak little English and suffer with environmentally derived illness at much higher rates than the general population. Working with Ann Cheney at the UCR School of Medicine we are sharing our research with community members to hear concerns and guide our research. It’s with the families living by the Salton Sea that gives an extra sense of urgency to prod the state into seeking solutions to the environmental issues in the sea.

                Ultimately science-based policy in the Salton Sea needs to be part of the solution, working alongside with local businesses and the agricultural industry to promote public health, a clean environment and a vibrant economy. By educating scientists on the law-making process, students and researchers will be better able to communicate with policymakers. In 2020 we plan to publish a finalized science-based policy memo to send to policymakers in Sacramento. The S2P certificate program (which I participated in as a student) is planned to take on new students in Spring 2020, while the mock hearing will be turned into an annual event. By embedding a student in the SSA we’ll have a way to work with directly implementing science guided approaches to Salton Sea projects. Finally, by gaining input from the community we can guide are own research in helping the people living nearby. From the level of students to senior professors, we scientists can participate in shaping environmental policy rather than be bystanders waving from the sidelines.

Postdoccin'

Time for an update...

While the blog was left fallow a few things happened. I managed to finish my PhD, so yay. I've submitted the first chapter of my dissertation for publication, so keep an eye out. I plan to write a summary of it for the more casual reader. I'm preparing the remaining three chapters for publication as well, and that will likely close out the 5+ year project about the human impacts on southern South American marine food webs. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, my advisor Marilyn Fogel has been publishing her life story over at her own blog, which she has updated much more consistently than me. It's a good read, I'd highly recommend it. Near the end of my graduate student career, I sat down with her, and she asked what I planned to do after finishing, and, replying honestly, I didn't know. She offered me a job on the spot: stay a little longer, work as a postdoc! so I did!

The Salton Sea during field sampling a few weeks ago

So now I'm living the good life, getting my PhD work to a larger audience by publishing in journals, and working on some new research: the Salton Sea. The first of that research I just presented at Riverside's own Postdoctoral Association. I was fortunate enough to convey the research clearly and effectively, by sticking to the core message: that the Salton Sea in nearing an ecological tipping point and is in crisis. And I won the top prize for best poster! It might not be one of those "better poster" formats with the QR code taking up half the space, but I think it presents the details in a fairly easy to read way. Feel free to check it out here or stop by the hallway in front of lab in the Geology building at UCR.

My fellow postdoc and labmate Kaycee Morra talking about her birds at the 2019 Postdoc Symposium.

Of course, a lot of work went into this data and I'm especially thankful to Brenda Bermudez who weighed out all the samples and helped collect samples, which is not easy. Boat access to the sea is essentially cut off at this point as there's no good way to launch a boat due to the mud. Below are some illustrations of working in the Salton Sea.

Making a ramp to get to the water. Future fieldwork will likely involve some sort of fishing pole.

Getting stuck in the stinky mud

Barnacle feet: a new type of spa treatment

Reflections on the Society for Marine Mammology Conference Halifax 2017

Meant to post this after the conference back in October, but hey better late than never right?

From the fort overlooking the city

Nice and cool in Halifax and a very nice city. This is my first marine mammal conference, a needed perspective in the context of my research. Working in a chemistry laboratory in a geology department with a isotope biogeochemist as my adviser and zooarchaeologists as my collaborators I don't often get a chance to speak with people who work directly with animals.

There's been a number of great talks and I'd like to highlight some of them below:

The California sea lion: Isotopic indicator of changing conditions in the Gulf of California, Mexico presented by Julieta Sandoval-Sierra
Julieta's analysis was very similar to my own project, modeling food webs using carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes but with a very different application. Instead of comparing data over vast time periods, she showed a gradient in niche width from north to south in Baja California due to variation in oceanographic characteristics. Sea lions were eating very differently throughout this range.

Pre-historic insights into northern fur seals and fishing territories in the Pacific Northwest presented by Andrew W. Trites
Andrew told an amazing story of how science can be applied for social justice. An 1856 treaty granted fishing rights to several Native American tribes on the Washington coast, and a dispute over the boundaries of those fishing grounds was in the courts. Andrew used historical documents and  isotopic analysis of archaeological materials to show that indigenous peoples were hunting a population of fur seals that existed off the continental shelf break (but no longer does today), far from shore at the time the treaty was  made. After 30 years of losing in the courts, the judge was convinced by Andrew's testimony and awarded these tribes rights to fish all the way to the continental shelf break.

Eating seal or hungry like a wolf? Polar bear use of terrestrial resources revealed by compound-specific stable isotopes presented by Lara Horstmann
Lara applied isotopic analyses of amino acids to show how polar bears are beginning to rely more and more on terrestrial foods, such as elk and berries, instead of their preferred food, ringed seals. This appears to be directly related to loss of sea ice in the arctic, as polar bears will hunt these seals on the ice. One population of polar bears appears to be entirely terrestrial at this point, in direct competition with brown bear in north Alaska. She also measured cortisol in bone as an indicator of acute stress response, though didn't find much. An interesting idea though!

