(Sound of fishing line being cast)
(Laughing) Well we did catch a fish!
And he's off...
(Background) What is that? It was a very small very small
Coho salmon...
You know you fly across the country and
look out the window, and you can't help but see
what the impact of humans is on the landscape
and we have done things to the atmosphere and to the earth
that are accelerating the natural rate of change.
From a scientific perspective
there is no doubt that climate change is happening
This lure is called a "Coho Killer"
How's that for blood and guts?
There are records of tribal settlements
that are, you know, 8 to 10 thousand years old around here.
These tribes by and large subsisted on all the various different flavors of salmon
And we're gonna come out here and we're gonna tool around for a couple of hours
and hopefully we'll catch a couple fish
maybe 3-4 if we have a good evening.
But, it used to be that you could come out here and
inside of an hour everyone in the boat would just be swimming with fish.
It's this idea of shifting baselines...
The world the way it once was...
I never get tired of seeing this stuff.. Really.
If people had their act together, they would make this into a national park.
The tide is the rising and falling of the sea which happens due to the gravitational pull
of both the moon and the sun.
So when this tide is higher, you'd never even know that these lower rocks are out here.
It's a large area that can be exposed.
So for organisms that
make their living here, You know this is a pretty harsh thing because
they're inundated by water
and then they're exposed to air. That's a huge temperature shift.
What we're doing here today
is we're monitoring the community of organisms that live in the rocky intertidal zone
and we're keeping track of how that community changes.
With climate change when we have these periods where the temperature rises
it is going to change the fundamental nature
of this ecosystem.
This is one of our long-term monitoring plots where we're focusing on
rocky intertidal communities.
As part of this long-term monitoring program we've set up a series
of permanent plots we come back to monitor every year.
This is a plot which is 10 meters long and it really spans two zones.
The barnacle, algal zone on top
And then down below, in the middle elevations, the mussel beds.
Intertidal zonation is a pattern of community structure that results from physical
tolerances and biological interactions that results
in distinct bands of organisms at different elevations.
The idea here is that we're not just trying to assess
the density of organisms in the tide pools
within each one of our plots. But we're also trying to assess
how the barnacle zone and the mussel zone are contracting and expanding over time
But with climate change were expecting that
were gonna get heightened air temperatures so it's going to be
hotter and drier up here and they're already
at the fringe of their ability to exist here.
These mussel beds create habitat for a whole host, a whole community of other
organisms also.
I would like to think that when my children
get to an age where they can truly understand exactly what their dad does for a living
I hope they actually think that
I am doing something worthwhile that I've done something worthwhile
and that I've contributed.
I've got such a great crew.
And I'm a big believer in
relationships. So the emphasis is on
doing the best work that we can do. Having it be
worthwhile work and enjoy doing it
The thing about climate change
is that there's no one particular item which is a smoking gun. So you can't look at
any one particular
instance. One particular heat wave event. One particular
storm, and say, "Aha" this is proof of climate change.
Proof of climate change is taken over a longer period of time.
This long-term monitoring
is very important because we want to be able to show these long-term trends
because we're expecting to see
steady decrease in ocean pH, incremental increases, say,
in the frequency and magnitude of storm events, increases and
sea temperature and sea level. Things like that. Proof of climate change
is actually the weight of evidence over a period of time.
That over there to me just really beautiful. This is the Olympic coast
This is archetypal classic Olympic coast right here.
Ocean acidification
has a major impact on marine ecosystems. Human beings have been
combusting fossil fuels for a very long time. Since prehistoric times
we've essentially doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
Now carbon dioxide in the atmosphere needs to come into equilibrium with the
amount of carbon dioxide dissolved into seawater
As that CO2 dissolves into seawater
through the magic chemistry it forms carbonic acid.
Carbonic acid effectively decreases the pH of ocean water
making it more acidic.
Acidic water is very bad for marine organisms.
Most marine organisms use calcium carbonate to form shell structures.
Low pH water can dissolve those shells and all marine organisms
use biochemical pathways to conduct their daily lives.
Those metabolic interactions
are mediated by the pH of the environment that they're bathed in
and affect growth reproduction and ultimately
life and death.
What we have done is we've taken a big tide pool like this
and we have mounted an instrument on the side of the tide pool.
We're trying to measure
what the pH is of this water that's bathing all these organisms.
Every half hour it takes a measurement.
Now of course, it's in a tide pool so there's a certain point at which the
tide comes and this is all inundated.
If we can see changes in community that also
correlate with changes in the ocean chemistry
that's a very powerful tool to say what the impacts
of a changing climate are.
This area 200 years ago I dare say
would have looked almost exactly like this
very similar to this.
The National Park Service manages lands that by and large are some of the
most pristine lands that you can find in North America.
They are the most untrammeled, untainted areas that you can find.
We monitor long-term climate change
in the national parks so we can assess how climate change
is impacting these valuable park resources.
There's also great value to this monitoring
for comparative purposes to more impacted areas outside of our boundaries.
Man's role in climate change is that primarily through the combustion of
fossil fuels
we've accelerated the process.
As a society we're vitally linked to the ocean.
We rely upon the ocean as a source of food and in a variety of different ways.
As climate change begins to impact marine food chains
that has the potential to profoundly impact how we interact with the ocean,
how we rely on the ocean and the terrestrial environment.
We have been put along a certain path
a certain trajectory with climate change.
But that doesn't mean that we should throw up our hands and say
that all is lost. Sit back and enjoy the ride,
and keep doing what we're doing. I think that we can
ameliorate some of the long term effects by
moderating some of our behavior.
As a species and as a society we have the obligation to think that far ahead.
At the end of the day, I want to enjoy life
I enjoy good food, I enjoy good drink
I enjoy good places and good people. And if I can do some good while I'm here
that is icing on the cake