Monitoring marine protected areas is essential in order to assess if they are effectively conserving marine species and their habitats. Long-term studies allow us to track changes in fish populations in response to environmental variability, and these data can aid in the management of protected areas and fished stocks. This study sampled ichthyoplankton from Scripps Pier for one year and identified them to species using DNA barcoding. These data were compared to results from Harada et al. (2015) and Duke et al. (2018), to look for variability in egg abundance and species diversity in response to seasonal temperature changes, including the record-breaking sea surface temperature recorded at Scripps Pier in August 2018. We observed peak egg abundance in June 2018, which was most similar to data from 2013 and 2014, a shift from later spawning seen in July or August during collections from 2015-2017. Overall egg abundance during the spring and summer months of 2018 and sea surface temperature data from the previous winter fits in with the correlation found in Duke, Harada, and Burton (2018). High temperatures recorded in August had no significant effect on number of eggs collected. In January 2019, sampling began at five other California locations, to establish baseline data and monitor sites across latitudes. Initial results have shown that species assemblages north and south of Point Conception, California are different from one another. Evaluating fish spawning in response to environmental variability over time and space will help with the management and conservation of marine resources.

Galaxies like Islands, Islands like Galaxies: Envisioning Futurity in Seascape Technologies examines Indigenous Futurisms as a political and aesthetic movement that bridges art-forms (literature, performance, comics, media) to combat “settler futurity.” Indigenous conceptions of temporality, contact, alternative worlds, apocalypse, and revolution are all themes/tenets of Indigenous Futurism and can be expressed artistically through multimedia forms. My project's methodology is defined by its engagement with moʻolelo, Kānaka Maoli storytelling. Moʻolelo as methodology envisions alternative futures that are liberated from a colonial matrix and challenge western epistemological conceptions of temporal progress. This dissertation features Native artists creating projects of cultural expression that reimagine uses for technology that are not predicated upon continued modes of capitalism and settler logics. Therefore, I develop a theoretical framework that employs anti-colonial/decolonial future-making actions and discourses or “futurities,” at the intersections between Indigenous aesthetics and science and technology studies. I engage spatio-temporal Kānaka frameworks by outlining the sections of my dissertation not in chapters—but in wā. The term Wā or Ta-Va (space-time) resonates throughout Oceania and is similar but different between cultures. In the Native Hawaiian context, wā means period of time, epoch, era, time, occasion, season, or age. It can also mean space, interval, or as between objects or time. Material, ephemeral, and affective registers are engaged: it can be thought of as the space between things or a rolling interval. Wā speaks to complex temporal overlays between engaging the space of the past, present, and future within this dissertation. As sea-voyaging in Oceanic cultures is central to life, I am outlining my chapters as wā as to signify movement between ideas—like traversing between mini-theoretical islands of thought. Similar to how the ocean is complex with immense depth and secret go-ons beneath the surface, I use the theoretical concept of wā to understand and critically unpack the theories, art, and ideas within this dissertation.

This article presents and reflects upon the transformations on the soundscapes of Belo Horizonte (capital of the state of Minas Gerais, in Brazil) and the surrounding countryside areas, noticed during the current social isolation period due to the health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The starting point is a discussion about the concepts of landscape and soundscape, upon which our work is grounded, as theorized by scholars in the fields of geography, art, and sound studies; and also, the notion of proxemic zone, which guides our understanding of the relation between the listener and their space. The article then moves on to the authors’ own experiences during these pandemic days. One has stayed put, remaining in the center of a city with a population of 2.5 million people and taking notes of the different pandemic phases through the changing soundscape. Another has left her apartment in a bohemian part of town to stay at her countryside home, replacing the musical soundscape of nearby bars with the singing from tropical birds. Finally, the third author alternated his stay between places located in different neighborhoods of the city, looking at certain times for refuge in a farm in the countryside of the Minas Gerais. In addition to our own perspectives, we also discuss the experience accounts from 76 undergrad students, from Journalism and Advertising courses at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, in Portuguese), regarding their social isolation soundscapes. These accounts have been originally gathered for the “Sound and Sense” class, guided by Raymond Murray Schafer’s sound diary, from his sound education exercises (Schafer 1992), and adapted to observe the soundscapes during the social isolation period due to the pandemic. The students’ accounts and the authors’ experiences are presented and discussed from a sound studies perspective, addressing the ways in which our sonic environment can shed light on urban changes and transformations in sociability.