ASITA 2017 post-conference thoughts

The triple helical structure of collagen, the stretchy material that makes up a third of our bone. Complicated, right?

Just got back from the University of Waterloo where the 2017 Advances in Stable Isotope Techniques and Applications (ASITA) workshop was held, and it was eye opening. I learned a few tips, some tricks, and received a whole lot of recommendations that are going to be very useful in our lab over the next few months. This conference was much smaller, had a different crowd and focus than other conferences I've been to. While previous conferences I've attended have really been about scientific theory this conference was really about the nuts and bolts about the methods, which are ultimately essential for advancing theory like you might see at some of the larger gatherings. Of the hundred plus people in attendance, most were lab managers, technicians, people running commercial labs, professors setting up their own labs and seeking expertise in their own institutions, and company sponsors, the manufacturers of instruments used to conduct stable isotope analyses (at times the conference was more like a trade show, with companies advertising the latest and greatest technology).

ASITA, as I learned in the opening presentation, was only formed in the early 90s with the advent of a now ubiquitous setup in many laboratories around the world: the continuous flow isotope ratio mass spectrometer with an elemental analyzer attached. While both those instruments existed in mature forms before they were hooked up to each other, it took around fifty years for people to use them in direct combination. By doing this one could increase the amount of samples to analyze in a single day from maybe ten to over one hundred; a truly revolutionary accomplishment that appeared in just a few years. As people got wind of such a development, ASITA was created to inform the community of stable isotope researchers on how to implement the technology in their own labs. Since then conference has continued to serve the purpose of informing the community of new technological leaps and developments, including new methodologies, incremental progress, and new instruments (such as laser based mass spectroscopy).

Though I was not the only graduate student in attendance we were certainly in the minority. However, it was certainly beneficial to see a different more technical side of the field. Below I'll just summarize some of the things I took notes on or otherwise found interesting:

• Use quarter inch tubing instead of eighth inch on pure oxygen cylinders, lest you experience an explosion due to adiabatic pressure effect leading to flash combustion of micro-fragments in the tube. 
• Though not necessarily useful for my own benefit, many people there were in attendance for a workshop on LIMS, a laboratory information management system. This seems almost necessary for the large commercial labs and government agencies which are handling thousands of samples and clients everyday.
• There is a much larger market for stable isotope analysis outside of academia than I realized. Several of the presentations discussed developments in techniques for identifying performance enhancing drugs in athletes, others in adulteration of foods and in environmental remediation efforts, not to mention forensics. 
• We now have the ability to analyze many of the lighter isotopes using the same instruments in a short amount of time; its possible to analyze a sample nitrogen, carbon, sulfur, oxygen and hydrogen in ten minutes. 
• Ramping the temperature in a GC column allows you to essentially erase the "memory" effects of carbon and sulfur, with sulfur being a particular nasty element that often sticks around long enough to influence the next sample that immediately follows.
• Hydrogen samples can be especially tricky. On many molecules (especially of interest to me, collagen from bones) there exists exchangeable and non-exchangeable hydrogen. We're interested in the non-exchangeable H as that was set in place during an animal's lifetime. After the molecule is exposed after death, the exchangeable H will freely equilibrate with whatever is around it. Therefore, every lab must treat the sample with a carefully controlled atmosphere of known composition so it can be corrected to an international standard. 
• Collagen must also be dealt with fast before analyzing for hydrogen, as the molecule happily absorbs water. Make sure to completely desiccate it before analysis.
• If you're interested in only carbon analysis, check out cavity ring down spectroscopy.
• CSIA (compound specific isotope analysis) via GC-C-IRMS is particularly sensitive to what standard you use (all samples you intend to run must be compared to a substance of known composition so the numbers you receive are comparable between labs) and should be as close to your sample in composition as possible. So if measuring hair, use a hair standard and not some random organic thing, and especially not your reference gas. 
• Splitless injectors for GCMS work seems to be more problematic than the more tradtional split injector. 

If many of these things seem confusing to you, do not worry! I plan to do a series on mass spectroscopy with pictures from our lab this summer. Stay tuned!

Taphonomy and organic matter in bone

The bone bed found on a beach at Bahia Thetis

All that history in my last post leads to the reason for this travel in the first place: the collection of historic samples. Up until this current trip, I've looked at samples of fur seals and sea lions form archaeological sites. The majority of these are from the earliest known site with animal remains, Tunel, named after the Estancia Tunel not far from Ushuaia. I also have some samples that were collected in other sites along the Beagle Channel, Peninsula Mitre, and Isla de los Estados that extend my data set both geographically and temporally to the end of the marine hunting and gathering lifestyle employed by the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego. With this new collection, I'll be able to see if the massive changes that happened culturally with the arrival of industrial marine exploitation also had an impact ecologically. Significant changes have been observed in ecosystems around the world, including in California with the near elimination of sea otters. The extent of ecological impacts of industrial exploitation in comparison to subsistence exploitation of marine animals in Tierra del Fuego remains a mystery...until I run these samples in a few weeks!

