Episode 1: Introducing Tending the Tides

Preview (00:00)
Tom: We hear a lot these days about this blue economy that’s coming someday. And the point I wanna make is that it’s not coming. It’s here.

Introduction
Suzie: Welcome to Tending the Tides, a new audio series by Ecotrust, highlighting stories about mariculture on the Oregon coast.

Tyson: We’re your hosts for today’s episode, I’m Tyson Rasor. Mariculture, a type of aquaculture, is the farming of marine life for food, restoration, conservation, or cultural knowledge. And throughout this podcast, we’ll hear from scientists, entrepreneurs, seafood enthusiasts, and others as they share their expertise and experiences. But, Before we go much further, let’s define this key term: what is mariculture? To help us out, here’s Steve Rumrill, recently retired leader of the Shellfish Program at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Steve:  Aquaculture, really, is a combined word. Aqua, meaning water and culture, so, just growing organisms in water. And so aquaculture can refer to and does refer to growing in fresh water, as well as marine. So when we switch to mariculture; mariculture means growing in salt water.

Tyson: Now that we know what we’re talking about, who is Ecotrust and why are we making this series?

Suzie: Tyson and I both work at Ecotrust, a nonprofit that for more than 30 years has been working in Oregon and beyond on projects that attempt to answer this question: Can we take care of the environment, build healthy local economies, and uplift communities all at the same time? This concept is known as the “triple bottom line” and even after decades of pursuing this work, we’re still finding ways and places where this approach could really make a difference.

Tyson: Our work on triple bottom line initiatives has us focusing on the Oregon coast; where Ecotrust is part of the Oregon Coastal Mariculture Collaborative. Together, we’re working to understand how mariculture in Oregon can support a thriving coastal economy, ecosystem, and communities. Throughout this podcast, we’re taking a look at how culture—including what we eat and why—influences its development, and how the unique geography and ecology of this particular coastline presents both challenges and opportunities for the sector.

Suzie: In this episode, you’ll hear from members of the Collaborative. Like the Director of Oregon Sea Grant, Karina Nielsen, and the Director of the Oregon Kelp Alliance, Tom Calvanese. It’s worth stating up top that we at Ecotrust and the Collaborative have a particular perspective here: We believe that if we do it right, mariculture can be good for people, good for the environment, and help sustain local economies.

Segment 1: Starting with Place (03:28)
Suzie: Let’s start with Place. We wanted to understand what makes the Oregon coast unique. Here’s Tom Calvanese, the Director of the Oregon Kelp Alliance and a member of the Oregon Coastal Mariculture Collaborative. Tom is also a diver and resides on the southern coast of Oregon.

Tom:  I’m so glad you asked because it it is unique. And of course, yeah, you’ve just opened the, you’ve just pushed the marine biologist button, so get ready. Among other many incredible things that make this place unique, it’s, the wind. This time of year, we typically see very strong north winds and they literally will knock you down if you’re not careful. The great thing about those winds is that they drive really powerful upwelling and what happens is that the wind is driving the movement of the water, and the current it creates almost a sort of a low pressure system right along the coast. What that does is it pulls the water from the deep ocean. That’s why we call it upwelling. ‘cause it’s upwelling from the deep ocean. That deep upwell water is first of all, very cold. So anyone who thinks you’re gonna come to the southern Oregon coast this time of year and go take a dip in the warm ocean, no you’re not, because it’s very cold. It’s could be down to 46 degrees. But. The other thing it is nutrient rich. There’s a lot of nutrients in that upwell water. And the fact that it’s cold, produces a lot of nutrients that give rise to all this productivity, starting with the primary producers and the plankton and the little zooplankton to eat the plankton and the little fish that eat that, et cetera. Everything from whales to fish, to abalone, to you name it, of those things are here. And all these fisheries are super productive of the wind.

Segment 2: What the heck is the Oregon Way? (05:21)
Tyson: As Tom said, the Oregon Coast is a special place. And Oregonians are well-versed in debating about how to utilize and care for the state’s natural resources. And, as you’ll hear, a kind of culture has developed around working toward consensus. The short hand for this is called the Oregon Way.

