Noyo Center for Marine Science Executive Director Sheila Semans Conservation, Restoration, and Education Northern CA Coast

In this episode, we talk about the loss of bull kelp along the Northern California coast and the efforts underway to restore the ecosystem,and about the first annual Kelp Festival May-June 2024 with the Mendocino Film Festival, Above/Below, and the many organizations, chefs, and people who came together to raise awareness about this critical issue and the positive things people are doing about it. Sheila has led the development of the Noyo Center from its inception in 2015. She has worked in coastal and marine conservation for more than twenty-five years, most recently with the California State Coastal Conservancy where she served as senior staff to the California Ocean Protection Council. Sheila’s experience developing highly collaborative programs like the California Seafloor and Shoreline Mapping Program or the Coastal Ocean Currents Monitoring Program has enabled her to work with all of California’s marine labs, with local, state and federal agencies, and with academic and industry leaders conducting leading-edge marine research. The Noyo Center has a 3-pronged approach to development,  supporting an innovative research program, creating an integrated  education program and building a world-class facility for research,  education and tourism. Our research and education

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Transcript

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Speaker 1
Welcome to Resilient Earth Radio, where we host speakers from the United States and around the world to talk about critical issues facing our planet and the positive actions people are taking. We also let our listeners learn how they can get involved and make a difference.

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Speaker 2
We are resilient. Earth radio, a project of Planet.

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Speaker 3
Centric Media Se

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Speaker 1
Welcome to Resilient Earth radio. I'm Leigh Anne And this episode 12 was recorded earlier this year on April the 26th, 2024. We spoke with Sheila Semens the executive director of the Noyo Center for Marine Science, and we spoke with her about urchin ranching, which might help the disappearing kelp forests along the northern California coast. And it includes discussion about an event that was held mid-May through the middle of June, the first annual Kelp Festival.

00;01;17;19 - 00;01;55;05
Speaker 1
Not only did the Noyo center for Marine Science participate in that, but it had several organizations that collaborated together to bring this event off to raise awareness about the loss of bull kelp along our coast, which was diminished by almost 97% in some places, the 95% and others. What are people doing to help bring it back? The Noyo center for Marine Science is located in Fort Bragg, California, Mendocino County Sheila Semens has led the development of the Noyo Center from its inception in 2015.

00;01;55;10 - 00;02;33;05
Speaker 1
She has worked in coastal and marine conservation for more than 25 years, most recently with the California State Coastal Conservancy, where she served as senior staff to the California Ocean Protection Council. Sheila's experience developing highly collaborative programs like the California Seafloor and Shoreline Mapping Program or the Coastal Ocean Currents Monitoring Program, has enabled her to work with all of California's marine labs, with local, state and federal agencies, and with academic and industry leaders conducting leading edge marine research.

00;02;33;07 - 00;03;12;05
Speaker 1
The Noyo center has a three pronged approach to development supporting an innovative research program, creating an integrated education program, and building a world class facility for research, education, and tourism. Their research and education programs support activities that engage the community, the visitor, and the scientists in order to inspire connection, communication, collaboration, and creativity. Their future Ocean Science Center facility will be a dynamic environment that showcases sustainability through its landscape, buildings and operations.

00;03;12;08 - 00;03;40;03
Speaker 1
This campus will unfold from the land with one element leading naturally to another as it grows and changes over time. Transforming the former lumber mill site in Fort Bragg. Here are a few things that the Noyo Center strives to do. Place the Mendocino Coast at the forefront of marine research and education. Engage individuals of all ages in scientific exploration of the natural world.

00;03;40;05 - 00;04;18;26
Speaker 1
Facilitate. Collaborate among scientists, public agencies and private business in research and management of natural resources. Finally, one more goal of theirs is to support the restoration and protection of coastal and marine ecosystems. We'll find out more when we talk with our guest, Executive Director Sheila Simmons.

00;04;18;29 - 00;04;23;14
Speaker 1
And I'm so glad to have you here on the show this morning. Sheila. Good morning.

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Speaker 3
Good morning. Yes. Thank you. Liane, it's lovely.

00;04;25;21 - 00;04;36;20
Speaker 1
To be here. Sheila, it sounds like you have been the motivation, the energy behind the Noyo center for Marine Science. What got you into doing this in the first place?

00;04;36;23 - 00;04;57;08
Speaker 3
Well, I'd love to take the credit for this, but really, this would not succeed if it wasn't a community effort. So even though I have been the director since we launched the oil center in 2015, this was a vision by the city of Fort Bragg. From the initial start, as part of the redevelopment of the mill site, the visioning for what the community wanted to see out on their mill site.

00;04;57;10 - 00;05;29;14
Speaker 3
When the Georgia-Pacific mill site closed in two 2002, and that 420 acres became available for redevelopment, it was a really, really interesting process to figure out what this community wanted from, you know, their entire waterfront, basically. And so second, only to the coastal trail was this was this request for Marine Science Center. And, you know, that ranged from a Monterey Bay aquarium type facility to a, field station.

00;05;29;16 - 00;05;58;25
Speaker 3
And what did that really mean? And so when I was working at the state of California at the time and helping the city with some of this visioning process, and we gathered a team of experts to really look at, is it feasible to build a marine science center here, with all of the constraints of living in a rural community that, you know, we're now very well aware of, and it was a considerable process for the city to undertake and then decide, yeah, this is this is something we want to invest in.

00;05;58;25 - 00;06;08;21
Speaker 3
And they hired me from the state of California to come launch the new center. And they did that as a redevelopment economic development initiative for the city.

00;06;08;25 - 00;06;44;22
Speaker 1
I went to the International Ocean Film Festival down in San Francisco and met some amazing people doing all kinds of conservation efforts and protection of our natural resources. One woman that I met that's doing a lot of the marine protected areas, she's working with the Marine Conservation Institute, and they had on their panel a fellow who's working with a number of the tribes along our coast here and they're working on how to protect those areas and what it means for our climate as far as climate action.

00;06;44;25 - 00;06;54;16
Speaker 1
We want to raise awareness about kelp in specific. But we've had an a real natural disaster, and I wanted you to address that right now too.

00;06;54;19 - 00;07;21;29
Speaker 3
Yes. There's so many interesting things related to the origins of the Natural Center, but also the MPAs that you just talked about, and that's what I was doing more of when I was at the state of California. They undertook a really great effort to look at how to protect these incredible habitats off our coastline from various things and MPAs, our marine protected areas that are created in a whole different set of scales with different restrictions.

