Historical Lessons: The Pribilof Seal Commission and the Proposal to Protect Antarctic Waters

I know what you're going to say: we're all getting tired of know-it-all historians swaggering around talking about how you could have "learned something" and "not made the same mistakes" if you had just studied your history. "Just like last time" we have been known to say in our condescending way before running along to read more old musty letters that will probably give us an even more Cassandra-esque precision into guessing the future. We are snarky snarky bastards.

Okay, we're not actually that bad. Historians in general tend to be pretty quiet about making direct links and saying things like "nothing changes"- probably because we love the idea of subtle change. No situation is exactly the same, but I think we can learn something from examining history.

I've been thinking about this recently as I've read about the difficulties in establishing a major antarctic conservation zone. If you're unfamiliar with what has occurred, here it goes:

In July 2013, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Living Marine Resources (CCALMR)- established in 1982 to safeguard Antarctic marine life- called a meeting between 24 nations and the European Union to try to designate one of the largest Marine Protected Areas (MPA) in the Antarctic Ocean. One area encompassing a portion of the Ross Sea, proposed by the United States and New Zealand, would cover 600,000 square miles; another in East Antarctica proposed by France, Australia, and the European Union would cover another 600,000. It would, if passed, have doubled the amount of MPAs in the world and been the largest protected ocean region in the world.

But it didn't pass.

There were some reservations before the meeting in July- America and New Zealand had already scaled back their proposal, which had originally included all of the Ross Sea. That area is especially important in these negotiations because it contains the fishing grounds for the Chilean Sea Bass (a very yummy, very non-sustainable ocean resource that can sell for upwards of 35$ a pound).  As I've previously discussed on the blog, protecting marine fish stocks is very difficult because those suckers just swim everywhere and they don't really recognize man made borders. So, you can only protect those sea bass if they stick to the area you can get protected, and people who want to harvest these fish know it just as well as people who want to protect them.

And they aren't the only valuable resource in the Southern Ocean. Krill harvesting for animal feed and the Omega-3 fish oil dietary supplement market is on the rise. (I know all about this market as I'm a currently pregnant lady and those doctors push Omega-3 fish oils on you like, well, a pusher. Little did I know that those little pills could be filled with Southern Ocean krill!) With the warming oceans and the increase in krill fishing, scientists are in a race against time to establish baselines for a sustainable krill catch- first, they have to know a heck of a lot more about krill in general.

So when the meeting happened, things went south- and not in a good, let's-save-the-Southern-Ocean way. But in a Russia-and-the-Ukraine-are-questioning-the-legality-of-MPAs-to-try-to-block this-measure- kind of way. It's pretty clear that the CCAMLR has the legal standing, if they can get an accord, to establish MPAs. So why would Russia and the Ukraine try to block the MPAs?  The larger issues for Russia were the size of the proposed area and the fact that a ban on fishing and harvesting within that region would be indefinite. And a big thing, they suggested their wasn't enough scientific evidence to make all of these waters protected indefinitely. We don't know much about baselines when it comes to these organisms, and a lot of what we know is rough data and guess work. One of the reasons that protection would be a good idea is that it would actually allow researchers the chance to study the area intensively without worrying about harvesting. Who is to say what over harvesting krill and sea bass looks like?  Right now the data is rough at best and that could change if scientists get down there and find that stocks of krill are fine. But if they find that, it doesn't mean you can go harvest because now it is an MPA- I think you can see that this would be a problem- if there is a way to harvest krill sustainably in this area but we only discover that after we've blocked the region from fishing, we've cut off a huge supply of food from a lot of people. (also, there might be oil under the Southern Sea and we wouldn't want to leave that alone now would we) So. No. Go.

America and New Zealand have revised their proposal for a meeting next month in Hobart, Australia. The new proposal will start at 40% the second proposed size of the original, which was already smaller than the United States initially wanted (the entire Ross Sea) and this concession has angered many conservationists. But, we'll have to see what happens.

So, what about this situation reminds me of the past?

The situation in the Southern Sea reminds me a bit of another marine area with highly valued resources contested in the late 19th and early 20th century: The Pribilof Seal Islands in Alaska.

