Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation

Climate change poses a threat not only to the environmental and physical aspects of the places where people live, but also to their identities and ways of living, as well as those of the communities around them. Conducted as part of the requirements of the Master of Advanced Studies in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), this capstone project consists of a climate vulnerability assessment of the La Fortaleza and San Juan National Historic Site World Heritage Site in Puerto Rico, based on a literature review of existing scientific data. Its purpose is to inform a broader effort led by SIO’s Human Ecology Lab, which will complement this top-down approach with a bottom-up assessment of climate change threats to the area based on the perspectives of local stakeholders. This project includes two products: the full climate vulnerability assessment presented below and an online summary of its main findings with interactive maps, which can be found at https://arcg.is/1quumK. Ultimately, this project contributes to the ongoing development of a climate vulnerability assessment tool for cultural heritage that can be used independently by stakeholders to meaningfully assess the vulnerability of their own cultural heritage to climate change through a decentralized process that can inspire local climate action, inform decision-making at different levels, and be repeated consistently as the components of vulnerability change over time.  

Please see the media created for this project here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/79ebff9ddfd741d788141b1b10cb0b54

On the island of Fuvahmulah, Maldives, community members have learned to co-exist with resident tiger sharks. Rapidly becoming a premier destination for shark tourism, Fuvahmulah demonstrates a novel circumstance for how this often-polarizing industry can both bolster the local economy and strengthen shark conservation efforts. Focusing on personal storytelling, this project delivers a 5-part video series and interactive website featuring video portraitures of locals involved in and impacted by the industry. This anecdotal multimedia approach helps examine the grey areas of shark tourism while addressing ways to ensure its sustainability and longevity on the island.

You can see the media created for this project here: https://miyaru.org/stories

The ocean is a vital source of many valuable resources and services, such as food supplied through fishing, energy derived from oil and wind power, and often overlooked materials like sand, salt, and minerals. Each of these resources is finite by nature, so the need to sustainably manage them is paramount if we wish to ensure their availability alongside healthy ocean ecosystems for future generations. Doing so will require science-guided policies and laws that are crafted in coordination with stakeholder input from ocean-users and members of the public. Sustainability does not just require protection of ocean resources, but encouragement of human welfare as well. As such, public and stakeholder input is vital. However, engagement can be limited by barriers of inaccessibility: ocean-conservation topics are often complicated, and the policy processes and economic solutions we use to address them are equally so. This project offers a unique solution to fill that gap by representing real world issues and policy processes as a cooperative, physical board game. This process is called gamification: applying game design elements to non-game contexts. By gamifying ocean policy processes and making conservation decisions fun, Eight Oceans strives to demystify opaque policy processes, empower players to learn and discuss a myriad of complex ocean topics, and inspire player involvement and action in the real world. This game was created by assigning game mechanics and elements to real world processes and creating a conservation-focused objective for players to accomplish. This basic game ruleset was then put through many rounds of playtesting with a diversity of players, who provided feedback to revise and create new iterations of the game. The resulting prototype version serves as the framework for a more fully tested and complete product, intended for eventual marketability. Through the lens of gaming, Eight Oceans intends to bring important topics in ocean conservation to a unique new audience.

The southern California coast is well known for its surfing, beachfront towns, and high marine biodiversity. Humans share these coastal regions with species such as the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas; hereafter referred to as “green turtle”). Over the last two decades, East Pacific (EP) green turtles have undergone substantial population recovery. As a result of improved protection efforts at nesting beaches and foraging areas in Michoacán, Mexico beginning in 1979 green turtles have been spotted in more areas and in greater numbers than before since 2014.1 An analysis of existing stranding and sighting data is necessary to protect the growing EP green turtle population and ensure their continued population recovery in highly populated areas along the California coast. While the existing green turtle recovery plan (completed in 1998) addresses EP green turtles, it is dated and does not specifically address current known threats to this population, particularly in southern California. 2 Therefore, this report and accompanying StoryMap (link: https://arcg.is/0eX1zK) provide analyses on time-relevant and local scales. With the support of experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and the University of California San Diego, I review existing literature, analyze stranding and sighting data, and propose recommendations that could help reduce the human impacts on green turtles in the southern California region if implemented.

