Coastline protection: UC's ocean research

The governors of Oregon and Washington joined Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in July to create a historic West Coast ocean management plan. This new regional approach to the challenges facing our coastal communities embraces many of the same problems University of California researchers have long been dedicated to solving.

The West Coast Governors' Ocean Action Plan focuses on several areas that are among the top priorities of UC oceanographers, marine biologists, marine anthropologists and other scientists and engineers: keeping coastal waters and beaches clean, protecting and restoring habitats, instituting ecosystem-based coastal resource management and promoting sustainable coastal development. Here is just a sampling of the work being done at UC marine research centers to preserve the priceless cultural, scenic and economic resources of the Pacific Ocean for future California generations.

Reserves play role in global warming survival

Robert Warner, chair Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, UC Santa Barbara

Regional collaboration is nothing new to UC Santa Barbara marine biologist Robert Warner. As a member of the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans, he works with scientists from UC Santa Cruz, Oregon State University and Stanford University in the common pursuit of preserving healthy ocean waters. The PISCO group studies the effects human activities are having on the oceans' abilities to sustain animal and plant diversity, maintain water quality, and to survive environmental stress such as global warming.

Marine reserves – protected ocean waters where fishing, mining and dredging are prohibited –­ provide one powerful means of lessening human impact on coastal waters and could mean survival for species facing warming ocean waters. Yet less than .01 percent of the earth's oceans are restricted reserves.

Warner's research underpins the importance of establishing a network of small marine reserves along the Pacific Coast. Central California has such a network and work is in progress to establish a network in Southern and Northern California.

"The ocean is there for the public good," Warner says. "Nobody owns it or has exclusive rights to it."

Yet balancing the needs of all ocean users is one of the major hurdles scientists and policy-makers face in designating protected reserves.

In a PISCO survey of 124 global marine reserve studies, scientists documented significant benefits in even the smallest reserves of less than 1 square mile. Not only the quantity of animals and plants increased but also the size and diversity. Body size increased an average 28 percent, the number of species increased 21 percent and the mass of animals and plants grew 446 percent. The bigger the fish or invertebrates, the more offspring they produce. Eventually the larger populations of young move outside the reserve area and can actually benefit commercial and recreational fishing.

In a study of the Anacapa Island marine reserve, off the coast of Santa Barbara, researchers documented a reserve environment's resilience during periods of environmental stress. When a series of El Niño events raised water temperatures, kelp beds in unprotected waters disappeared. In the reserve, the kelp habitat withstood the climatic changes.

"As we get into an era of a warmer globe, it's not just that things get warmer," Warner warns. "Things fluctuate more. If marine populations are already low, there's a chance some species will get down to zero. Populations in marine reserves are high. They won't get down to zero."

The current practice of regulating single species hasn't proved as effective, Warner says, as ecosystem-based resource management where each species and each habitat's connectedness is recognized. Current management policies try to protect species by restricting the numbers that can be harvested, establishing size limits and fishing seasons or temporarily closing areas to harvesting. It's time to try new methods, Warner says: "We're going to have to consider ocean zoning, so some areas are set outside the limits for fishing. I think there should be fishing, but not everywhere."

Seawater tapped for drought solutions

Jeffrey Graham, marine biologist, Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego

Scripps Institution of Oceanography marine biologist Jeffrey Graham has helped launch what could be a new era in solving California's recurring water shortages. Working with Scripps coastal engineer Scott Jenkins, Graham served as a consultant to Poseidon Resources, a private developer that in August cleared the final hurdle to build the largest seawater desalination plant in the United States.

Graham helped solve one of the dilemmas for commercial desalination plants – how to deal with the extremely salty wastewater the process produces. For every gallon of freshwater produced, a gallon of wastewater, with roughly twice the concentration of salt as normal seawater, is produced. Dumping it back into the ocean can harm sea life.

Graham's research established maximum levels of salinity for the water returned to the ocean and found that if the wastewater stays within those limits, marine life will not be harmed.

With 20 desalination projects pending in California, his contribution to eco-friendly plant operation could set the stage for expanding California's scarce water resources.

"Ultimately, when permits are drafted for desal plants, there will be clauses that include the boundaries we have established for this company," Graham says. "This is how UC scientists are serving the needs of California. All the environmental problems with the discharge side go away if they use our calculations."

