Fishing in a soup of DNA
On a foggy spring morning, Walker and other Chumash tribal members gathered on a beach north of Santa Barbara to forge an uncommon partnership — one with university scientists.
Researchers at Stanford are doing an assessment of the ecosystem, creating a survey of marine species as a baseline for the future of the sanctuary.
"A sanctuary, it's a forever thing," Palumbi says. "And so we want to know not only what's here now, but how it's changing over time."
Traditionally, marine sampling can be expensive. Teams of scientists use research boats for multi-day surveys, and divers spend hours in the water documenting what they see. But new technology is changing that.
"This is one of our samplers," Palumbi says, holding up a fishing rod.
The rod is designed to catch something invisible to the eye: DNA. "There's little bits and pieces of organisms out there," he explains. "Scales from fish and little legs from sand crabs."
The ocean is essentially a soup of marine life DNA. The end of the fishing rod has a metal mesh ball that holds a piece of gauze. The team soaks it in the ocean and then brings it back to shore, where the DNA can be sequenced in a lab. That produces a list of all the organisms captured, providing a census of the life in the area.
Marine biologist Steve Palumbi helps Chumash cultural educator Mia Lopez with her fishing rod on a scientific sampling trip.Lauren Sommer / NPRPalumbi says this ecosystem could be a bellwether for climate change. Species that live in warmer waters, like off Southern California, are expected to move north as the ocean heats up. These waters will be a key place to spot that change and how it will affect the entire food web.
Walker and Palumbi are working to train tribal members in scientific monitoring, hoping to eventually take traditional tomols on the water to gather samples, producing more data than a traditional scientific approach would.
"Scientists or government agencies do it once a year or at a certain time. But we're here all the time, and so we can monitor always," says Mia Lopez, a cultural educator with the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation, as she casts the fishing rod into the ocean.
Lopez is also helping incorporate traditional Chumash words and place names into the project (there are several languages among the different bands of Chumash). Those names often reveal features in the landscape that are longer visible, like creeks or springs that were once found near the coastline.
"You can find things you're not looking for," she says. "It tells you so much about the land, just in that name."
Palumbi says it's about marrying the knowledge of both groups - the scientific community's methods and the traditional environmental knowledge of tribes.
"We're offering each other these different universes of science and trying to put them together," Palumbi says. "It's a discovery process."
The waters off Morro Rock could be a bellwether for climate change, since warmer water species may migrate into the area as the ocean heats up.Robert Schwemmer/NOAATurning the ship slowly
Later this month, NOAA is expected to release a final proposal for the sanctuary, including details about how co-management with different bands of the Chumash could work. The Biden Administration is seeking to involve Indigenous people in the places that were once theirs, both on public lands and in national parks. In 2022, President Biden restored the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and five tribes agreed to co-management.
"All the sanctuaries that exist today, even the monuments that exist today, had very little, if any, tribal management at the time of designation," NOAA's Douros says. "We're kind of excited about what that could offer in terms of a real diverse array of tribal involvement, reflecting the diversity of tribes that we have here along the Central Coast."
After decades of distrust and racism, Walker says the relationship with the federal government can still be uneasy.
"It's really tough to trust the federal government even with some of the highest seats on the federal government being Indigenous people," Walker says, referring to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. "When you turn the ship, it turns slow."
The upcoming sanctuary proposal will get feedback from the public and the industries that could be affected. A new wind project is being proposed in waters managed by the state of California, which could be affected by the federal marine sanctuary. The wind industry is seeking an exception for that, pointing out renewable energy is key to California's climate change goals. Walker says different bands of the Chumash tribe fall on different sides of the issue.
"Some people in our community — they support offshore wind or they support development," Walker says. "You cannot lump Indigenous people together."
After public comment, the sanctuary could be officially created sometime next year. Walker says she won't quit until her father's vision is realized.
"Our elder, Pilulaw, who has passed into spirit, she said that if you want to pray, you should put your feet in the water, because the water will take your prayers all over the whole world," Walker says. "And so I think about that. Basically every time we do this work, we're praying for a better world. We're praying that what we're doing is going to make a difference."