00;07;22;02 - 00;07;55;24
Speaker 3
And what's really interesting is that we've had this confluence of climate driven stressors in our nearshore environment that have turned our once extremely productive coastline into basically an urchin barren of a single species of little purple urchin. And so marine protected areas that restrict any take from those regions are now protecting urchin barrens. And so it's really requiring the state of California to look at what does adaptive management mean in the face of climate change.

00;07;55;27 - 00;08;19;00
Speaker 3
And how do we look at something like a marine protected areas and figure out how to manage that when we have these kind of dramatic shifts so quickly? So in 2014, just to give a little background, I think most people living on the coast are aware of this now. But in case you're not, in 2014, we started to see a real alarming thing happening off our coast.

00;08;19;00 - 00;08;40;29
Speaker 3
First, we had sea stars dying on our coastline and sea star wasting syndrome as something that we've seen for decades along the California coast, but in very discrete areas. And this what was significant about this is that it was along the entire West coast from Mexico, all the way up to Alaska. We were seeing sea stars die off and all sea stars.

00;08;40;29 - 00;09;06;22
Speaker 3
It was it was unprecedented in scale, in size, which is what we see with climate change as we go forward. But compounding that was the marine heatwave we had at the time in 2014, 2015, 2016, we had really unprecedented hot water off of our coast. And our coastline is so productive because we have cold up world waters that provide nutrients for a variety of species, including our kelp forests.

00;09;06;25 - 00;09;08;22
Speaker 1
All that. The blob?

00;09;08;25 - 00;09;33;28
Speaker 3
Yes, the blob and the son of Blob and Godzilla. I mean, they just like, kept getting more creative with their names. It was kind of crazy, but the impacts of that of warmer temperatures, like we've had a, you know, an ongoing oscillation of El Nino, La Nina years that really affect our physical oceanography and create warmer and colder conditions periodically, episodically.

00;09;34;04 - 00;09;57;09
Speaker 3
But this was a, you know, a marine heat wave like we hadn't seen. It was very big. And maybe it was driving the sea star wasting syndrome. We're not completely sure about that yet. When we have warmer waters off our coast, we get less kelp growth because it really is nurtured by cold up world water. So we were getting less kelp and we lost our sea stars.

00;09;57;09 - 00;10;19;04
Speaker 3
And for us in the Sonoma and medicine, a coastline, the main predator of the little purple urchin that we have in our coast is the sunflower sea star, which is this huge, you know, multi arms, you know, 16 to 24 arms. Incredible creature. These things that you see in the ocean that you can't believe are really real. They're three feet across sometimes when they're fully mature.

00;10;19;07 - 00;10;50;12
Speaker 3
We lost almost an entire population. It's now endangered on our coastline. And so we had nothing controlling these little purple urchin. And as we lost the sea stars, the purple urchin population just exploded. And it's important for people to understand that that's not an invasive species. It's now just an overpopulated species. But urchin play a really important role in our ecosystem, and we have to make sure that we understand that in a balanced ecosystem, they're really a vital part of our of our coastline.

00;10;50;15 - 00;10;55;09
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a very important point. Our balanced ecosystem.

00;10;55;11 - 00;11;20;23
Speaker 3
That's right. But when you have an explosion of these urchin, they are an incredibly impressive species. They're resilient. They're a force. So these purple urchin are now 60 to 100 times more populated off our coast. And they form what's called an urchin barren. So basically they can outcompete all of the other herbivores on our coastline. They like to eat seaweed and kelp.

00;11;20;25 - 00;11;59;06
Speaker 3
And so they have basically eaten all of the other animals, you know, just sort of out of the kelp forest ecosystem. And we get what is called an urgent bearing, which is a largely dominated habitat of just purple urchin. They cut abalone, they've out competed the red commercial urchin, and they basically the problem that we have that's so critical for people to understand that is unique to the North Coast is that our main habitat structure forming kelp, bull kelp, which is what you see behind me, is an annual species of kelp.

00;11;59;08 - 00;12;22;24
Speaker 3
And so it starts to grow around this time of the year, April, May. It has a growing season until the fall. In the fall it becomes reproductive. Its reproductive spores break off from those beautiful blades you see behind me. They're one of the fastest growing species on the planet. Between 10 and 20in a day. And then once they release their spores, the winter storms rip them out and they die back.

00;12;22;24 - 00;12;58;00
Speaker 3
And in a normal year, you know, we don't have a lot of kelp in the winter. So if we have an overpopulation of urchin, once those little kelp start to grow this time of year, the urchin just eat them. They just mow them over and eat them so they don't have a chance to become reproductive. The other problem that complicates that from a restoration standpoint is if you start to do restoration and you remove purple urchin in June, you have to continue to remove urchin in order for that kelp to have a chance to grow.

00;12;58;02 - 00;13;09;02
Speaker 3
Not only, you know, within that next growing cycle, but all the way until the next fall and then beyond. You know, if you want to keep an area cleared, you have to continue to maintain it.

00;13;09;04 - 00;13;36;08
Speaker 1
We're talking about the whole amount in abundance of kelp that used to be along our coast. It's down to about, what, 4 or 5% of what it used to be. And I was a scuba diver back in the 80s and diving off Monterey Bay through amazing kelp forests, kelp forests, or just forests for all kinds of sea life.

00;13;36;11 - 00;13;42;19
Speaker 1
And 95 to 96% of that is all gone along our coast because.

00;13;42;19 - 00;13;43;07
Speaker 3
Of this.

00;13;43;13 - 00;13;45;13
Speaker 1
Imbalance that's happening.

00;13;45;16 - 00;14;11;16
Speaker 3
That's right. It's it's tragic, honestly. You know, people go all over the world to dive into coral reefs, but to dive in a kelp forest is like no experience you've ever had, right? So it is one of the most beautiful habitats I've ever seen in my life. And it is in its balanced and full state. It supports hundreds of animals for shelter, for food, for habitat, for it attenuates way of action.

00;14;11;16 - 00;14;35;28
Speaker 3
It has many services for us and we as a culture have learned to depend on kelp forests in a way that I think that until the collapse of this, this whole ecosystem didn't really kind of fully appreciate it is an incredible species that we we can't just throw our hands up and say, oh, well, we have to continue to innovate and try to figure out ways to bring the kelp back.

00;14;36;00 - 00;14;43;24
Speaker 1
You were talking about the services that these kelp provide and a big part of that too, is carbon sequestration.

00;14;43;27 - 00;15;01;04
Speaker 3
Exactly, yes. So going back to the origin of the oil center, one of the reasons that folks wanted to have marine science here is that we had this productive and largely unexplored coastline. And it's it's always a little bit shocking to me how little we know about things in the ocean. I mean, we still have so much to learn.