Karina: You know, in these very polarized times, people you hear politicians and some people talk about, “Oh, we should get back to the Oregon Way.”

Tyson: You’re hearing our recent interview with Karina Nielsen, the director of Oregon Sea Grant, who is based in both Corvallis and Newport, Oregon at Oregon State University.

Karina: And that kinda represents this idea that good people of whatever political persuasion can come together if they recognize a common problem and pull ideas together, put aside their partisanship, and if they have a common goal, let’s talk about, let’s figure out how do we solve this and really come together around solutions.  The other important ingredient is like everyday people participating really quite robustly in a lot of those conversations around decisions. And that, I think, manifests differently in different states and in different state governance systems. But it is really important in Oregon.

Tyson:  To provide some context on the Oregon Way, I’m wondering if there’s a famous or well-known example or just one that you hold from your experience that you can tell us a little bit about.

Karina: The development of our Oregon Marine Reserves. That was a very contentious process.

Tyson: And for our listeners, the Oregon Marine Reserves are five areas along the Oregon coast that are dedicated to conservation and scientific research. In these reserves, development and removal of marine life is not allowed. And these sites are managed by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Karina: There’s some things about it that were very attractive. However it missed on some other things, which were, culturally important, uses historic or the uses of indigenous people. Then there was the fishing community who was like, “Hey, what the heck? Don’t we have enough to deal with regulation and places where we can’t fish?” And then, there were ardent and heartfelt conservationists who were going like, “Hey, there’s some real issues. This could help. And we care about these special places and we want to protect them.” But, people came together, they shared information, they deliberated, and after a challenging period of time of working through all of that together in community, we got them established. And it’s turned out they’ve been very beneficial. And maybe that’s because people set up parameters. Now, was anybody perfectly happy with the outcome? No, but nonetheless, we have this system of marine reserves and one of the unique aspects of it is that it has a really important component that is being supported, and that is the human dimensions research and monitoring piece, in addition to the natural science monitoring piece. That is a really unique feature of the way it’s being implemented here in state government in Oregon. And so I think that’s a really powerful outcome.

Segment 3: And how does natural capital fit into this? (08:38)
Suzie: Karina shared an example of how people with different perspectives came together to manage Oregon’s Marine Reserves. And, as you heard, there were a lot of interests at play—from people who wanted to make a living from the ocean to those who were interested in restoring its ecosystems. One way to bridge these various objectives is through an idea called Natural Capital. Let’s dive into what we mean by this term, natural capital. Here’s Tom again to walk us through it.

Tom:  I think using the term capital and the term natural is a really interesting kind of juxtaposition. We are placing economic value on natural systems, which we sometimes refer to as ecosystem services, right? And I think what we’re really doing is we’re placing an economic value system, like a template on top of the natural world. Of course, there’s other value systems we could apply. There are value systems that existed pre-western civilization culture and capitalist culture. But to answer your question more directly, I think, natural capital can be defined as basically nature doing work for us that we would otherwise have to pay for or do ourselves, right?

Suzie: That’s a great straight forward definition, Natural Capital is nature doing work for us. Can you share an example?

Tom: So, kelp forests, they’re not just pretty to look at, they’re out there filtering the water, absorbing carbon, they’re creating habitat for fish, they’re protecting the coastline from storms. Those all have economic value, even if we don’t necessarily put a dollar sign on it, right? Through programs like the Oregon Kelp Alliance’s Kelp Forest Stewardship Initiative, we’re now investing in doing the work to restore these extremely valuable ecosystems really around the world. We’re part of the International Kelp Forest Alliance and the Kelp Forest Challenge, which is aiming to preserve or restore 3 million hectares of kelp forests around the world by 2030. That’s how much we value these systems particularly now that we’re seeing them disappear.

You know, if you want to put it in economic terms, let’s talk about hanging on to the natural capital we have right now, instead of waiting for it to go away or recapture it and bring it back.