The United States purchased the Seal Islands from Russia in 1867, and by 1868 enterprising Americans (like their Russian counterparts before them) rushed to the islands to take advantage of a valuable resource that was considerably easier to mine than gold: the northern fur seal.

I think we're pretty familiar with what happens when people find a resource and harvest it unchecked: the fur seal almost went extinct twice. The incursion of Japanese, Russian, and English independent sealers nearly caused an outbreak of war over the territory.   In other words, things got pretty hairy up north; but instead of allowing extinction, the concerned governments decided to try to scientifically figure out a baseline population that would make it possible to sustain a seal herd and allow a robust sealing season.

The United States Fish Commission set up a seal commission to investigate how many seals still lived in the herd, their breeding cycles and behaviors, statistics and birth records for each year, and any other data that might help figure out what a normal and sustainable herd of these animals might entail. Of course, they started gathering this data at an all time low of the population, so a lot of information gathered was historical in nature. Charles Townsend, then an investigator for the Bureau, was in charge of gathering as much historical data as possible about the fur seal herd, and he was incredibly interested in solving the mystery of how many fur seals had existed on the islands before they were decimated by humans.

He turned to some amazing sources of information. Townsend asked diplomats in Russia, Japan, Canada, and England to gain access to as many sealing vessel logbooks as they could and send him the numbers of seals taken for each season. This wasn't easy work for the diplomats and there were major gaps in the records, especially because there were so many independent sealing vessels that had made clandestine runs into the seal islands.

But some information trickled in, including data from England for the years 1894 and 1895.

Wildlife Conservation Society Archives Charles Townsend Files

 You can see that sealing was on the rise, even as the number of seals were falling. The data trickling in from England, Japan, and Russia suggested that as the Alaskan rookeries became more cut off by American intervention, pelagic sealing (catching seals in deeper waters as they hunted) was on the rise.

Townsend and the Commission wanted more accurate data about breeding habits and sex ratios and the impact of taking male versus female seals on the herd, but this data was somewhat difficult to come by. A request for a count of fur skins by sex was met with consternation: how does one tell the sex of a fur seal after death? Townsend claimed it was rather easy to tell the difference (nipples!) and sent along a particularly helpful circular outlining where one might look to find the answer, but in the end the data was still patchy.

Wildlife Conservation Society Archives Charles Townsend Files 

In the end, Townsend and his boss David Starr Jordan collected sealing data for the years 1894-1896 from historical records, and tried to reconstruct the size of the herd, including the distribution of males and females, in order to set limits on sealing without cutting off the resource completely. 

Many aspects of the seal herd and its behaviors remained contested. One particularly interesting question involved accidental infanticide. Some scientists claimed that it was important to thin the herd of seals, because if the population became too large, females were known to accidentally roll over onto their cubs and smother them to death (a fear I seriously am having). Eye witness accounts claimed they had seen accidental deaths occur in highly populated areas, and this suggested to some in the Commission that it would be healthiest to maintain a smaller number of seals in a given area to allow all individuals a chance at growing to adulthood. But other scientists claimed that these eye witness accounts were unreliable and that, if such deaths occurred, they were uncommon and a negligible loss compared to the losses suffered from over harvesting.

Fur sealing was a big industry, and the fight over the right to harvest seals was a huge international issue. The Pribilof Islands were not the only fur seal rookeries in the world, Russia, Japan, and Canada all had locations where seals were present and they looked into their rookeries during the same period- I have not been in those archives but I hope someone will write a book someday on the seal convention of 1911 because they would definitely have a reader here!

The Pribilof Commission started gathering data and working on American harvesting issues as early as 1898, but an international Convention was not signed between Russia, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the United States until 1911. That convention basically banned pelagic sealing and made it illegal for ports to take in illegally caught seal skins for processing (seal skin processing was just as big a business as the sealing itself). Each government agreed to patrol their own herds and waters for poachers and to cooperate internationally to prevent pelagic sealing. It's an involved convention and if you feel like reading it, go here. It's clearly written and very interesting. 

You might still be wondering though, what does this have to do with current issues in Antarctic waters? 