00;15;01;04 - 00;15;24;20
Speaker 3
And bull kelp was a perfect example. We know a lot. You talk about diving in Monterey. Monterey has an interesting mix of two giant kelp. So bull kelp is one type of of giant kelp. And then we have in a confusing way, we have another species of kelp called microcystis, which is its common name is giant kelp. Monterey has a combination of microcystis and nereus.

00;15;24;20 - 00;15;43;29
Speaker 3
This is both kelp and giant kelp. And so it's it's a little bit more resilient. One is a perennial species and one is an annual species. So it's a little bit more resilient to the things that we're talking about. But it's also incredibly productive. So I lost my train of thought and what I was trying to say, because I get so excited about talking about kelp.

00;15;44;01 - 00;16;09;01
Speaker 1
What you were saying is that there's so little sometimes that we know about our neighbor, the ocean, and the inhabitants within it. And I really began to see that when Scott and Tre Mercer of MIT and Noma Whale in seal study, who had come on our show once a month and give us updates on the whales and the seals and all of the traffic along our coast, and to raise awareness that way.

00;16;09;03 - 00;16;44;11
Speaker 1
They then wanted to do an annual symposium where they brought in speakers from around the country, and we called that the Ocean Life Symposium. And then we started having these amazing speakers, and we kept looking at each other like, why are we not a more aware of these topics? Especially when Ralph Tommy of the International Monetary Fund brought up this thing about how to value whales over the period of their lifetime, how much carbon they sequester in their bodies, the amount of oxygen they help produce through the phytoplankton that they feed.

00;16;44;13 - 00;17;01;09
Speaker 1
And that was worth almost 2000 or 1500 trees. We were looking at each other like, why is this not more out there in the awareness of the public? So yes, I'm so glad that the new center for Marine Science is there doing what you were doing.

00;17;01;11 - 00;17;18;17
Speaker 3
Yes, that's exactly right. Thank you. And that was my point, is that we know so much more about species in the Monterey or in the Bay area, because we've had research institutions there for so long. We know so much less about species like bull kelp that dominated the far north coast.

00;17;18;19 - 00;17;24;17
Speaker 1
We'll be right back right after this special message.

00;17;24;19 - 00;17;28;28
Speaker 2
Hi, I'm Pam Hudson, owner and broker of Pamela Hudson Real Estate.

00;17;29;00 - 00;17;50;17
Speaker 4
And I'm Tom Bowman, realtor of Pamela Hudson Real Estate. We're excited to share with our community the new rules and regulations having to do with commissions. We are experts at representing sellers and buyers, and have confidence that the new structure will keep our clients protected. Our 35 years of experience and completion of this transaction is unmatched in our county.

00;17;50;20 - 00;18;01;10
Speaker 4
We can be reached at 707937 3900. We're located on Main Street in Mendocino. Remember, no one knows our county like we know our county.

00;18;01;12 - 00;18;19;04
Speaker 2
California diary license number 01036573. Energy Ethics experience Pamela Hudson, Real Estate.

00;18;19;07 - 00;18;24;17
Speaker 1
Welcome back to Resilient Earth Radio.

00;18;24;19 - 00;18;43;18
Speaker 3
When we first started to sort of respond to this crisis, we brought together the Gulf of Farallones Association, sort of led an effort to bring together all of the science around bulk help to kind of just do a baseline of what do we know, what do we need to know? What are our priorities in responding to something like this?

00;18;43;18 - 00;19;03;10
Speaker 3
Because this kind of shift, this kind of dramatic shift in such a short period of time was again unprecedented. I participated in a year of meetings, and we came up with the Bulk Help recovery plan. But it was amazing to me how little we knew about how long it took the survive in the environment. How far did they travel, where did you know where?

00;19;03;10 - 00;19;09;04
Speaker 3
If we are trying to bring kelp back, what is the process and what is the strategy for doing that?

00;19;09;10 - 00;19;29;07
Speaker 1
And you have to also be very careful because one approach could have devastating effects. And we see this from time and time again when we want to correct something, but maybe it's not the right way to go about it. So putting a lot of time in and foresight into your actions before you take them, that's so important.

00;19;29;10 - 00;20;04;13
Speaker 3
Always. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly right. And the other thing that I think that's been really interesting to to see and why I think something like the new center is so important is that the local communities that are dependent on our ocean resources and their and their culture is so significantly tied to the ocean feel the impacts, both the environmental and economic shocks of these kind of changes pretty quickly and pretty significantly took us a long time just to get the awareness out of what we were seeing and to get more attention and more dollars flowing into the area.

00;20;04;15 - 00;20;26;26
Speaker 3
And as one would predict, once people started to sort of understand the severity of this problem, a lot of that money is going to institutions outside of our area, and the science is going with it. So we're constantly trying to build our science capacity here locally, so we can respond to these kind of shifts quickly when they happen.

00;20;27;03 - 00;20;32;08
Speaker 3
So we're better to respond and we're more resilient going into, you know, an uncertain future.

00;20;32;11 - 00;20;40;08
Speaker 1
Building back resiliency in our oceans because it's our natural defense against any kind of climate change.

00;20;40;11 - 00;21;02;22
Speaker 3
I think we need to build resiliency in our communities as well. Remember that I said the new center was initiated as economic development initiative for the city. So what we're really trying to do is constantly find the ways in which we can have a win for the environment and a win for the economy locally. So our research and ranching, which we'll talk about in a little bit, is an example of that.

00;21;02;22 - 00;21;14;23
Speaker 3
And I can I can explain that. But I think we have to build in our local economies that are so vulnerable to these shocks, the pandemic being another one, the wildfires, you know, we we have a hard time bouncing back every time.

00;21;14;23 - 00;21;30;03
Speaker 1
So really glad you point this out, because that's exactly why an economist from the International Monetary Fund, Ralph Jamie, could talk about this from an economy point of view, how can you benefit both sides?

00;21;30;05 - 00;21;59;28
Speaker 3
Yes. And this has always been a problem in the ocean. How do you value ecosystem services. So so that analysis on the value of oil. Well it was amazing right. So and it will drive the way that we calculate slowing down cargo ships and shipping lanes because that's an economic cost to those companies. But the economic gain from saving a whale from being hit, it's now an equation on both sides.

00;22;00;03 - 00;22;39;07
Speaker 1
And there's other ways to to build economies around protecting these resources. And that benefits humans that need to make a living and to thrive where they are and not have their means of survival taken away, either because certain resource needs to be protected. There's got to be economies that address both. And with you working there at the new center for Marine Science up in Fort Bragg, and all the work that you've been doing with the team and with the city of Fort Bragg over the years and other organizations, you've been able to get some grants and to work towards expanding and doing new projects.

