tiffanyshin

[tiffanyshin]

NOAA Black Abalone Juvenile Recruitment Habitat and Transplant Review 

Hello ENVIR 491 classmates! I hope that everyone is enjoying their internships. I’m Tiffany and I have been working on a remote research internship on black abalone conservation with NOAA Fisheries for my Capstone. Black abalone is an endangered species of marine snail found along the California coast in mostly rocky intertidal zones. However, recovery has been heavily impeded by disease (withering syndrome), overfishing, low densities and reproductive rates, chemical spills and spill response activities, and climate change. NOAA Fisheries convened a specialized task force, the Black Abalone Recovery Team (BART) to study, protect, and restore black abalone populations and work with partners to ensure the implementation of regulations and management plans to reduce poaching and increase the wild abalone population. This includes long-term population monitoring programs set up by UC Santa Cruz, the Navy, and the National Park Service. The final product of my internship will be two white papers that characterize the best practices and methods for black abalone transplantation and juvenile recruitment habitat studies. As part of my responsibilities, I am currently conducting an extensive literature review and interviewing black abalone experts.

One interesting thing I have found in my work is how small of a team is responsible for such important endangered species conservation. The BART consists of 9 members who all have an extensive background in marine sciences and have worked with abalone for more than two decades. These scientists are located all throughout the West Coast and they represent organizations and institutions such as the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC), Universidad Autonoma de Baja California (UABC), California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), National Park Service, and the Navy. While these experts conduct fieldwork every year, they are also incredibly in need of more human and financial resources. In the interviews, the researchers expressed concerns over the key uncertainties around transplantation and the preferred habitat characteristics in juvenile habitats. However, there are simply not enough people and funding to facilitate more in-depth and small-scale studies that would be beneficial to understand the mechanisms by which abalone detects suitable habitats and the specific conditions that allow for juvenile recruitment. At the same time, I was amazed at how this small mighty team of researchers is primarily the sole group of people protecting the endangered black abalone. For example, the UCSC team has a long-term monitoring program that has been ongoing for more than thirty years. There is a new protocol designed to direct the rescue and relocation of black abalone in landslide events. Scientists from Mexico work with fishing cooperatives to manage black abalone for conservation and taking.

This is a screenshot of me attending the BART meeting and these are some of the leading experts in black abalone conservation in the U.S. The meeting consisted of updates from subteams (monitoring and emergency response, restoration, experimental translocation and captive breeding, disease research, genetics, education and outreach, enforcement, and NOAA). The meeting lasted for two hours and I was able to experience how a government agency manages coordinated conservation actions!

Another interesting thing I have learned was the attractiveness of scientific fieldwork. My internship is entirely remote, and I have had some opportunities to interview experts on zoom. However, seeing the site photos of experts in black abalone habitats, I feel more inclined to engage in hands-on fieldwork and reconnect with my passion for the ocean and scuba diving. Black abalone conservation in particular has a very strong dynamic between fieldwork and management: the same people who are researching black abalone are also making important decisions about managing black abalone populations and projects. In this way, I think it will be meaningful to physically interact with black abalone while pursuing my original interest in policy management. 

One challenge that I have faced was balancing my internship responsibilities with other school work. As my internship required a lot of reading, I felt very overwhelmed by my workload. My internship aims to reference 10 sources for each topic (transplantation and juvenile recruitment habitat), conduct 9-12 expert interviews and transcriptions, and finally, produce two white papers synthesizing all the information I have collected. In many ways, I feel that I have underestimated the intensity of my internship work. To overcome this challenge, I took extra steps to stay organized and manage my time. For example, I kept a detailed record of my work progress and gave weekly updates to my Site supervisor about my accomplishments and shortcomings. The weekly goals that I set for my Site supervisor have definitely helped with keeping me accountable and reassuring my progress in completing the internship. Towards the latter of the term, I made a weekly checklist of small tasks that I can complete every day to finish everything by the end of the quarter. 

Another major challenge was conducting expert interviews. Initially, I felt very intimidated to interview researchers, some even have more than 20-30 years of experience. Related to the work pressure I mentioned before, I always felt underprepared for these interviews and had a hard time understanding some biology jargon specific to black abalone. To overcome this challenge, I did some background research of the interviewees before each session. I also scheduled a mock interview with my Site supervisor, which allowed me to practice my interview skills — how to introduce myself, ease into interview consent questions, and ask appropriate follow-up questions. I also asked for assistance from my Site supervisor about any unclear spellings or scientific explanations and was also able to further leverage the opportunity to ask experts about interesting things that other experts have brought up. 

Here are some questions for you! 

How has your internship confirmed or changed your career goals? 

Do you have any ideas for what types of internships/jobs you want to pursue in the next few years? 

How do you think researchers can advocate for endangered species conservation in small animals such as the black abalone? How can we get the public to care? 

Here are some pictures of black abalone!

Black abalone in their cryptic habitat.

The follow two photos demonstrate the effects of withering syndrome (WS) in black abalone. Symptoms are shown by a shrunken foot (lower photo). WS first appeared in the 1990s and the population has struggled to rebound.