Segment 4: Seems like a no brainer, but what are the challenges? (11:14)
Tyson: Tom, makes a good point that we should be stewarding and protecting the natural capital that we have now. But, we know there are challenges that have to be solved if we want to grow the mariculture sector in Oregon. Here is Karina breaking down what those challenges are.

Karina:  In Oregon, specifically, we have a fairly underdeveloped mariculture industry. We have some cultivation of Pacific oysters. There’s not other shellfish being grown, or at least not at scale in Oregon. There’s interest in seaweed aquaculture. Mostly this has been done in tanks, on land, not in the water, as it might be in other settings.

Trying to start a new business, it’s not clear how to do it. There are a multitude of permits. There are concerns, something that we often call social license. Like people have an impression of it. Such as, a lot of people, when they think about aquaculture, they think about the issues with aquaculture. It has a checkered past in some ways. It can introduce non-local, non-native species. Those can be problematic. On the other hand, you can’t produce mari-cultured foods for consumption in areas that are polluted or that have contaminants. And so by putting these operations together you often bring benefits for water quality.

And then, there may be competition for space use with other uses in the coastal zone. The land planning that we talked about, the planning for use of space, whether that’s in the estuaries or in the coastal ocean, are long and challenging and involve the Oregon Way and people in the community who care about a variety of factors. So, to change permitting, to enable some of these maybe beneficial pathways to start culturing, maybe, a different species of shellfish, all of those run into barriers that are both associated with some of our beneficial Oregon Way land use plannings, environmental stewardship policies. And prevent in some ways, explorations or make it hard, impede the explorations of new approaches.

Segment 5: Looking to the future (13:35)
Tyson: There certainly are some challenges to work through. We heard Karina name the opportunities for growing more varieties of shellfish, outside of just oysters, but that it’s not that straightforward to permit your business, much less pilot a new project for restoration. We asked both Karina and Tom for their visions of the future of mariculture in Oregon and their thoughts on how we can get there.

Karina:  I’m interested in some of these pilot projects that are coming out. I would like to see some experimentation happen. I would like to see communities be able to come and see what’s happening. Having events where you can bring people on-site to learn and see how it works. I think that’s really important because if you’re just sitting somewhere else and hearing about it, you don’t really have a sense of it.

I think that’s one thing that would be really important and I think increasingly development on the coastal zone is a challenge, right? We need to think about what places are appropriate and not appropriate, and how does that space intersect with other existing uses and cultural priorities, and how do we share the public space. Some people call that spatial planning. And given the interest in various things in the ocean, I think that it’s not gonna stop. Look at the interest in deep sea mining, minerals, data cables, ocean renewable energy, there are all kinds of unusual ways of producing wine. I think we’ve heard about some of these things in Oregon recently. There’s always gonna be people proposing to use the public space in different ways.

Tom: I think that we need to continue to support kelp forest preservation and restoration and stewardship, but I also think we’ve got to invest in the people that live in the coastal communities that are gonna be the ones that are gonna make this work happen. And I want to emphasize that this is a lot of work.

What that means is we have to invest in dive training programs. Particularly some of the work we’re doing with tribal communities, with coastal community members, in pilot programs. Like the one that we are doing right now, the Oregon Restorative Kelp Mariculture Project, which is working with local fishermen to develop new economic opportunities to work on the water and diversify their portfolio, while tapping into their experiential knowledge and their ability to do work in familiar waters. We need better processing facilities for things like urchins, seaweed. And we need to build markets for these, I guess I’ll say for Western palates. A lot of people have just learned, just discovered that you can eat seaweed and you can eat uni. And honestly, we also need to develop new permitting pathways for this preservation and restoration work and restorative mariculture that will facilitate the work. We hear a lot these days about this blue economy that’s coming someday. The point I wanna make is that it’s not coming. It’s here for those of us living here in coastal communities and we need to invest in jobs to help coastal communities. We need living wage jobs that are tied to this natural environment and give people an opportunity to do work that has meaning in terms of their relationship to the environment.