00;22;39;10 - 00;23;10;12
Speaker 1
You're putting on this kelp Festival, which is going to also be a great tool for raising awareness along our coast, because you're going out through a variety of different venues. You're going through art photography, through the film festival, Mendocino Film Festival. You're doing guided hikes and informational tours. I want to talk a little bit about that before we get into more specific into this urchin farming, which I find so fascinating.

00;23;10;15 - 00;23;18;19
Speaker 1
First, tell me about this festival that is out there to raise awareness about our kelp and ocean out here on the coast.

00;23;18;21 - 00;23;45;10
Speaker 3
Yeah. Thank you. I'm excited to talk about all those things. But yeah, the Kelp Festival is this amazing confluence of everybody's enthusiasm to raise awareness and understand this challenge that we're facing. This isn't an oil centered, driven event. We're part of a really highly collaborative group of institutions that are working together to celebrate kelp through art, science, film and food.

00;23;45;12 - 00;24;00;20
Speaker 1
Above and below the Mendocino Film Festival, of course, Mendo Park's Ocean Protection Council, sea Grant of California, The Nature Conservancy, and word of mouth. I mean, that's all the organizations in the Kelp Festival.

00;24;00;22 - 00;24;21;17
Speaker 3
There's a whole list. So I really everybody to go to the beautiful website we have had on the leadership council of this organization. We've had two beautiful artists that has just created gorgeous imagery. This picture behind me is an example of one of the photographers that we will be highlighting in a photography exhibit at the field station, for instance.

00;24;21;19 - 00;24;41;26
Speaker 3
It's really hard to get people to understand things under the water and to have that emotional reaction. Like, you can see a forest fire and you understand, or if we clear cut the entire forest along our course, that would have a real visceral impact on you. So we really want people to see the beauty of kelp forests and to understand what's at risk here.

00;24;42;03 - 00;24;44;26
Speaker 3
So having that art component is huge.

00;24;44;28 - 00;24;57;00
Speaker 1
The films that I saw at the 21st International Ocean Film Festival in San Francisco, one of them was Sequoias of the Sea. Is that the one that's going to be showing, or is that another film?

00;24;57;02 - 00;25;11;29
Speaker 3
No, we were hoping that one was going to be shown because it's got so much real focused attention to Northern California. No, they're not quite ready. They're still in the editing phase. So I think they're going to show the trailer for it, but it's not quite ready. It'll be probably next film festival that will get that on there.

00;25;11;29 - 00;25;28;27
Speaker 3
In fact, when they come up, they're going to come do some more filming at our Urchin Ranch so they can get that in there. The filming they're doing is incredible and they're trying so hard. It's a complex story, and it's a hard thing to synthesize into something that you didn't story tell around. Right? So it's a very complex issue.

00;25;28;27 - 00;25;45;27
Speaker 3
And I have every faith that they'll do a good job. No, it's another film that's featured at the film festival. So I highly encourage people to go to that. And then they have a panel of a number of local folks talking about kelp afterward. So that'll be a really great event.

00;25;46;00 - 00;26;00;08
Speaker 1
The film festival starts Thursday, May the 30th, and that's a member night. And then the opening night gala is the next night and it goes through June 2nd. And I believe that you were involved in the opening night gala, too.

00;26;00;11 - 00;26;02;07
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yes, exactly.

00;26;02;07 - 00;26;15;09
Speaker 1
Because it's at the Mendocino Art center. My friend Pamela Hudson is the one that puts it on every year. I've been a supporter of that festival for 12 years now, so or longer. But anyway, I'm sorry to jump in on you there. Go ahead.

00;26;15;09 - 00;26;35;25
Speaker 3
No. That's good. No. Yeah. The opening reception at the Mendocino Arts Center is going to be spectacular. We have some really amazing artists that will be featured at the Art center, and then throughout the month, we'll have incredible workshops there. I mean, there's just such an amazing array of things being offered to get people to, to sort of integrate into these issues.

00;26;35;25 - 00;26;57;04
Speaker 3
And, and I imagine as you're doing seaweed pressings or basket weaving or whatever it is, whatever the workshop is that you choose, you'll be talking about these issues the whole time. People will be trying to understand what's happening to kelp and trying to understand what impact it's had to the whole ecosystem. So I think these things will just ignite further conversations.

00;26;57;06 - 00;27;25;06
Speaker 1
If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Sheila Semens She's the executive director of the Noyo center for Marine Science in Fort Bragg, California. That's in the Mendocino County portion of Northern California. And I'm Leigh Anne Lindsey, host today here on KGUA public radio, independent Public Radio on the southern tip of Mendocino County, right over the bridge is the Sea Ranch, Sonoma County, where I live.

00;27;25;08 - 00;27;53;07
Speaker 1
And then we have all along our coast, people and organizations are doing such amazing things to help raise awareness about our oceans, to help ensure that our natural resources are protected, and also to rebuild that resiliency in there, because we get our oxygen from over 50% of it from the oceans. So this is a very, very important topic that we need to be addressing.

00;27;53;12 - 00;27;58;28
Speaker 1
And I want to hear more about the Kelp Festival now, Sheila. And then we'll get into urchin ranching.

00;27;59;02 - 00;28;25;02
Speaker 3
Okay. Great. Yeah. So the Kelp Festival, as I said that we're trying to celebrate kelp through art, science, food and and film and we'll integrate those things. So when I was the the closing ceremony, for instance, will be, seaweed reception with some amazing chefs doing food, and we'll have a panel about urchin ranching in and urchins in particular, using the ocean for food source.

00;28;25;05 - 00;28;37;03
Speaker 3
But included in that will be the lead chef at the Harbor House down in Elk, who we hope will be working with us on creating a really wonderful tasting seafood product.

00;28;37;03 - 00;28;39;21
Speaker 1
And he's, that is Matthew Kammerer, a 2-star Micheline chef now.

00;28;40;05 - 00;29;09;06
Speaker 3
Yeah. Matthew. Matthew is amazing. He came into office years ago and said, what is happening? How can we help? And we've been partnership with him for quite some time. He used to go down and collect both purple and red urchin and kelp from his cold in order to supply their menu. And you know, I'm really excited to integrate somebody of that caliber with what we're trying to do and see if we can create a taste and texture that is worthy of a Micheline starred restaurant.

00;29;09;06 - 00;29;23;16
Speaker 3
That'll be super exciting. So we're bringing all of these things together. He'll be sitting right next to, you know, a researcher who's working on aquaculture at Moss Landing and right next to an indigenous person who will be talking about using the ocean resources for food.