Storymap for this project can be viewed here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/391c53f931dd45619347177810259dd3

In this digital graphic novel, a neurodivergent teenager’s underwater journey through Monterey Submarine Canyon reveals that sensory differences are powerful adaptations, exploring how her sensitivities to light, noise, and touch correspond to deep sea conditions such as darkness, quiet, and pressure. The graphic novel is hosted online as a website, which also includes a fully narrated, sound mixed, and captioned video version of the underwater journey.

See media created for this project here: https://swimdown.neocities.org/

The United Nations has declared 2021-2030 the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development; increasing ocean literacy is an integral part of the larger network of actions intended to address the numerous environmental crises the global ocean faces. Many aspects of Ocean science remain opaque to the public, including the world of planktonic organisms. The arts provide an expansive laboratory for communicating and interacting with scientific topics, including in modes that engage visual and kinesthetic learners. I designed an interactive art

installation and STEAM lesson plan for elementary students, with the intention of creating a somatic mode to engage with complex topics in biological oceanography. The topic was biological-physical interactions with plankton, with a focus on turbulence, based on the research of Scripps Institution of Oceanography Professor Peter Franks. Prototypes of the art installation “Plankterception” were exhibited at two events at the Birch Aquarium, where the public interacted with the work and engaged with the scientific material through conversations with me and accessing an informative website. The lesson plan was distributed to elementary school teachers in the San Diego Unified School District as a resource to celebrate World Oceans Day, using drawing and dance as a tool to think critically about plankton physiology.

See website created for this project here: https://www.plankterception.com/

Yolas are indigenous fishing boats constructed by specific members of coastal communities in Puerto Rico. The knowledge of how to build and fish with yolas is passed down through generations and is considered traditional knowledge. The yola has formed an important part of the culture in Aguadilla and Rincón, Puerto Rico, but this piece of culture is being lost as younger generations are not using these boats. Youth in these communities are using larger fishing boats, which can go faster and farther out, but in turn they are not learning how to build traditional boats. In addition, these fishing communities are facing various challenges including coastal erosion, over-development of the coast, and fish migration away from the shoreline. These challenges are adversely affecting the elders of the fishing community, and contributing to a loss of knowledge by deterring youth from using traditional boats. For my project, I created a multimedia storymap utilizing pictures, audio, and video in order to tell the story of the ‘yolero’ community in Aguadilla and Rincón, Puerto Rico.

Please see the links below for the full project: 

English: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/6960e77660474c01803ee2f835494c74

Spanish: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4436f648c56d492189c78a085f111bfb

LOCAL OCEAN is an uplifting documentary film that provides an insightful, earnest portrait of the struggles and value of seafood producers in the San Diego community, breaking down the "us vs. them” public perception surrounding commercial fishing.

More about this project can be viewed here: 

https://www.bizwallace.com/

Thiamine Deficiency Complex is an emerging health concern for California’s Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). Low egg thiamine concentrations contribute to the condition being expressed in newly hatched fry leading to increased rates of early mortality. Increased rates of mortality in early life stages could further jeopardize already depleted populations of Chinook salmon in California’s river systems. In 2020, a study of egg thiamine concentrations at Coleman National Fish Hatchery and Livingston Stone Fish Hatchery revealed nearly 50% of the sampled populations contained egg thiamine concentrations below 5 nmol/g which is the egg thiamine concentration threshold for 95% fry viability. This study assesses egg thiamine concentrations from Chinook salmon sampled in the Klamath River Basin during their 2020 and 2021 annual spawning migrations. The study will also assess relationships between egg thiamine concentration and other variables including water temperature and distance of migration, and it will also evaluate relationships between egg diameter and egg thiamine concentration.

See the media created for this project here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/b49ec1acfdc9435dabeeca0c2606eda1

Elasmobranchs (sharks and rays) have been both culturally and socioeconomically significant in Baja California, Mexico, for over a century. Artisanal shark fisheries in Mexico account for approximately 40% of the national catch, and artisanal fisheries account for up to 80% of elasmobranch fishing activity in Mexican waters, according to data collected in 2011. Yet, there seems to be a behavioral change among artisanal shark fishermen for various reasons, resulting in a shift in shark conservation that needs to be explored. Collaboration between fishermen and local scientists is important when reimagining shark conservation among artisanal fisheries in Baja.

See project media here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/2201db1ddc06425b9c1f3e5d18af3f23