In the early 1930s, Stanford student Willis Hewatt had rigorously documented a slice of the region, photographing, sketching and counting everything that fell within an imaginary corridor now known as "Hewatt's transect." Hewatt, PhD '34, had hammered brass bolts into the rock to mark his line for future observers it's a yard wide, extending from the shore bluffs 108 yards out to sea. Examining it "would take a hell of a lot of work."īut there was a way to do it. The idea that climate change-resulting in warmer water-might be responsible for the algae changes was "a wild hypothesis, kind of a concept," Baxter recalls. It was getting more like Southern California." Baxter, an avid diver, had lived in Southern California on coming to Monterey, he'd been impressed by "the aesthetics of going out into the intertidal here-the early morning light and the radiance of these shades of reds and browns." But by the '90s, he noticed the algae "got to where it wasn't the same. The study's starting point was Baxter's observation that the Monterey intertidal waters seemed to be changing color, likely due to a shifting algae population. The tide pools offered a striking opportunity to observe a world responding to complex change. "We have a lot to learn from natural systems because they've been adapting to unpredictable challenges for 3.5 billion years." "The problems that are faced by natural organisms are exactly the same problems that businesses face, that security experts face, that climate change experts face, which is that the world is full of risk and it's unpredictable," says Sagarin, a wiry man with unruly brown hair who speaks in thoughtful bursts. Now an assistant research scientist at the University of Arizona, Sagarin has turned his observational focus to questions of national security: How can people adapt to changing conditions using evolutionary principles? His work, which now involves collaboration with military and government officials as well as with fellow scientists, asks what humanity can learn from nature when dealing with complex uncertainties, like natural disasters or terrorism. Rafe Sagarin has since taken that methodology to much stranger tide pools. It rooted his faith in observational ecology-the old-fashioned naturalist style of closely watching and meticulously calibrating the world in order to understand it. Tabulating the creatures of the Monterey tide pools had been the modus operandi of a study Sagarin began in 1993, which became one of the first to show that climate change was transforming a regional ecosystem. " Anthopleura sola, that's those two anemones." He pointed to a pair of spongy green blobs. "Those are mostly hermit crabs taking over turban snail shells," Sagarin, '94, said, as he peered into one pool. The shallow pools initially appeared abandoned at low tide, but a closer look revealed dozens of tiny creatures going about their underwater business. It was a drippy coastal morning, with fog heavy enough to dampen paper and a raucous crowd of gulls hooting from the roof of the nearby lab. His mentor, emeritus lecturer Chuck Baxter, stood on a nearby outcropping and called out helpful advice. Sagarin was again hunched over a tide pool identifying its briny inhabitants. The rocks at the north end provide shelter from the waves and leave tide pools and richly populated exposed rock at low tide.Nearly two decades after coming to the Hopkins Marine Station as an undergraduate in earth systems, Raphael D. This set of images shows the setting at Asilomar State Beach. My friend Jeff Honda, a superbly talented underwater photographer/videographer who does fantastic macro fluorescence work (visit Jeff’s web site to see some of his work) and happens to live in the area, guided me to the evening spot. Kara Nordin (Northwestern University) accompanied me on one of the dawn trips. I made two predawn visits to the north end of Asilomar State Beach and one evening trip to the tide pools at the end of Asilomar Avenue. On a recent trip to the Monterey peninsula (California) the timing was right for low tides in early morning and not long after sunset. In many places you can do fluorescence exploration when the tide goes out, providing access to subjects in tide pools and on exposed rock surfaces. You don’t necessarily have to go underwater to enjoy the fluorescence of marine subjects.
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