00;29;23;18 - 00;29;41;20
Speaker 1
This public media station was started by the first Native American run National Public Radio, Peggy Berryhill. And that was over 50 years ago. But it's important because the tribes were the ones who were the original stewards along our coasts. What exactly is the topic that night?

00;29;41;22 - 00;30;03;26
Speaker 3
It is going to be about urchin, basically, and how we use urchin culturally, but also as a food source from both a science standpoint but also from a restaurant standpoint and from a Native American standpoint. So it'll be an interesting panel, I think, for sure. I had no idea about your origin, and that's really amazing. We have an incredible partnership with the Kashia tribe down there.

00;30;03;26 - 00;30;05;04
Speaker 1
You yes.

00;30;05;07 - 00;30;29;02
Speaker 3
One of the most visionary tribes I've worked with I think. And after giving back some of their tribal lands on the Sonoma coast they one of their first initiatives is to create an abalone restoration center and aquaculture facility. And because of this issue, they are also going to be doing urchin aquaculture. So we're really an interesting kind of parallel development processes.

00;30;29;02 - 00;30;34;14
Speaker 3
And so it's amazing opportunity to work in collaboration with the tribes.

00;30;34;16 - 00;30;39;25
Speaker 1
Was that the land that was through Richardson Ranch on Stewarts Point?

00;30;39;27 - 00;30;42;17
Speaker 3
Yes. Thing acres.

00;30;42;17 - 00;30;43;12
Speaker 1
Amazing.

00;30;43;20 - 00;31;12;21
Speaker 3
And they're just so forward looking and and they're trying to look at food sovereignty through their aquaculture. We talk a lot about co-managing resources with tribal governments, and we don't really know how to do that. So the partnership between us and the Cheyenne and Davis trying to create an abalone Broodstock program will be training tribal divers to do the scientific monitoring of the habitats and hopefully building back habitat that we can replant abalone into at some point.

00;31;12;26 - 00;31;24;17
Speaker 1
And here's the economy exactly. Building economies around the protection of our natural resources while it benefits both sides. And everybody wins in the end.

00;31;24;20 - 00;31;28;19
Speaker 3
We hope so. If everything goes well.

00;31;28;21 - 00;31;35;09
Speaker 1
Have caveat there. So the Kelp Festival is going to be in Fort Bragg and Mendocino.

00;31;35;12 - 00;32;04;08
Speaker 3
North Coast. Kelp Fest. Org then I have a beautiful website they've put together. We have from just the science events. For instance, we have Low Tides seaweed walks with Kathy Miller from Berkeley. She's an amazing person who has such a knowledge of our seaweed species and how they're used calcium. Miller's low tech seaweed walk is May 25th from 7 to 930, and then Jose Iseland and Laura Knolls are going to do another one on June 8th.

00;32;04;08 - 00;32;28;28
Speaker 3
And Jose, if you don't know her, she's an artist, but also an incredible archivist. It's hard to really describe Jose Iseland. She wrote the Bible on bull kelp, basically, and this is part of this above and below artist collective, and has written and done amazing things around Bull kelp. And so she has done these tidepool walks with us in the past looking at all the different species.

00;32;28;28 - 00;32;53;10
Speaker 3
And Larry Knowles from he's one of our local seaweed harvesters. Verge con has moved here. She's an engineer and material scientist. It's brilliant. I mean, when she talks, I have a hard time keeping up. She's looking at using urchin shells as a material product for. Then she's got a number of different potentials. 3D printing materials, manufactured stones, perhaps, you know.

00;32;53;10 - 00;33;16;17
Speaker 3
So she's looking at the calcium carbonate of the shell and how we can use that and put it to some kind of use. So verge has a lab here in Oil Harbor and has collection of resources behind her with her work at both Berkeley and MIT. We like to call them science socials at the field station, where it's a little bit less formal than a whole science talk, but the folks talk and present.

00;33;16;17 - 00;33;21;18
Speaker 3
But you also have a beer and you talk with scientists, and you get to know them more as people.

00;33;21;20 - 00;33;46;19
Speaker 1
In fact, I just want to interject real quick that you have some great topics that you bring up each month at your location, as well as the guests come in via zoom. One that you did just recently that I really like was with Zach Cleaver and Rich Ryals, and they're talking about this role plus gear technology. I mean, there's just so many different topics and discussions that you're having to help raise awareness in our community.

00;33;46;23 - 00;34;15;21
Speaker 3
Yeah, far beyond the Kelp Festival. We're constantly trying to figure out how to educate folks. And just as a little note, if you don't know, we have the Discovery Center Science Museum in downtown Fort Bragg, where we not only have artistic exhibit, it's showcasing kelp, but we built a 360 dome that gives an immersive idea of what it's like to be under the water and to have a virtual experience of swimming through kelp forest habitats versus, you know, slipping over an urchin barrier.

00;34;15;21 - 00;34;29;12
Speaker 3
And it's very impactful as well as a whole host of natural history exhibits of whales and dolphins and pinnipeds. So I encourage people to go down to our center and see that.

00;34;29;14 - 00;34;31;13
Speaker 1
Is that in the harbor?

00;34;31;15 - 00;34;50;24
Speaker 3
No. So we have a field station in the harbor where we're doing the ranching. This is our science museum in downtown Fort Bragg. So it's on North Main Street right at Laurel. Yeah. And again, we just took over one of the vacant storefronts when this kelp collapse happened, because I just kept thinking, people are going to say, how did we not know about this?

00;34;50;24 - 00;35;12;28
Speaker 3
Right. So we wanted to tell those stories that we were seeing underwater and not only just tell the stories, but test the way that we're educating. So when we build our Ocean Science Center on the Fort Bragg Headlands, where we have 12 acres for our eventual center, we know what does impactful and what's meaningful to our community. We can do that bigger and better at the Ocean Science Center.

00;35;13;01 - 00;35;40;12
Speaker 1
That's excellent. Again, if you're just tuning in, you're listening to the voice of Sheila Simmons. She's the executive director of the new center for Marine Science in Fort Bragg, just to the north of us, up in the northern end of Mendocino County. We are Kaga in Molalla Independent Public Media Station by Native Media Resource Center. And we are going to be talking in just a second about urchin farming and why that's important.

00;35;40;14 - 00;36;07;17
Speaker 1
And my name is Leanne Lindsay, host today, and I am excited about these topics because we've been talking about ocean oriented issues for quite a while, thanks to a lot of the people that we come in contact with, not only the Mercers, but also Richard Charter of the Ocean Foundation, who is a very good friend here. And he just did, the Ocean Foundation did a 22 minute documentary, Defend the Deep.

00;36;07;17 - 00;36;24;11
Speaker 1
Sylvia Earle is an amazing person who was on that film, and she's done so much and deep sea submersible diving for many decades. We'll be right back, right after this special message.

