479. The MLPA Laugh of the Day::: A Satire of the Excessive Parameterization of Kelp by the Science Advisory Team (SAT) [Go Dave Rudie!]

CAPTION: Bull Kelp! ::: Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Satire of the Science Advisory Team (SAT). The t-shirt design is based on a two-minute public comment of Dave Rudie, who is part of the Regional Stakeholder Group (RSG). This t-shirt is the beginning of my own little MLPA Campaign: instead of "MPAs Work" or "I Love MPAs," I thought up of the "Fish-in-a-Box" Campaign with a simple logo. I needed to incorporate some existentialism and absurdism (not to mention humor!) to the whole process.

Granted the November 10, 2009 Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF) meeting (south coast Marine Life Protection Act) is done and gone and probably no longer on top of most people's plates... but I'm still in a mode of reflection.... Well, this process is a good chunk of my Ph.D. thesis... so maybe I can call this "delayed reporting." University research is known to lag behind the rest of societal operations anyway.

I was so impressed by Dave Rudie's 2-minutes, 2-cents worth of a speech (Dave Rudie is an RSG member who participated in the FIC/FIN group I took notes for, FIC = Fisheries Information Committee, FIN = Fisheries Information Network) that I went back to Cal-span (http://www.cal-span.org) to try and write down most of his speech, word for word. He illustrated two major points and with cunning wit, which ultimately left the whole room in a bellow of laughter. Too bad the Cal-span footage did not pick up the audio of a light-hearted room amidst a tense, high-stress process. See the quote below that's worth far more than two cents (slightly paraphrased; it's not exact)!

"My name is Dave Rudie, and I represent Catalina Offshore Products. I represent small family fishermen who are out there working on a daily basis. Most fishermen that sell to me are day-boat fishermen. They go out to catch sea urchin or lobster. And these are the men and women who are going to be the most impacted by these marine protected areas. They have fully engaged in the process. They are not opposed to the process. They participated. They unilaterally support Option 4 [San Diego?]. I undersand that that's been somewhat taken off the table, but that's what the hard-working fishermen support. Option 4. They support it because it meets the science guidelines best as we were given to us. We were told to protect all the habitats, not just the three forms of kelp habitats--

"Two of my sea urchin fishermen work in the northern part of the La Jolla area in Option 1. That northern part has a large population of sea urchins just outside the kelp bed. The divers wait until the sea urchins get to the edge of the kelp to harvest these sea urchins. If the divers are not allowed to harvest those sea urchins, these urchins will likely march to the klp as they have in many places in San Diego in the past. These sea urchins will not only eat the average kelp, but the maximum kelp, the persistent kelp, and the gap kelp--they would also eat the quality kelp. They would eat all kinds of kelp as the sea urchins march through that kelp bed.

Work Group 1 was supposed to come up with middle ground solutions. A win-win situation. Not a win-lose situation. Option 1--the old Proposal 3--is a win-lose. Win for the preservation community and lose for the fishing community. I am 100% against Option 1."

In the speech above, Dave Rudie harps on two main issues: (1) he represents small family fishermen, and these are the people who will be most impacted by the marine reserves, and (2) the excessive parameterization of kelp by the Science Advisory Team (SAT) had reached the brink of absurdism, and hence set up the joke of all jokes of everyone's last chance to speak before the BRTF made their decisions on an array of marine protected areas (MPAs). Mic Kronan, the harbormaster of Santa Barbara, also emphasized the holistic relationship between marine conservation and marine management, and over the course of the MLPA process, it seemed like marine / fisheries management fell into the limelight. Some speeches were conceptual and ideological... and some speeches were quite practical. I think Dave's was the most memorable of the ideological speeches.

I'll be putting up the maps (Option 1-2-3-4 references) in a near-future blog.

Additional Papers Associated with Science-Conservation Case Study Assignment, Science and Value Systems, Parasitology and the Male Species

Okay, I'm being a bit repetitive here, particularly with the "iceberg model." There is one part of this "perception" that I do not agree with... tremendously. And this would be the notion that the "scientific value system" is completely dichotomous from the "public and political value system." I mean, even the metrics of measurement and monitoring systems are dichotomous. I think that is 100% bullshxt to dichotomize our world (the scientific world) versus the "outside world."

I talked to Julia and Karl about this--how the underlying ways of human thinking in science are shaped and framed by our value systems. Dr. Ed Keller in the preliminary Goleta Beach video that was displayed in UCSB's Shoreline Preservation website--Dr. Keller stated that no matter what type of science we do, our overarching decisions in management ultimately reflect our value systems, which is not necessarily science. He didn't say this exactly the way how I said it, but it was nice for a scientist to admit this. I specifically told Julia (my upcoming roommmate) that to consider the course in parasitology that I took with Dr. Armand Kuris in winter of 2003. There were three philosophical approaches to parasites: negative (obviously), neutral, and positive. Humans have learned much about parasites and the human body throughout history due to the concept of our own survival, ailing, and sickness due to those little bastards draining our bodies of nutrients and energy. Our knowledge of parasites are largely medical driven, even today. But Armand takes a unique approach. He (as well as Dr. Kevin Lafferty in the US Geological Survey) specializes in "ecological parasitology" in which parasites are studied in a "distant, detached" version. For example, the study of primitive cestodes (tapeworms) in the guts of sharks. All the scientists due is study the system as is, with no interventionist approach. We may study the life cycle of the rosette-like parasite in the shark gut, but with no intention of playing vetenarian and trying to kill the parasite in the shark. We do not imply that the shark is even in great pain! It's totally absurd to think about.... And, now beside the distant, neutralist, stand-offish approach is the "positive approach." I have seen Kevin Lafferty in particular work on how to assess "ecosystem health" by counting the number of parasites found in certain hosts, like the number of digene trematodes found in Cerithidea horn snails in our Pacific Coast salt marshes (hopefully I'm saying this right, I am mentally rusty with my parasites). Armand and Kevin have also worked on the "enemy release hypothesis," such that certain invasive species (at least in the invertebrate world, and even the plant world) display their "invasive" success, particularly because in the new region they are becoming compatible, chummy, and "virulent" (beside their high "frequency of encounter" in the region), is largely due to the lack of parasitic enemies to control their population levels. There are typically more parasites found in the invasive species in their habitat of origin. You can even apply this knowledge to humans who have traveled from the "Old World" to the "New World." Not only, these pilgrims escaped religious and political persecution, but they also were free from a high density and diversity of old-world diseases. Unfortunately, several of these old-world diseases were brought over to America, and the native Americans paid the price for that.... Anyway, in parasitology, there are negative, neutralist, and positive value systems and approaches, which ultimately govern what types of scientific questions we ask, and how we apply this scientific knowledge to the management and innovation of ecological systems, whether this ecological system is a salt marsh, a shark gut, or the human body itself.

One more aside, Armand and Kevin also study how parasites engage in "behavioral alteration" of its host to increase the likelihood of the parasite being transferred to its next "habitat," such that the parasite can continue its life cycle. It's total Alien-movie mind games. Just like guys. Guys, man. Like parasites to poor female brains. You can make an entire philosophical analogy of parasites and the male species. Chance encounter. Developing Compatibility. Total random chance. Huh, Matt? I have written quite a bit about this actually. More to come....