Farallon Institute Newsletter - Summer 2022

Around The Office

In May, Farallon Institute welcomed its newest staff member. Gammon Koval comes to FI from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, located between Monterey and Santa Cruz, CA, where he completed his master’s degree in marine science. Gammon’s graduate research focused on deploying video cameras in the waves of California’s surf zone to assess the species present and determine how factors like water temperature, wave height, and whether the beach was within a marine protected area impacted which plants and animals inhabited the surf zone. At FI, Gammon will work on the Saildrone project (see below) to use remotely collected data to answer questions on physical oceanography. We’re excited to have Gammon as part of the team.

State of the Ocean — Central-Northern California

Our coastal waters have entered the summer in cool and productive conditions for the second year in a row, thanks to the second winter of La Niña in the tropical Pacific that has not yet abated. La Niña provides favorable conditions for the California Current marine ecosystem in the form of cool water temperatures and strong coastal upwelling, which brings plenty of nutrients to coastal areas to support high biological productivity. For the time being on the U.S. West Coast, these cool conditions are helping to counterbalance the global trend of increasing ocean temperatures. 

On land in California, unfortunately, La Niña conditions can lead to reduced precipitation. In the last three winters we have already experienced lower than normal precipitation (2019–2022, Source: NOAA). Not all of those winter conditions were associated with La Niña, but La Niña can exacerbate ongoing issues.

The world’s ocean is losing its memory

A new publication led by Hui (Daisy) Shi, recent postdoctoral scientist at Farallon Institute, indicates that the ocean is steadily losing its year-to-year memory—there is less persistence of sea surface temperatures, which is an important characteristic for prediction in today’s ocean. The uppermost layer of the ocean is vertically churned by winds and so is referred to as the mixed layer. Deeper mixed layers (better mixed) have greater heat content, which provides more stability for temperature, and this temperature stability is the memory. However, with ongoing climate change, the mixed layer over most of the ocean is becoming shallower. The more shallow mixed layer is more noisy and variable in terms of temperature change (temperatures are less persistent), resulting in the decline in ocean memory. Persistence in ocean conditions is what scientists use to inform models that produce predictions, so this memory loss makes accurate predictions more difficult. 

Dr. Shi’s paper, a collaboration among the Farallon Institute, NOAA, and the Universities of Hawaii, Washington and Arizona, was published last month in the journal Science Advances and has grabbed the attention of other journals and the media. It can be freely accessed here, and so far it has been accessed over 15,000 times! Congratulations to Daisy and the other authors of this study.

2022 field research report

Saildrones. Saildrones are uncrewed, wind-driven, remotely controlled ocean surveying vessels. Scientists direct the track that the Saildrone follows and the vessel collects data in the air and the water with its many sensors, then those data are sent back to researchers by satellite. Different research groups take turns with time directing Saildrone cruises, and our third (and last) summer Arctic Saildrone Cruise is underway! Two Saildrones vessels are currently sailing through the Bering Sea on their way to our official cruise start point, the Bering Strait, and doing their best to not get too close to the ice. 

This cruise, part of a NASA-funded project, has the objective of validating satellite data under the challenging and rapidly changing conditions in the Arctic—ice margins, coastal areas, and land runoff regions. This year we are also teaming with the multi-agency Distributed Biology Observatory group to collect and contribute oceanographic data on areas where they collect biological data every summer (red lines in the map below). 

Alcatraz Island. The seabird breeding season on Alcatraz began in mid-February this year when the first Brandt’s cormorants arrived back on the island after a winter spent fishing along the coast. Under protection by the National Park Service, Farallon Institute and colleagues have been monitoring this colony since its establishment in 1991. In that time, the breeding population of Brandt’s cormorants has grown from only 3 pairs in 1991 to 3,436 pairs in 2021. Notably, the colony has set a new record for number of breeding pairs in four of the last five years.  

Since the island has been either closed or at reduced visitation capacity since spring 2020, researchers speculate that some of the recent growth is due to reduced human disturbance. Cormorants began nesting in new areas in the past two years, expanding into parts of the island more exposed to human onlookers. This year, the island re-opened in full, welcoming up to 4,500 visitors each day. Even with this human presence, the cormorants returned to all newly established nesting areas, even spreading further into the rubble of what was once housing for the penitentiary’s correctional officers. The breeding population has already set a new record this year of 3,932 pairs and is projected to surpass 4,000 before the season concludes. This continued growth points to favorable feeding conditions in San Francisco Bay and the nearby ocean, providing the cormorants with ample resources to raise their young.