00;36;24;14 - 00;36;58;09
Speaker 1
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00;36;58;11 - 00;37;27;06
Speaker 1
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00;37;27;08 - 00;37;58;24
Speaker 1
Planet Centric Media is the producer, and they are A501 C3 nonprofit, which makes your contribution tax deductible. Welcome back to Resilient Earth Radio. I want to go back now to urchin farming because I happen to be a fan of urchin from the sushi restaurants. And this is different because we've got both red and purple. First, did you have anything else to say about the festival?

00;37;58;27 - 00;38;23;24
Speaker 3
Go to that website, North Coast Kelp fest.org and check out all the things in the environment, things at our field station, things at the medicine Art center. My staff has been sort of representing the news center. When I look at the website, I just am like, wow, there's so many things here going on demonstrations and at the beach from other organizations that are doing the restoration work right now.

00;38;24;01 - 00;38;35;27
Speaker 3
Hopefully tastings, you know, at places. But uni is the challenge right now because the urchin themselves are starving. So I can't make any guarantees that you'll be able to taste much.

00;38;35;29 - 00;38;57;24
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's the one thing I did learn was how starved they are. And that's why it's such a barren out there along our coast. And what you're doing now to have commercial divers or other divers go down and bring the purple urchin up that's been feasting on the bull kelp at early stages, so can't even get a chance to regrow every year.

00;38;57;25 - 00;39;00;14
Speaker 1
So let's dive into that now.

00;39;00;17 - 00;39;31;18
Speaker 3
Nice, nice. Yeah. So so again, the complexity of this issue is kind of limitless. But so urchin have basically eaten themselves and all other animals out of house and home. So what happens is they took out most of the seaweed species when their population exploded, you know, in the subtitle habitats. And what was remaining was basically nearshore intertidal seaweeds, not the large bull kelp you see behind me, but smaller seaweed in the nearshore.

00;39;31;18 - 00;39;37;27
Speaker 3
So, for instance, abalone, which was a $44 million recreational fishery off of our two coast to be.

00;39;37;27 - 00;39;39;11
Speaker 1
An app diver to.

00;39;39;14 - 00;40;01;13
Speaker 3
It. So that was that was closed in 2016 for the first time in California. There's no collection of abalone and one of the startling things to understand about that is that fish and wildlife manage that species, because you could only free dive as you would call. So all of the abalone that were beyond the reach of a free diver were sort of the broodstock for those species.

00;40;01;13 - 00;40;25;08
Speaker 3
And when this happened and all the kelp was sort of clear, those abalone all came inshore and it was super easy to get abalone for a number of years during the whole perfect storm. And so the catch per unit effort for abalone in the beginning was just nuts. But right now that still remains. People will go down to the nearshore and they'll say, oh, there's so many abalone, because that's really all you're seeing.

00;40;25;08 - 00;40;28;13
Speaker 3
That's the whole abalone population, almost 80s.

00;40;28;13 - 00;40;34;08
Speaker 1
When I was diving for abalone. So really changed since then.

00;40;34;10 - 00;40;54;11
Speaker 3
Significantly abalone 70% reduced. And we think we might have lost some of the species of abalone live. We historically have had seven species by abalone on our coast. Who knows how many we can recover. But so as opposed to abalone, which are not really very resilient and are sort of dependent on one type of food source, urchin will eat anything, you know.

00;40;54;11 - 00;41;18;27
Speaker 3
So urchin, they're all competing, everybody. But they've also sort of cleared the area of anything. They will scour rocks for plastic. They'll eat sand, you know, they'll eat anything. And then when there's nothing left to eat, they can subsist. They can un their tests. So they become a little bit smaller, and they can subsist by just pulling in nutrients from the water for, you know, maybe up to a decade.

00;41;19;00 - 00;41;24;05
Speaker 1
And they're very valuable for scouring the coral for the algae that keeps that down.

00;41;24;07 - 00;41;46;14
Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly. They have important services when they balance again. Balance and balance. Right. If we went and harvested a ton of work and right now they come in as basically empty shells, they're worthless. There's nothing in them to eat. So this is important for people to understand. When we talk about ranching urchin, it's because we're basically bringing in an empty shell and trying to give them something to eat.

00;41;46;14 - 00;42;16;08
Speaker 3
So we can fill that shell up with uni, that we can then sell as a restorative seafood product. So one better than sustainable seafood, where we're basically saying you're improving the environment by eating this. So can we do that? Can we do that without access to seawater? So the thing that's made this region, aside from all of the other things we've talked about, particularly difficult from an aquaculture standpoint, is we don't have access to seawater.

00;42;16;11 - 00;42;38;27
Speaker 3
So, you know, so bodega Bay has an open seawater system. Humboldt, you know, at the Tanaka lab, has seawater. We don't have anywhere on this entire stretch of coast, an open seawater system where we could do aquaculture. So what we're trying to do is take this not sophisticated technology. Urchin are not hard to ranch, but do it in a closed system.

00;42;39;00 - 00;43;01;21
Speaker 3
So we're trying to create a recirculating system and truck in seawater where we need to, and see if we can grow these urchin out in 8 to 10 weeks into a very valuable seafood product. The market for urchin internationally is extremely strong because these problems are happening around the world. This issue has really shrunk the globe for organizations like mine.

00;43;01;21 - 00;43;30;15
Speaker 3
We talk regularly to people in many other countries that are dealing with similar consequences, although we all have different reasons that it's happened in the warming seas is the unifying reason, obviously. But you know, we have different predator species. But right now, what's important to understand about our species is we have no predator in the environment, so there's nothing let's keeping the urchin in check right now besides us.

00;43;30;17 - 00;43;57;29
Speaker 3
So if you're talking about a restoration effort that because it's an annual species, requires us to remove urchin and then continue to maintain a spot for basically forever until something else happens that doesn't seem very self-sustaining, right? So when we were doing in 2018 or 2019, we were contracting the commercial divers and removing urchin and trying to see if we could just get kelp to come back on its own.

00;43;57;29 - 00;44;19;14
Speaker 3
If we cleared urchin from an area, but with, you know, 5 to 6 months of rough seas and we can't get back into the water. And so our dive window is small and we have an annual species, and we have such a large population of urchin, the the re invasion is just an incredible issue to have to deal with.

00;44;19;17 - 00;44;44;11
Speaker 3
And then there's finding that ongoing funding to continue to do that kind of effort is the challenge. One of the main reasons we want to do this is we want to keep capacity in our urchin diving community right now, because red urchin, which is the commercial urchin, one of our most valuable urchin fisheries here, historically is in disaster relief because these little tiny purple urchin that top out at about four inches have out competed.