The Poseidon project, located at the Encina Power Plant in Carlsbad, will produce 50 million gallons of freshwater a day, enough to serve 300,000 people. To produce the water, the desalination plant will use reverse osmosis, a process UCLA researcher Sidney Loeb developed in the 1960s. Part of the water the power plant already uses for cooling will go through the reverse osmosis filtering to produce drinking water. The rest of the power plant's water will be used to dilute the salty wastewater, so it can be safely discharged back into the ocean.

Riding the wave of alternative energy

Richard Seymour, head of the Ocean Engineering Research Group, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego

One of the priorities outlined in the West Coast Governors' Ocean Action Plan is the exploration of the coastal waters as a source of sustainable alternative energy, including wave power.

Ocean engineer Richard Seymour has been wave watching since 1975 when he started the Coastal Data Information Program. This network of wave measurement stations is now deployed in more than 100 locations along North and South American coastlines. With California's goal of obtaining 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2010, ocean waves have the potential of developing into a new source of alternative power.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has signed a power purchasing agreement with Finavera Renewables, which is building a wave farm off the Northern California coast near Humboldt County. But the high cost of producing wave energy is a drawback to widespread development, says Seymour.

"It's one of those things where we might say 'it costs us more but it cuts our carbon footprint and reduces reliance on Saudi Arabia and that's the price we pay,'" says Seymour. Yet high cost isn't the only issue.

In a system such as the PG&E project, he says the wave energy capture devices need to be fairly close together, so fishing vessels can't drag or trawl through the area. One solution might be to put wave farms inside marine reserves where fishing is already banned.

However, Seymour believes there is a more immediate use of ocean resources to reduce California's energy-use footprint.

"For ocean energy, the most direct, ready-to-apply-right-now and the most effective method is for energy-use avoidance," he says.

Seymour sees great potential to tap deep seawater for air-conditioning. Conventional air-conditioning systems circulate cold water that has been chilled with electricity-powered refrigeration units. In a seawater system, cold water, pumped from more than 1,000 feet below the ocean's surface, is used to chill the circulating cold water. The seawater is then pumped back into the ocean when it has warmed and more cold water is pumped in. Seymour estimates that the seawater cooling method would use one-tenth of the electricity that mechanical air-conditioning systems use.

A company in Hawaii is currently developing a seawater air-conditioning system for downtown Honolulu. Such a system would also work well in Southern California coastal communities, Seymour says.

Harmful algal blooms threaten marine life

Mary Wilcox Silver, professor, Ocean Sciences Department, UC Santa Cruz; adjunct scientist, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Increasing incidents of harmful algal blooms along the Pacific Coast have oceanographers stepping up both monitoring and public education efforts.

"It's a problem that's been with us for thousands of years," says Mary Silver, a UC Santa Cruz researcher who is part of a group studying the risk potential. "California has been monitoring this since the late '20s because people died from eating mussels. Some have pretty potent toxins."

In 1927, about a dozen people in Northern California died from eating mussels contaminated with a naturally occurring toxin. That put the state on alert, and monitoring programs along the coast have curtailed human risks.

In recent years, toxins produced by different kinds of microscopic algae, or phytoplankton, have shown up in marine life and birds in West Coast waters. These neurotoxins cause syndromes known as paralytic shellfish poisoning and amnesic shellfish poisoning. Silver has documented the presence of domoic acid neurotoxin in sport fish present near a fishing pier in Santa Cruz. Severe cases of domoic acid poisoning can cause seizures and comas and loss of short-term memory. Commercially sold fish and shellfish are tested for toxins, but recreationally caught seafood can pose a threat, particularly to populations who consume more recreationally caught seafood or whose preparation preferences might make the toxins more dangerous. Cooking a fish whole without gutting it, for example, or frying it increases toxin exposure.

"There are natural shifts in the distributions of these critters," Silver says. "As the currents change certain dangerous toxins will disappear and others flourish."

Using sophisticated remote monitoring equipment, Silver says soon researchers will be able to detect in near real-time the presence of toxic species in the coastal waters rather than waiting for mammal or bird deaths or human illness to alert them. Researchers aren't sure why more incidents of toxins are showing up. Silver isn't yet convinced humans are causing it although in some areas sewage runoff might encourage more algae growth.

"I'm not sure how much of a role humans have played," says Silver. "I'm not willing to say we've screwed up the water."