Sea lion and whale bone in an archaeological site

But the understanding of the process of what happens to a body after death (the field of taphonomy) is a pretty important for interpreting stable isotopic results from my bone samples. Much of this field was pioneered by Behrensmeyer in multidecadal studies in Kenya with observations of the breakdown of bodies, separation into different parts, and ultimately into individual bones that break apart themselves. There are many different things that influence this process, including biological: scavengers, which can rip apart the body, limbs and chew on bones; microbes, which can feast on soft tissues, fat and oils of the body and the bones, and produce byproducts such as acids that chew away at bone mineral. Physical processes can include transport, for example, a bone traveling down a stream, bumping and grinding against rocks; damage from sunlight, which bleaches the surface and wears down the mineral, leading to cracking and flaking in the bone surface; and chemical weathering, the dissolution of bone mineral from acids.

One of the reasons I've been able to analyze samples from here is because the climate and conditions here in Tierra del Fuego generally buffer or slow down these taphonomic processes. Bones from the even the earliest sites have nearly the amount of organic matter in them that you would find in modern samples. This is because they've been buried almost immediately after being processed by humans. As a sub-antarctic climate, its generally very cold here, like throwing your steak into a refrigerator, it'll last longer than sitting out in the open on the Kenyan savannah, In addition, they've been buried in piles of shells. These shells are largely calcium carbonate, which counteracts acids that could be introduced by rain, trees, and soil bacteria.

Bones from partially articulated sea lions 

In contrast, some of the bones I have were buried in sand, allowing more of these chemical processes to reduce the organic matter in my bones, noticeably reducing the amount of organic matter. The samples we recovered from the seal greasery at Bahia Thetis are in an even worse state. After the carcasses were thrown into the bay, biological agents surely ate away at the soft tissue, leaving behind bones. Tidal action moved the bones/carcasses along the floor of the bay, before they were washed up onto the beaches during extreme storm events. Despite these destructive forces, a large number of identifiable bones can be found up on the beaches. However, bones on the surface tend not to last very long at all, and almost all the bones we found were in an advanced state of deterioration despite being only 70 years old. It may end up being difficult to extract the organic matter from these, but we have a large volume to extract from, so even if a small fraction is there, we'll get it.

We did find a fully articulated skeleton buried in the beach, with just a piece of its skull sticking out on the surface. The buried bones were in a much better state that the buried elements. I imagine this carcass was buried before it could be disarticulated by external forces. It stands to reason that there are probably many more articulated skeletons and bones either buried in the beaches or still in the bay where they were originally deposited. Likewise, there are surely many seals and sea lions buried in shell middens which have yet to be excavated, of which there are thousands known in Tierra del Fuego.

Return from Bahia Thetis

Anchor from a shipwreck in Peninsula Mitre

After twelve days and much work, I've had a few days to rest and reflect on our mission to collect and sample sea lion, fur seals, kelp, water, birds, fish and shellfish from Bahia Thetis, one of the most remote parts of the island of Tierra del Fuego. And it was a absolute success: In total, we collected 101 left sea lion and fur seal jaws (the majority being adult female sea lions), around ~50 femurs, and 10 skin and fur samples from the 1940s factory site. In addition, we made three 50x50cm excavations of shell middens, containing numerous more bones, stone and glass artifacts and tools including the first harpoon point ever found in the peninsula.

I learned a lot about this part of the world, and Peninsula Mitre in particular, which I think is important for understanding the context of the work I'm doing here. Peninsula Mitre is different in a number of ways from the land surrounding the Beagle Channel. The Beagle Channel is characterized by steep mountains and sharp glacial features, drumlins, canyons and overall rocky with forest. The peninsula, and much of the Atlantic coast of Tierra del Fuego, has softer rolling hills, less forest, dominated by peat bogs, and shallow coastline with  a slowly descending continental slope that extends for hundreds of kilometers. This shallow coastline proved treacherous for navigating, resulting in many shipwrecks, many of which were scavenged to build ranch buildings.

A more recent shipwreck from the 1980s

Geographic differences also played out ethnographically between indigenous groups. The Yamana occupied the Beagle Channel and southern archipelago, the Selk'nam in the interior and northern parts of Tierra del Fuego, the Alakuf on the western archipelago in Chile and the Haush in Peninsula Mitre. It is important to note that boundaries were not absolute for these groups, language and culture mixed and created gradients. The Haush and Selk'nam commonly incorporated more terrestrial animals into their diets, especially Guanaco, but they also hunted sea lions and seals like the more marine oriented Yamana.