00;44;44;11 - 00;45;09;17
Speaker 3
Even the big mighty red urchin and those urchin are struggling. So the urchin divers we've lost a lot of our divers. Once you lose capacity in a fishery like this, it's very hard to get it back. We want to keep those divers employed. We keep experimenting with different ways to do this. And if we can create a commercial aquaculture facility that is viable in our region, we can employ divers.

00;45;09;25 - 00;45;37;07
Speaker 3
We can have a certificate program created at Mendocino College. They're super eager to do this. On aquaculture. We can bring in community science around all of the educational components and even some of the collection components. You know, we can feed our community even though there is a strong market internationally. My goal is to really market the species locally because I think it not only educates the community, but it is, you know, at the base of our food chain.

00;45;37;07 - 00;45;54;15
Speaker 3
It is a really important thing for our local community to to start to engage with. And so I think with the help of people like mad at the Harbor House, we will showcase the deliciousness, the potential of uni as a food source.

00;45;54;19 - 00;46;19;20
Speaker 1
I was going to say the very same thing. It's very sweet, briny and silky. It has an Emami flavor. It is really quite delicious. And there's a way that I was reading in this Los Angeles Times article from a couple of years ago regarding this abalone farm that's down in Goleta, near Santa Barbara, that it's a type of different seek help that you can feed to the.

00;46;19;20 - 00;46;20;16
Speaker 3
That's right bull.

00;46;20;17 - 00;46;30;28
Speaker 1
Urchin to make them even more flavorful. And they are supplying Michelin starred restaurants. They are in Los Angeles, in Santa Barbara. And we can do the same here on the North Coast.

00;46;31;00 - 00;46;51;18
Speaker 3
Yeah, we're not trying to reinvent the wheel with anything that we're doing. We're just trying to apply it to our local conditions. So we've now installed a container down the harbor. It's very small pilot project that's just looking at how can we take urchin create a recirculating system. We've integrated the seaweed tumbled tanks. That Moss Landing has become so, so famous for.

00;46;51;21 - 00;47;14;03
Speaker 3
So we can create the seaweed to feed not only the urchin, but also the abalone. And we don't have to harvest anything from the environment. But the seaweed is also nurtured by the water from the urchin. So the nitrogen that it needs to grow in an integrated system, it's it's very beautiful. I'm hoping that we can get that stabilized and working.

00;47;14;03 - 00;47;39;08
Speaker 3
And we could sell any of those products, like the cultured abalone farm that you're talking about is an incredible model for all of us. We could become a farm that raises abalone for restoration, but also sells some to the community. We could raise the purple urchin that we sell the community, and we can raise the seaweed that we can sell part and use part in the restoration, all to fund the ongoing efforts to improve our environment.

00;47;39;10 - 00;47;54;17
Speaker 1
This is the executive director of the new center for Marine Science that we've been talking with today, Sheila Simmons and Sheila, in this last minute or so, how can people get in touch with you and give us that website again for the festival?

00;47;54;19 - 00;48;14;17
Speaker 3
Yes. Thank you liane, it's been a pleasure and I always love the opportunity to talk more about what we're doing. Our own website is NewsCenter dawg. If you want to go on, you can see all of the things that the center does within our community and attend some of those science talks we're talking about. I also see some of the ones from past years, and then see the hours of all of our facilities.

00;48;14;17 - 00;48;36;14
Speaker 3
We also have a little crow's nest out on the headlands. We didn't even get a chance to talk about volunteer. Run that little nature center out when you're stepping off the coastal trail. So newscenter.org is our website up North Coast kelp fest.org is the site that has been created for the Kelp Festival. It's beautiful to look at, but it's also jampacked with all of these events.

00;48;36;16 - 00;48;58;20
Speaker 3
You can also reach us at info at NewsCenter org if you want to ask questions or just stop in to one of our facilities and visit us. The field station we're creating in New York Harbor, we're trying to turn a restaurant into a field station. So we're in transition doing that. But that is meant to be a community gathering space to learn about science and see the research that's happening.

00;48;58;23 - 00;49;13;27
Speaker 1
That's wonderful. Sheila, thank you so much for joining us here today on KGO. We really appreciate having you on. We will have you back for sure. And other people that are associated with Antonio Center for Marine Science. Thanks so much for joining us today.

00;49;13;29 - 00;49;17;28
Speaker 3
Thank you. I appreciate it.

00;49;18;00 - 00;49;24;08
Speaker 4
Live local coastal. This is KGO 88.3 FM.

00;49;24;11 - 00;50;00;07
Speaker 1
That radio show with Sheila Siemens was recorded earlier this year on Friday, April the 26th, 2024. Later in June June 17th, after the Kelp Festival was over. Mendocino County Public Broadcasting Casey did a show on. This is a follow up. You can find it on their website. And I'm going to read from the article by Sarah Rice. One of the final events of the first North Coast Kelp Fest, which wrapped up this weekend, was an open house at the Urchin Ranch.

00;50;00;09 - 00;50;26;02
Speaker 1
It's a green painted shipping container in Fort Bragg's North Harbor, next to a former cafe that's now the field station of the new center for Marine Science. For two months now, captured purple urchin have been fattening up on aquaria, eating kelp pellets donated by The Nature Conservancy and actual kelp that's being grown in a couple of tanks outside the shipping container.

00;50;26;05 - 00;51;01;01
Speaker 1
The urchin are a native species, but their population has exploded in the wake of a disease that started killing off their main predator, the pig Napoleon Sea Star, in 2013. And my own personal comment, just as we heard from Sheila Simmons just now and continuing on with this show and article from Sarah at Casey Wicks, she says now they've devastate to 96% of the kelp, which is also the main food source for red urchin and for abalone, formerly one of the most lucrative fisheries on the North coast.

00;51;01;07 - 00;51;26;14
Speaker 1
The idea of the Urchin Ranch is to see if it's possible to round up the now starving urchin, get them into edible condition and market them in this scenario, humans replace the pig, the podia sea star, as the urchins most relentless carnivore. If it works, the ecosystem will be restored and the economy will get a boost. Richard Millis is the field station manager at the Urchin Ranch.

00;51;26;18 - 00;51;54;09
Speaker 1
He loves to point out how beautiful the creatures in his care are with delicate hair fin feelers known as tube feet among their purple quills, each tiny feeler has a suction cup that it uses to attach to a surface or walk a food item across its quills to its mouth, which is an intricate, powerful trap with five teeth that can tear through rock, wood, plastic, and in some instances, one another.

