The Noyo Center for Marine Science is busy. The Fort Bragg organization, led by Executive Director Sheila Semans, recently celebrated ten years of pursuing its core mission “to advance ocean conservation through education, exploration and experience.”
But the Noyo Center is just getting started.
As of today, the Noyo Center consists of a Discovery Center, Marine Field Station and the Crow’s Nest Interpretive Center, all located in Fort Bragg.
At the Discovery Center, a small exhibit space and gift shop on Main Street in downtown Fort Bragg, the skeleton of a killer whale that became entangled in a crab pot line off the coast of MacKerricher State Park takes center stage. The 26-foot-long specimen is believed to be the largest orca skeleton on display in the world.
The Discovery Center’s Ocean Immersion Dome allows visitors to take a deep dive without getting wet, surrounded by 360-degree videos of swimming tiger sharks or diving sea lions. An eye-catching wall display showcases over 50 different California sea lion skulls. And a compelling, if disturbing, exhibit on plastic – microscopic particles of which have been found in breath exhaled by dolphins – drives home the point, as Discovery Center docent Jackie Burns-Waters puts it, that “every bit of plastic that’s ever been made is still on the planet.”
The Marine Field Station in Noyo Harbor, just south of central Fort Bragg, serves as a research hub that is actively trying to undo the damage to the ocean’s ecosystems. High on the list is the collaborative “Help the Kelp” project, which seeks to restore the bull kelp forests that are a critical part of the nearshore ecosystem and provide shelter to young fish and a food supply for red abalone and other ocean species.
Along the north coast, bull kelp forests have decreased by more than 95% according to the National Science Foundation, due to warming waters and a mysterious wasting disease that has decimated the sunflower sea star. Sunflower sea stars are voracious consumers of purple sea urchins. Purple sea urchins, left unchecked by this natural predator, have devoured the kelp forests.
Meanwhile, divers are heroically trying to remove sea urchins near the shore along the Mendocino Coast, a Sisyphean task that requires constant maintenance.
The Field Station is home to a land-based aquaculture project, using an old shipping container to explore the large-scale production of purple sea urchins as a viable seafood product.
“We really need an aquaculture solution,” Semans says. Although purple sea urchin uni (the gonads of the urchin) is considered a delicacy by some, the purple urchins off the North Coast are now essentially starving, producing little or no uni meat, while still able to survive for years as “empty urchins” ready to gobble up any kelp spores that float by.
The Noyo Center is working with partners The Nature Conservancy, Urchinomics (a company that has developed an urchin feeding technology) and local chefs to improve the taste and texture” of sea urchins and to increase the amount of uni the urchins can produce At the Noyo Center’s recent 10-year celebration dinner, uni shooters made from ranched urchins were on the menu.
The projects – and the effects of dwindling kelp forests – don’t end there. Under the leadership of the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians in Sonoma County, the Noyo Center, in partnership with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the University of California Davis-Bodega Marine Lab are all collaborating on a captive breeding initiative – the Abalone Broodstock Program – to bring back another species being starved out by the disappearance of kelp, the red abalone. The project, which involves collecting adult abalone and transferring them to tanks at the Noyo Center Marine Field Station and the Bodega Marine Lab in Bodega Bay, is “integrating leading science and traditional knowledge,” Semans says.
Both the Abalone Broodstock Program and the purple urchin ranching project are part of a greater effort in Mendocino County to create a “blue economy” where commercial development is combined with ocean conservation and sustainability.
Education is a key element of the Noyo Center’s mission. Taking the kelp forests – sometimes called the “redwood forests” of the sea – as an example, Semans points to the difficulty of educating the public on why it all matters.
“People understand the destruction of redwood forests at an emotional level, partly because of all the wildfires. We need to find ways to give the public that same sense of connection” to the destruction of ocean habitats, she says. “People need to see the ‘forest to forest’ comparison” to understand what is at stake.
Educational efforts also include an after-school program funded by the California Coastal Conservancy that gives local kids a chance to visit the Marine Field Station and get a close-up view of harbor seals, sea lions and birds on the Noyo River. Summer camps, presentations at local schools and day trips to the Noyo Center’s third outpost, the Crow’s Nest at the Noyo Headlands, are among the many ways the center is bringing marine science to school curriculums.
The center’s speaker series, Noyo Talks Science, gives the public a chance to hear from conservation and sustainability experts, like a recent presentation by Sunflower Star Laboratory, a Monterey-based nonprofit, on its efforts to bring back the sunflower sea star population. Semans opened the talk with the observation that, much as the efforts to fatten up North Coast purple urchins and breed red abalone are critical, “having real progress on the sunflower sea star is the answer” to restoring the kelp ecosystem.
As seen in its many projects, the center does not do this work alone. Semans points to the California Academy of Science in San Francisco as another key partner in a network of organizations that responds to stranded marine mammals. The Noyo Center has specific responsibility for responding to and collecting data from stranded dead marine mammals along the southern Mendocino coast.
At the Crow’s Nest, a tide pool aquarium and marine mammal exhibits offer a taste of what’s to come on the Noyo Headlands, on property that was once part of the huge Georgia-Pacific lumber mill that dominated the Fort Bragg coastline.
Although the former mill site has been embroiled in controversy since Georgia-Pacific announced the closure of the mill in 2002, one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that 11.5 acres are destined to become the site the Noyo Center’s Ocean Science Center. The new center will serve as a research and education facility with the goal of “plac[ing] the Mendocino coast at the forefront of marine research and education,” according to the Noyo Center.
“We have this incredibly productive coast and ecosystem, and no one knows anything about it,” Semans says. The Ocean Science Center presents both an opportunity and a challenge, in her view: “how to open up the coast to public access without devastating the habitat.”
Confidence in the Noyo Center’s ability to lead this effort remains high. At a recent report for a GrassRoots Institute workshop in Mendocino, George Reinhardt, co-founder of the Noyo Headlands Unified Design Group, described the Noyo Center as an “exemplary institution… showing us the way” on sustainability and ocean conservation.
A presentation on the Ocean Science Center earlier this week described the guiding design principle: People will “learn about science by walking around.” The proposed design envisions a campus-like environment with classrooms, research labs, space for housing for aquaculture researchers and students, public event spaces, a commercial kitchen, a café and even a restored coastal redwood forest, in recognition of the fact that the area was once the western boundary of the old-growth coastal redwoods.
The Ocean Science Center will include a “la-bone-atory” where experts and volunteers will be able to fully articulate the crown jewel of the center’s collection – the skeleton of a 73-foot blue whale that washed ashore in Fort Bragg in 2009 after being struck by a boat. Groundbreaking on the la-bone-atory is expected next year.
Like any nonprofit, the Noyo Center has faced challenges. Operational costs are rising and are often not covered by grant money or donations. An early lesson from the short-lived Slack Tide Cafe at the Marine Field Station has left Semans determined to delegate operation of the cafe at the Ocean Science Center to someone in the restaurant field. And building the new complex will require a huge fundraising lift, both locally and farther afield.
Semans is optimistic. As the only marine research and education center on the 250-mile coast between Bodega Bay and Humboldt County, the Ocean Science Center will have “all the potential in the world.”
Learn more about the Noyo Center for Marine Science at noyocenter.org.
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