I think one of my concerns is that, in an effort to build MPAs, conservationists might be demonizing the industries that have grown up around the "blue economy". Is it wrong that certain companies want to harvest krill in the Southern Ocean- not necessarily. There is nothing inherently wrong about finding a natural resource and utilizing it. Of course, we would hope with the proper data and international agreements that people would follow the rules and only harvest in a sustainable way- but the very act of wanting to harvest does not make you a demon. Yes, Russia is a pain in the butt, but they aren't the only country that wants to harvest krill, and I'm sure they aren't the only country that is interested in oil under the Ross Sea. They are just a country that isn't afraid to say it- and that might be a good thing in the long run. 

A lesson we might learn from the Pribilof Commission and the eventual Convention is a lesson in time and the scientific process. Understanding the ocean, its inhabitants, its resources, and how we can sustain harvesting without harming will take more time, and scientific effort, than merely setting up zones where no one can harvest. Focus should be on international data collecting and sharing in these areas, and long term scientific studies that can give us more information about the ecosystem and organisms involved. If we rely on scientific data to make claims about sustainability, it is important that we admit when more data is needed. And that takes so much time. 

Yes, this is a dangerous statement. Global warming and new fishing technologies and methods mean that time is definitely not on our side. The ability to decimate an ecosystem is enhanced by a shifting climate and the ability to take larger and larger catches through updated tools- but there has to be something scientists can do to gather international data that would serve everyone's interest. 

What does not help is setting up a dichotomy between industrial/commercial fishing interests and the scientific and environmental communities. The oceans have long been a valuable resource for humans of all nations- Americans overfish their own waters and have failed time and again to set sustainable baselines for catches- because industry and culture have trumped scientific data. We should recognize in Russia's concerns what we can see in ourselves- not pretend we are perfect scientific stewards of the sea. 

The science of the sea is intimately entwined with feeding people on land and to pretend otherwise is to set up a harmful dichotomy that disallows conversation. Both Russia and the US (and all 24 countries and the EU gathered at these meetings) want one thing in the end- to not die on a wasted planet full of nothing but boiling oceans and toxic air. Work your way up from there and they'd like to figure out how to feed the world, by land or ocean, without turning those resources into boiling and toxic places.  As we saw with the Pribilof Seals, once the US shut down the islands to outside sealers, these sealers got very good as sitting outside the protected zone and picking off seals in deeper international waters. This bears a striking resemblance to the ability to catch krill and sea bass outside the Ross Sea. If we concentrate too heavily on preserving area, instead of sustainable catches based on data that each nation will want to enforce, are we really doing anything that will help sustain these organisms- or are we just shutting down future conversations about actually protecting these resources? 

International cooperation is the key to saving the Antarctic Conservation areas, not condemnation. 

Salvaging Historical Ocean Data; the role of the archive in current scientific debates

I've just finished Callum Roberts' 2012 book The Ocean of Life and it has me thinking about how useful historical data can be to modern debates about ecology and climate change. My husband bought me the book to read during my plane ride to Manchester, UK to attend the International Congress for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (ICHSTM) last month and it, combined with a talk I saw while at the conference (which I will discuss later), lead to this blog post.

Roberts is a professor of Marine Conservation at York University and he has a fairly simple message:

"We find it hard to believe...descriptions of extraordinary past abundance because it has been so long sing such scenes were commonplace. It is a human trait to give greater weight to personal experience than to others' descriptions. The result...is an intergenerational shift in the way we perceive the world. Science is particularly susceptible to these shifting baselines, as scientists work at the forefront of knowledge and are always in hot pursuit of the latest ideas." (48)

It seems simple to say that humans have a hard time believing things we can't see with our own eyes. I've talked a lot on this blog about the difficulty of reintroducing "native" species because the people who have to deal with the reintroduction don't imagine them as "natural" to that landscape- they've never co-existed with them in the past. But it is something else to say scientists have a hard time dealing with these historical issues. It makes sense- scientists are totally humans. But what does it mean to deal with an "intergenerational shift in the way we perceive the world" in science?

Roberts suggests that this limited ability to visualize the past landscape leads ecologists and environmentalists to underestimate the amount of change in an ecosystem over time. If you can't even imagine what it used to be like, or that it was different, how can you predict the changes that might occur?