00;51;54;12 - 00;52;13;24
Speaker 1
They do tend to do a little cannibalizing mills. Admit it, we've seen it in our system. A little bit. I've seen it in the intertidal. I don't know if it's just that certain ones like to eat other ones, or if it's an acquired taste, due to a biological quirk that allows them to stay dormant for a fantastically long time.

00;52;14;00 - 00;52;40;00
Speaker 1
It is just about impossible to starving urchin to death. The urchins mostly come from the intertidal zone or the barrens, where there is no kelp and the seafloor is covered with starving urchin. We bring them in and they're quite empty, Millis reported, adding that so far the system seems to be going smoothly. Our general rates of mortality are down really low now, and things seem like they're going in a good direction, he says.

00;52;40;00 - 00;53;07;13
Speaker 1
The urchins are not being sold at the moment. It's mostly to educate people that we have something out here that you can eat, Millis explained. That is overpopulated. It's a restorative seafood product, but if you take it out of the environment, it's helping the environment. Sarah Grimes, the stranding coordinator for the new center, said that she has found that conditions may be improving even in the wild.

00;53;07;15 - 00;53;35;11
Speaker 1
Grimes said that just since the beginning of June, she's found some purple urchin in the wild that have been pretty plump. This is good news. Like sea stars, sea cucumbers and sand dollars, urchins are a kind of derms with a five point radio symmetry. That means that in addition to the five teeth of their mouth called an Aristotle's lantern for the ancient naturalists description, they have five sections of any inside of their bodies.

00;53;35;14 - 00;54;02;29
Speaker 1
Grimes advised visitors to get a fishing license, observe tidepool etiquette by not stomping on everything, and then crack open a purple urchin. It's salty, and then it explodes with sweetness, and I'm going to stop here and interject that I too love uni for this particular reason. Back to the radio show from Casey Wicks. David Rudy processes urchin on a much larger scale.

00;54;02;29 - 00;54;24;18
Speaker 1
He's a partner in Pacific Rim Seafood, which is located right there in the North Harbor. He is also chairman of the California Sea Urchin Commission. If they're full of uni, it's perfectly marketable, he said. Though the Urchin Ranch is still in the experimental phase, he believes it has the potential of expanding to the point where it could be a viable business.

00;54;24;20 - 00;54;57;00
Speaker 1
He mentioned ergonomics, a company in Southern California that is buying purple urchins from divers and working to make it a commercial venture that's hopefully profitable, he says. But it's a big investment with equipment and leases and food for the urchins and paying the divers, so it's still an unknown if it can be viable commercially. Purple urchin, which are typically a shallow water species, are starting to move into deeper water and overlap with the red urchin, though they haven't been seen much deeper than 80 to 100ft.

00;54;57;01 - 00;55;26;09
Speaker 1
The commission is trying to get more areas open to harvesting red urchin and otherwise protected marine habitat, including a stretch between Point Arena and Bodega Bay. Rudy argues that this would reduce the pressure on the kelp, which might have a chance at a comeback if the ocean cools down. With the coming La Nina this coming winter. And there was another article by Mary Benjamin of the Mendocino Beacon.

00;55;26;11 - 00;55;54;17
Speaker 1
And in there she talks about how the Mendocino Film Festival participated in this kelp fest to bring it to a broader audience, bringing it an awareness of the devastating and widespread kelp loss that's along our Pacific coastline. The Mendocino Film Festival presented two short films by the Nature Conservancy, Forest Above, Forest Below, directed by Sasha Burrows, and A Disappearing Forest, directed by Tyler Schiffman.

00;55;54;17 - 00;56;29;10
Speaker 1
Both films featured stunning underwater photography and supportive narration. Both of the film shorts emphasize the role of kelp forests in providing carbon sequestration, and how its ecosystem links to that of tree forests on land. A third film, Send Kelp Exclamation Point, directed by Blake McWilliam, was a feature in the Mendocino Film Festival's regular schedule. The storyline followed the winding journey of Frances Ward as she set out to plant an experimental seaweed farm in British Columbia.

00;56;29;13 - 00;57;00;15
Speaker 1
Ward referred to her motivation as echo grief, a profound sadness for what is to come that can stun a person into inaction. During the film, scientists, local fishermen and seaweed farmers explain what they do and why there is no one solution for kelp restoration, and Ward realizes that despite her first successful seaweed growth, we must collectively, quote, reduce our human footprint and consume less.

00;57;00;17 - 00;57;37;01
Speaker 1
And that's something we've been hearing here on Resilient Earth Radio from many of our guests. Just a little bit more from that article. It said that above, below, a San Francisco based group dedicated to raising public awareness about Pacific Northwest kelp forests, was the main planning team for the Kelp Fest. The co-directors, Josie Iceland and Mariana Lucero were key members of the Fest steering committee, which included local organizers Tori Douglas of Lemon Fresh Design and Trey Petri, interpretive facilities manager for the new center for Marine Science.

00;57;37;03 - 00;58;12;19
Speaker 1
They invited the Mendocino Film Festival to serve as that unique communication vehicle, bringing the public more directly into the visual world of kelp forests and their deep connections to land, ecosystems and humans. Celebrating and fostering film as art. The center of the Mendocino Film Fest's purpose adds support to the vision of Above Bellows ocean literacy campaign, which he believes is the power of art, to create a sense of wonder and foster curiosity about the ecology of the oceans.

00;58;12;19 - 00;58;58;03
Speaker 1
Kelp forests Tristan McCue, the Nature Conservancy project manager for the Mendocino Coast Bull Kelp restoration experiments, funded by sea grant film director Tyler Shiffman. Local commercial urchin diver. Grant Downey, who was featured in Shiffman Film and Above Below. Co-Director Mariana Lou Shell participated and answered the audience's questions and I know Grant Downey is also being featured in an upcoming documentary called sequoias of the Sea by Natasha Benjamin of The Blue Frontier Campaign, and also a host on the Rising Tide Ocean podcast, which we carry on.

00;58;58;03 - 00;59;21;24
Speaker 1
Kaga on Sundays at 1130. And she's doing this in conjunction with the executive director of the International Ocean Film Festival, Anna Blanco. We're looking forward to that. Thank you for listening to Resilient Earth Radio, where we talk about critical issues and positive actions.

00;59;21;26 - 00;59;51;14
Speaker 1
And thanks for listening to Resilient Earth Radio, where we talk about critical issues facing our planet and the positive actions people are taking. Produced in association with Planet Centric Media, Sea Storm Studios and KGUA 88.3 FM, a public radio station on the Northern California coast. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and wherever you get your podcasts.

00;59;51;16 - 01;00;19;12
Speaker 1
The music for the show is Castle by the sea, from international composer Eric Allaman of the Sea Ranch in Sonoma County, California.