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For many of us, being a marine biologist is top on our list of dream jobs. Along with professional athlete, rock star and astronaut.
But exploring the depths of the sea requires having nerves — and a stomach — made of steel. Just ask Mike Beck, senior marine scientist for The Nature Conservancy.
Nature.org spoke with Beck about his latest research in the kelp forests off the coast of California, where he and his crew braved stormy seas, great white shark sightings and morning commutes through heavy swells to unravel some of the mysteries of the sea.
Nature.org: Why study kelp? As far as marine plants go, it has a high “ewww” factor — long, slimy and greenish-brown.
Mike Beck: Kelp is amazing! Giant kelp can grow up to one foot a day and is the third-fastest-growing plant in the world. In North America, it’s only found off the coast of California and Baja California. Giant kelp is found elsewhere in the world, but the forests off California are the most dense and lush of anywhere.
Very little is known about kelp and the importance of the kelp canopy to the many fishes and other critters that hide within it. So we set out to study this mystery. As part of the project, The Nature Conservancy became the first nonprofit to lease California kelp beds — more than 1,700 acres of kelp — for research.
Over three years, we spent hundreds of hours in the water, doing experiments, gathering our data and working directly with kelp harvesters.
Nature.org: Why is kelp harvested? Do people eat it?
Mike Beck: Yes, although they don't necessarily realize they're eating it. Kelp is used as a thickening agent in many foods and medicines. Salad dressings, cake mixes, milk, ice cream, toothpastes, cosmetics and hundreds of other products contain algin from kelp.
But most of the kelp off California’s central coast is harvested to feed farm-raised abalone. These abalone need to eat frequently, so tons of kelp is harvested from the canopy to feed them.
Abalone aquaculture is already a very sustainable business. But loss of kelp does have a big effect on species like juvenile rockfish. Through our research we learned that there are some simple and sensible ways to reduce those impacts.
For example, right now the typical practice is to harvest an entire patch of one kelp bed. In our studies, we found that half-harvesting two patches — instead of whole-harvesting one patch — is far better for the rockfish. Juvenile rockfish can rarely move between patches because they are easily seen and eaten by other fishes.
Nature.org: What was it like to spend so much time underwater, in kelp?
Mike Beck: I love being in the water, but studying kelp beds is tough work.
Just getting out to our research site was challenging. There aren’t any bays or ports between Morro Bay and Monterey (a distance of about 100 miles), so we usually had to beach-launch in Zodiacs that were packed to the gills with divers and equipment. The boat flipped over once because the waves were so rough!
The water is about 52 degrees Fahrenheit all summer long. So we have to wear one-inch thick wetsuits and 35 pounds of weight just to sink. We're basically in our wetsuits for eight hours a day (you can imagine the smell).
Our research took place in kelp canopies, about two feet beneath the surface — which is exactly where you don’t want to hang out for long because the surface is where all the wave action and motion is concentrated. Even people with strong stomachs can get seasick easily when you are trying to stare in to the canopy and count small fish.
Nature.org: Did you have any scary experiences or dangerous encounters?
Mike Beck: This past season there was a lot of great white shark activity throughout the central coast of California. We heard about other divers being chased out of the water, and we saw lots of beheaded seals.
Our field crew was occasionally not allowed to dive because of all the activity. We didn’t see any sharks, but it was always in the back of our minds.
We also had to deal with a lot of choppy seas, heavy winds and thick fog; there were few days when all the elements were in our favor.
Nature.org: Who does all this work?
Mike Beck: This project was done in partnership with Dr. Mark Carr from the University of California at Santa Cruz and the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Science of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) program.
We had a great field crew that made the work really enjoyable. Kendra Karr and Patrick Berk anchored the crew every year and we had a surprising number of really qualified volunteers that helped throughout the project. To be on the field crew you have to be a science-certified diver, which takes hundreds of hours.
“Our experiments have helped provide important information on the role of kelp.”— Mike Beck, senior scientist with The Nature Conservancy |
Nature.org: Despite the hazards of the job, was all this work worth the effort?
Mike Beck: Definitely. Because this is such a tough environment to work in, we know much less about kelp forest communities than we do about coral reefs, salt marshes and seagrass meadows. Our experiments have helped provide important information on the role of kelp in supporting whole communities.
One of the major strategies that the Conservancy is working on — in the water and on land — is sustainable harvests to support people and nature. But it's still surprisingly rare for scientists to work with industry to test new approaches and measure their effects on whole communities, whether we are talking about redwood forests or kelp forests.
Our work helps to show why those experiments are so informative and how they can reasonably be done.
Read more about Beck's research in the kelp forests off the coast of California in the spring 2008 Nature Conservancy magazine.
Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Steve Clabuesch (beach launch); Photo © Steve Kurtz (Mike Beck).
