Dr Anjani Ganase considers the latest ocean research. Microplastics are everywhere. Some mussels are adapting. Corals continue to lose as the climate changes.
Our ocean is a vast and wild place with much more to be discovered. Ocean research may seem irrelevant to our day-to-day lives but the knowledge we obtain from studying the deepest darkest places and the teeny tiniest organisms have significant implications to our climate, health and well-being. Let’s delve into some of the latest research. Targeted research may focus on a handful of species within a location but these studies are the building blocks for regional and global understanding to guide policy and management.
[caption id="attachment_1134474" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Before and after: At left, Fisher and Hildebrand's image of a rock and its mussel bed community they sampled at Dillon Beach in 1941. At right, the exact same rock sampled by Longman in 2018. - (Harvey I. Fisher and Milton Hildebrand/UC Berkeley; Jacqueline Sones/UC Davis)[/caption]
World War II mussels
Mussel beds off Dillon Beach in Northern California continue to thrive even under climate change. This is what a group of University of California students was able to discover when they came across an unpublished report of a survey of the mussel beds from 1941, during World War II around the time of Pearl Harbour.
The students replicated the survey, using old maps, the survey data and old photographs from the report. To their surprise, the mussel beds continue to thrive today, in contrast to many other mussel bed sites along the coast of California. There were, however, some critical changes to the community composition. While there was considerable overlap in the number and types of species present between 1941 and 2019, when the new survey was conducted, there was a shift to a greater proportion of mussel species that typically dwell in warmer waters of southern California from cold-water species more common in 1941. Another major change is the decline in the average size of the mussels, another likely adaptation to the warmer water. There was additional delight when the students were able to meet a surviving co-author of the original report, 101-year-old Milton Hildebrand who lived nearby.
Historical data serve as important baselines for ecosystem health and can help define targets in restoration activities. Such studies also help correct shifting baselines, how the ecosystem is perceived over time and the expectation of how the ecosystem should be. Similar datasets exist for Tobago’s coral reefs from the 1980s and serve as a reminder that coral reefs today are nothing like coral reefs of the 1980s and 70s.
[caption id="attachment_1134473" align="alignnone" width="1024"] A mussel bed in the Bodega Bay region of northern California creates three-dimensional habitat for crabs, snails, worms, sea cucumbers, and many other marine species. - Photo courtesy Jacqueline Sones / UC Davis[/caption]
Microplastics in seafood
The age of humans will be recorded not only b