One way to do this is to use historical archives to establish baselines so that we can see the change. Roberts points to two bodies of work, that of Loren McClenachan (a professor at Cobly College in Maine) and Ruth Thurstan (one of his graduate students at York). Both of these scientists use different forms of archival data to establish change over time in a given ecosystem. McClenachan utilizes a variety of archival sources, including historical photographs of game fishing in the Florida Keys, to ascertain the downward shift in size of game fishes caught in the Florida Keys from the 50s to the present.

"Documenting Loss of Large Trophy Fish from the Florida Keys with Historical Photographs" Conservation Biology 23:3 (2009)

Thurstan utilized previously forgotten government fishing data from the 1880s to the present to analyze the decline in catches.

 From "The effects of 118 years of industrial fishing on on UK bottom trawl fisheries" by Thurstan, Simon Brockington, and Collum Roberts in Nature Communications 1:15 (May 2010).

Both of these papers are exceedingly interesting for what they tell us about the overall decline of fish stocks, but they are also examples of how scientists have extracted useful information from data gathered for a completely different purpose. The photos of game fishes were not taken to later be used for scientific purposes, and a scientists could not necessarily use just any picture as scientific data. McClenachan used photos taken on two separate boats by the same professional photographer, and each photo displayed the largest catches each day.  In essence, the author had to make sure that the photographs represented something important, and that they were taken in a consistent manner.

Thurstan ran into a different problem: fishing technology has changed greatly since the 1880s. So, how do you compare information gathered in the late 19th century with information gathered today? Thurstan looks at different "units of fishing power" and measures the size of stocks based on "landings per unit of fishing power".

Both scientists found useful data, but not in ready use form (or the form that many scientists are used to working with); the historical information wasn't necessarily ready-use, but it was useful.

This brings me to the paper I saw in Manchester. While I was at the conference, I was lucky enough to catch Marcel Wernand speaking about his recent paper with Hedrick van der Woerd and Winfried Gieskes entitled "Trends in Ocean Colour and Chlorophyll Concentration from 1889 to 2000, Worldwide" published in June 2013.

Wernand and his colleagues start with the understanding that ocean color correlates to specific conditions, i.e. a green color corresponds to a higher content of chlorophyll blooms. Most recently, scientists have used data about ocean color collected from satellites, but Wernand et al wanted to look at a longer data set to ascertain plankton bloom changes over a greater period of time. But, how to access data about ocean color before satellites existed?

The authors turned to something called the Forel-Ule scale. This tool has been included on board ships from the 1880s onward, and is fairly simple to operate.

Above, you see there are 21 different colors of water in the tool. Anyone on a ship- from the naturalist to the captain to a sailor- could enter Forel-Ule data each day during a sea voyage. And, it turns out, they did. The authors used digitized oceanographic and meteorological databases archived by NOAA-NODC totally 220,440 FU observations between 1907 and 1999. Before 1907, they turned to other historical information from major voyages and came up with 221,110 FU observations with which to work.

Unlike recent papers that suggest that plankton blooms have decreased worldwide recently, using these data sets Wernand et al found that plankton blooms have shifted throughout the world's oceans since 1889, but they have not experienced a blanket decline.

All three of these papers utilized a different form of historical data to assess the current status of the world's oceans, and archival data continues to be useful. NOAA has three ongoing historical ecology projects looking at the history of Stelweggen Banks and cod fisheries in Massachusetts, the Florida Keys coral reef project, and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary project. Theses projects pair historians and scientists together to sift through archival data and examine the relevance of that data to modern understandings of ongoing ocean change. Pretty cool.

When I'm in the archives, I consistently run into large data sets- something that isn't necessarily helpful to me but could be helpful to scientists interested in catches and data from a particular area. In the Smithsonian archives, there are log books that contain hourly information on tides, ocean color, temperature, location, and fish catches. All are meticulously kept and just waiting for someone to take a look. And even though I get bummed that what I thought might be a useful journal (for me) turns out to be thousands and thousands of tiny entries about water temperature and color, in the long run, it's great to know that that data can be mined for useful information.

And, it makes it all the more important that we recognize that archives and historical data are not useless- they need to be preserved not only for historians but for the establishment of baseline ecological and environmental data.

Callum Roberts laments society's short memories of our surroundings- He suggests we scoff at the musings of our parents and grandparents when they states that our environment has changed over time; we understand only our limited personal experiences. But, this doesn't mean we can't access and quantify those memories at which we sometimes scoff. Historical ecologists and climatologists working with archival data have found multiple ways to access and quantify these memories, including photographs, statistics, and consistent tool use over time.