Conclusion & Credits (17:26)
Suzie: Let’s recap. We heard from Tom that Oregon has a unique geography. With cold, nutrient rich water that upwells on the coast creating an environment for marine life to thrive and good conditions for mariculture.

Tyson: Well, we do have this amazing geography that supports this ecosystem off the coast. It is hard to grow out in the open ocean. The Oregon coast is dynamic and it can have large waves in the wintertime. So really our protected areas to grow in are the bays and the estuaries. That brings up some considerations for what organisms can be grown. How we grow them and where growing will take place, whether that be for conservation or restoration, commercial or cultural purposes, maybe a combination of those things. There’s certainly a lot of different communities to talk to along the way.

Suzie: I’m reminded of what Karina shared about how Oregon has this history of people working together to address different challenges and opportunities through that process called the Oregon Way. And there are also quite a few challenges around getting new projects permitted. We heard from both Tom and Karina how pilot projects can be a great way to figure out what kinds of Mariculture work for Oregon. Ironing out some of those permitting challenges is gonna be a really important piece of the puzzle moving forward.

Tyson: Yeah. I think we’ll hear more about it in future conversations. To me it’s exciting to think about all that. The ocean provides us everything that is and can be grown for food.

Suzie: Yeah. Speaking of food, Tom and Karina did share about some of their favorite foods from the ocean. So I think that might be a good way to wrap things up.

Tom:  Uni. So I always have to make note of the fact that the uni is the urchin’s gonad. Just ‘cause people I feel need to know that because people look at an urchin and go, what about that can you eat? Urchins have what we call penta radial symmetry, which means they have five of everything. They have five teeth and they have five parts of their shell, and they have five inside. So when you go to open an urchin, you’re gonna find five. If it’s a healthy good urchin, you want to eat, you’re gonna find five delicious little morsels inside that urchin. And what you’re gonna be looking for is plump, juicy and a nice kind of a golden yellow color that is an indication of a healthy urchin that you’re gonna want to eat. And I’m just gonna have to share my favorite preparation, which is when I first started to work as an urchin diver. I had only eaten urchin from sushi bars. And to be honest with you, some of the preparations I had, I wasn’t super excited about, but I decided I’m gonna have to learn to love these things if I’m gonna be fishing for ‘em and trying to convince people to eat them. So my favorite preparation is actually just an urchin that I just pulled off the bottom on the boat and cracked it open and rinsed the little pieces of gut off of it in some salt water. And it has all those attributes I just said. And it’s just raw with some sea salt from the ocean on it. And it’s delicious.

Karina:  I like oysters. I have to admit. I’ve eaten oysters in a lot of different places around the world. I’ve gone on like expeditions to get to a certain place that sells oysters. So you know, for sure a fan of oysters–cooked, raw, I like them small, briney.

Suzie: Stay tuned for our next episode, when we’ll be taking a closer look at Karina’s favorite food, oysters. And there’s a lot to get into throughout this podcast series. We’ll be taking a deeper dive to get up close with seaweed, oysters, urchins, cattle, collaboration, restoration, and more. You can learn more at our website: ecotrust.org/tendingthetides

Tyson: This episode was hosted by Tyson Rasor and Suzie O’Neill. Written by Emilie Chen. Edited and produced by Kaitlyn Rich. Music by Imagined Nostalgia and Boxwood Orchestra. Illustrations by Tony Sterling and design by Heldáy de la Cruz. The idea and concepts for the show are thanks to Jon Bonkoski and Megan Foucht.

This podcast was made possible by our funders at the Builders Initiative; The Builders Ini­tia­tive invests in and col­lab­o­rates with nonprof­its, busi­ness­es, and oth­ers work­ing towards sus­tain­able solu­tions to soci­etal and envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges. Lastly, this podcast is a production from Ecotrust, where we work in partnership at the intersection of equity, economy, and environment. Learn more about Ecotrust at ecotrust.org.