Sustainable Oceans Symposium highlights ideas to “make the sustainable attainable”
The one-day conference featured graduate students and others throughout California presenting research related to nearshore environments, species interaction, fish and more
“Maybe there’s a way our curiosity can be not just in the natural systems, but also in the systems overlaying them.”
By Sonora Slater
Sun was shining through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the UC Davis International Center multipurpose room on May 31, greeting attendees of the 2023 Sustainable Oceans Research Symposium as they filed into the open room holding paper, pen and reusable water bottles.
The conference went from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., provided breakfast and lunch to attendees and offered both in-person and Zoom attendance options. It was split into four sections: species interactions, socio-ecological approaches & ecosystem services, fish and nearshore environments. According to the introductory speech by Priya Shukla, a PhD candidate at UC Davis, the purpose of the conference was to highlight research that is seeking to “make the sustainable attainable.”
“[Ocean systems] are part of something much bigger, and they involve people, and they involve policy and management,” Shukla said. “So when we think about that, maybe there’s a way our curiosity can be not just in the natural systems, but also in the systems overlaying them.”
Christopher Janousek, an assistant professor from Oregon State University, kicked off Session 2 with a presentation about carbon sequestration along the Pacific coast.
Carbon sequestration is an ecosystem service of emerging importance, according to Janousek. Many ecosystems provide natural “services” that improve life for humans — for example, tree roots hold soil in place to prevent erosion or landslides, bees pollinate flowers, vultures and fungi help scavenge and decompose waste, and so on. Soil offers an ecosystem service by trapping carbon, keeping it from rising into the atmosphere and contributing to global warming.
As climate change becomes a major topic of discussion for scientists, policymakers and environmentalists, understanding more about what types of environments are better at this process may become a very important question, according to Janousek.
For this study, he said that they compiled data from more than 1000 soil samples across tide flats, marshes, mangroves and tidal swamps, gathering a lot of information about outside factors that could affect the level of sequestration and covering a broad range of areas with different rain levels, temperatures, tides and species compositions.
In the end, they had two main takeaways: first, that tidal swamps and tidal flats may be under recognized carbon sequestration ecosystems. Second, that there is potential for restored wetlands to increase carbon sequestration, but more data is needed.
“This is probably just a drop in the bucket of what there is to learn.”
“This is probably just a drop in the bucket of what there is to learn,” Janousek said. He believes that, moving forward, this research could help researchers, managers and policymakers.
Chris Heggerud, a post-doc student at UC Davis who noted that his favorite marine animal is a leopard seal, went next, presenting a model of the dynamics of phytoplankton.
Phytoplankton “blooms,” or rapid increases in the population, can produce toxins, as well as reducing water clarity. They’re often caused by run-off from urban industrial sources of agricultural run-off or fertilizers. But more broadly, their population dynamics, according to Heggerud, can be modeled by four main population dynamics: biotic interactions like competition or grazing, environmental factors like climate or lake conditions, socio-economic considerations like human impact and resource dynamics like nutrient availability.
Looking specifically at the socio-economic considerations, Heggerud also incorporated the human decision to either “cooperate” to reduce the algae population by decreasing agricultural run-off and/or urban development, or “defect” and keep doing what they’re doing, as well as assigning an associated cost to each one. Heggerud said that theoretically, this model could be used to encourage favorable outcomes, or to avoid unfavorable ones.
Mei Blundell, a PhD candidate in population biology at UC Davis who especially appreciates dumbo octopuses, closed out the session. Her presentation, titled, “Tea with the Man in the Trailer out Front,” went in a slightly different direction; rather than discussing specific research, she shared reflections on her summer internship at Fort Bragg, where she developed second grade curriculum about kelp and basic coding.
Blundell highlighted stories about her interactions with a man who lived in a trailer nearby where she lived and would occasionally invite her over for tea and scones, and to share his thoughts about research ethics.
According to Blundell, this man expressed anger that researchers were conducting an experiment in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest to see the effect of logging on sediment build-up in Casper Creek. He felt that they weren’t aware of or weren’t taking into account the impact of the study on local residents’ lives.
“‘It’s science’s obsession with numbers,’” she said, paraphrasing his words. “They need to demonstrate how much sediment builds up when you clear cut around a river. But what’s the point? Everyone knows that clear-cutting is bad. Those are our relatives, our family, our clear water, and they cut them down. Is it worth cutting them down?”
This perspective, Blundell went on to say, is one that she plans to take with her throughout the rest of her career as a researcher.
“What would it look like for my research to be a community service?” Blundell said. “And are my questions worth the answers?”