Bahia Policarpo, site of the Policarpo family sheep ranching operation

When European settlers arrived, such as the Anglican missionary Thomas Bridges, they first set up in the Beagle Channel. However, it didn't take long for others to settle in other parts of Tierra del Fuego. Estancia Policarpo was established in the late 1800s by a Chilean family southeastern Atlantic coast of Tierra del Fuego, extending from the easternmost part of the Island at Cabo San Diego to its northern border with Estancia Maria Luisa some 50 km away. Like the ranch at Harberton, Estancia Policarpo exploited sheep for their wool. Estancia Policarpo operated until the mid 20th century, succumbing to falling wool prices from technological innovations in synthetic fabrics and wool that was cheaper to produce elsewhere. A caretaker maintained the what was left of the ranch until the 1980s, but most of the ranch buildings fell into disrepair throughout the late 20th century. Today the estancia is operated as a cattle ranch.

Blubber boiling vats

One way to subsidize the cost of the operation of the failing ranch was the exploitation of pinnipeds. In the 1940s, over one hundred Chileans, experienced in seal in sea lion hunting more common on the western coast of South America, set up a seal oil production facility in Bahia Thetis. The company would raid the multiple sea lion colonies that existed along the shores of Estancia Policarpo, killing over 30,000 seals and sea lions over a decade. The pinnipeds would be killed at the site of their colonies, loaded onto boats and taken to Bahia Thetis, were they were skinned, stripped of blubber and thrown into the bay. The blubber was then boiled in large vats, producing oil, much in the same way as whale blubber. In 1952, sealing was banned and the operation abandoned, leaving behind ruins of both the seal greasery and the ranch.

Bahia Thetis, site of the 1940s seal greasery facilities

That's I've got for today, stay tuned for more!

Estancia Harberton

Estancia Harberton, home of missionary Thomas Bridges and family in 1886. Imported brick by brick from England to Tierra del Fuego. Located east of Ushuaia by 50 km or so.

Yesterday I joined the archaeologist crew to collect some of my own samples and help carry bags of rocks. They were very heavy and my arms are quite tired still. But it was quite a productive day trip! We managed to carry 145 rocks over several kilometers, which will eventually help my fellow graduate student Carmen determine the source of lithic tools that were used by the Yamana. For my own sampling, I took some samples of kelp and some water samples, one of each from a bay exposed to a river mouth and one from the bay facing the Estancia Harberton (pictured above) which does not have a direct freshwater input. I doubt there will be significant differences between the two areas but good to measure extra just in case. The waters of the Beagle Channel are known to be exceptionally fresh compared to ocean waters from other parts of the world, due to the high amount of precipitation and freshwater inputs (from snowmelt and glaciers), but I will find this out and verify this claim personally!

Loading a large bag of rocks to be carried back to the truck.

The purpose of sampling water here is two fold. First I'm interested in differences in the waters of the Beagle Channel and the southern Atlantic/Argentine Sea, specifically to see what differences in water chemistry there might be, especially when it comes to nutrients and trace elements. Different nutrient loads can have an impact on the productivity of food webs, which would in turn have effects on species high in the food chain, like top predators such as fur seals, sea lions, and cetaceans (whales and dolphins). Trace elemental analysis can help me not only differentiate bodies of water, but serve as an independent method that would potentially verify where my fur seals and sea lions spend their time. Trace elements are incorporated into your tissues just like stable isotopes are and can (hopefully) be used a tracer.

A figure showing the interaction of different bodies of water in South America (from  Acha, E. M., et al. Marine fronts at the continental shelves of austral South America: Physical and ecological processes. J. Mar. Syst. 44, 83–105 (2004).) 

The measurement of kelp will serve a similar purpose. Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera, grows around the world, from the coasts of Alaska, New Zealand, Japan, all the way down to Tierra del Fuego, It's a very successful species, one of the fasting growing on the planet (a meter a day in the right conditions) and forms the basis of many highly productive food webs around the world. Constraining the variation between southern Atlantic kelp and Beagle Channel kelp will give me an understanding of what to expect when I compare the stable isotopic values between giant kelp, kelp based fish and ultimately fur seals and sea lions. Fur seals and sea lions might be moving back and forth from open ocean to kelp ecosystems or changing their degree of residency in kelp ecosystems over time so it's important to understand what the kelp ecosystem looks like versus the open ocean.

Soon I leave for the Atlantic Coast, Peninsula Mitre and Bahia Thetis, site of the abandoned sealing operation that ran from 1946 to 1952. Bahia Thetis was formerly known as the Bay of Good Success, I hope it lives up to its name!

Wild horses seen while sampling near Estancia Harberton