For the last couple of weeks I have been working in Santa Barbara with Dr. Doug McCauley from UC Santa Barbara on a Giant Sea Bass Count project. This project, done in collaboration with Dr. Milton Love (UCSB) and researchers at CSU Northridge, encouraged any and all recreational divers in California to get in the water during the first week of August and report their sea bass sightings (or lack thereof). This is to be the first of many annual citizen science giant sea bass counts that will hopefully shed light on how many of these endangered fish live in our waters. For an animal as large and conspicuous as the giant sea bass, surprisingly little is known!
In addition to getting in the water and counting sea bass, I also helped with a “spin-off” project: determining the economic value of seeing this fish in the water to the average recreational diver and thus answering an important question – is this fish worth more money alive in the water to a recreational diver or dead in the market as seafood? To this end, I had to interview lots and lots of recreational divers! Let me just say, divers are by far the most fun people to interview . Through this work I also had the opportunity to get my first taste of Channel Islands diving! Ken Kollwitz, owner of Channel Island Dive Adventures, generously offered me a spot on his charter so I could do the sea bass work and get some dives in. Aboard the Pacific Star we made it to San Clemente, Farnsworth Bank, and Catalina! I unfortunately was not one of the lucky ones in our group who saw a giant sea bass, but I did get some cool shots of other characters!
Later that week I drove down to Canoga Park to talk to the members of the Whaler’s Dive Club about Giant Sea Bass and survey them for the project… and of course tell them about this amazing scholarship I’m on! In addition to meeting some fantastic members of the club, I also met my co-speaker – Richard Slater. Richard is a marine geologist, renowned scuba and submersible diver, with thousands of dives in both, founder of Delta Oceanographics, and turns out he used to sponsor OWUSS Scholars back when he was diving! I even scored a signed copy of his book!
During my time in Santa Barbara, I was generously hosted by Richard Salas, amazing photographer and person! Richard gave me a great crash course in lighting techniques for underwater photography – I can’t wait to get in the water and use this new tool kit of knowledge! You should check out his new book, Luminous Sea! I recommend pre-ordering 🙂
Southbound to SoCal!
