Science

Hey! Did you miss that fish?!

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UPDATE: We've now funded one day of sampling out at the Channel Islands!  One down, and one to go!  Help us finish fueling this project!  We're getting close!

An Astounding Data Set  

Climate change, overfishing, pollution, acidification. These things can and will have a huge impact on life in the oceans. But to know how life in the oceans will change, we need to know what is there.

The incredible SCUBA dive team at the Channel Islands National Park Service in Southern California has been surveying Giant Kelp forests for thirty years. Thirty years!  Their extensive unique data set on the abundance of fish, invertebrates, and algae is unique in the world. It represents one of, if not the, best data sets describing life in our nearshore oceans through recent times. Now that the data has become widely available , it’s starting to be used by more and more scientists around the globe. Heck, just see some of my own work (Byrnes et al. 2006 Ecology Letters).

There is, though, one problem

The Problem...

Counting things on the seafloor, while in a thick wetsuit, sucking air through a regulator, getting thrown about by big waves, with sand and grit swirling in front of your face is hard. Really hard. It’s one reason why there are so few subtidal ecologists in the world. And for a data set like the Park Service’s, it adds a little bit of error to their counts of life on the seafloor. 

“So what?” you may say. A little measurement error here or there shouldn’t make a difference with so much data at hand. Well, not so much. That measurement error may make it incredibly difficult to detect a signal of important changes to life on the seafloor. Natural variation due to El Niños, marauding bands of urchins, and more will hide the signal well enough without adding in the simple problems of accurately counting stuff. 

But, there is a solution.

A Calibrated Solution

The divers at the Park Service want to go out and collect some calibration data. By having different divers sample the same plots over and over and over again, we can get a sense of how big this measurement error is. It’s long dull monotonous drudging boring work. But they want to do it. They want that data to be used, and used well!

That’s where you come in. Will you help fuel their boats, buy their time, and help send them out to collect this absolutely crucial piece of data? As part of the #SciFund Challenge, I’m asking for a little under $7K. This seems like a lot, but it’s just enough to fund 2 calibration sampling trips (sampling at remote islands underwater is expensive!).  And, hey, any money beyond that goes to fund more trips!  More data = better results!

As the ecological statistician on this project, I’m confident that this data is going to be invaluable to the future of anyone using this data set - including the Park Service itself!. With it, we nail down just how those kelp forests have changed in the last thirty years, and know that the answers are from real biology rather than the problems inherent in the topsy-turvy nature of SCUBA research.