Letting a Species go- reposted from "A Last Word on Nothing"

I'm in the process of moving from Salt Lake to Wilkes-Barre, PA so blogging hasn't been at the top of my list. But, I wanted to repost this blog from Erik Vance's blog. It ties nicely into my last post on living with endangered species.

http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2013/08/07/a-tiny-dolphin-and-a-big-problem/

A Tiny Dolphin and a Big Problem

By Erik Vance | August 7, 2013

The following is an essay I wrote while reporting from the Sea of Cortez last fall. To learn more, read my piece in this month’s Harper’s Magazine: “Emptying the World’s Aquarium.”

Over the past few days I have found myself thinking a lot about the tragic poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” In it, the narrator kills an albatross and brings on the wrath of the ocean – bad weather, ghost ships, and whirlpools. It’s a transfixing tale of willful destruction followed by forgiveness and redemption. One particular quote keeps popping to mind.

He prayeth well, who loveth well / Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best / All things both great and small

Here in the Upper Gulf of California, fishermen, governments, and environmentalists have been struggling with a different kind of albatross – not one that soars high on the wind but rather lurks unseen in the murky water. But when the fishermen pull it into their nets, it’s an omen just as bad as that legendary bird.

Their albatross is the Mexican porpoise, more often called the vaquita (little cow). It’s a small, shy animal – four or five feet long with a blunt nose and rarely glimpsed even by the most determined scientist. They poke silently about, unique to just the very top slice of the Sea of Cortez, growing slowly, reproducing infrequently, and wandering into fishing nets. In short, it’s the kind of creature that seems almost designed to go extinct.

In the past few decades, the vaquita has become the Gulf’s spotted owl – a quiet spokesman for conservation in the region. After NAFTA was signed, its environmental wing (the Commission for Environmental Cooperation) and the Mexican government decided that saving the vaquita was priority number one. In 1994, Mexico created a massive reserve covering the entire Upper Gulf to protect the vaquita and in 2004 another area within that as a specific vaquita reserve.

Ever since the Chinese river dolphin went extinct in 2006, the vaquita has held the dubious title of “world’s most endangered marine mammal.” It’s not clear how many vaquita are left in the world. They were probably never common like their more congenial cousin the harbor porpoise but for the past 50 years as US demand for fish and shrimp exploded and the Colorado River dried up, the tiny population has crashed. Some estimates (mostly considered to be outdated) are as high as 500 but estimates go as low as 150, which would put them in grave danger of serious inbreeding problems in the future. The most recent comprehensive study four years ago put it at just 220 lonely creatures.

Fishermen by nature are not crazy about dramatic changes or outside intervention. When PROFEPA, Mexico’s fishery enforcement wing, moved in to try and enforce the reserve by fining poachers or checking permits in the 90s, their cars got torched. So to save the vaquita, the government tried some carrots instead. They cut back the giant trawlers, hated by local fishermen, and offered to push out all the outsiders so that locals fortunate enough to own a permit could have the fishing grounds to themselves.

Yet still the vaquita disappeared. So in 2008, they offered to buy out any fishermen or pay them to switch their shrimping gear to a dolphin-safe version. The payouts were generous – $25,000 or so each – as long as they spent it on building tourism businesses in the area, like hotels and seafood restaurants.

This should have been the happy ending of the story. Except that this is the Upper Gulf, not Cancun. Tourism is limited to a few Arizonans wearing “I’m with stupid” T-shirts who bounce down the dunes in their ATVs. Furthermore, not many fishermen know anything about hotels and restaurants (which are plentiful here, but oddly no fishing tours). Four years on, most of those businesses have failed.

As for the dolphin-safe nets, they do indeed spare the dolphins – and unfortunately the shrimp too. According to the government, the new nets (big scoopy things, in contrast to wall-like, filamentous gill nets) catch more than 220 pounds of shrimp per day – a really good haul. But I talked to fishermen who helped in that study and they said the dolphin-safe nets couldn’t catch enough shrimp for a dinner plate. But they were asked to write those numbers in pencil so that the researchers could change the numbers later.

Ask a fisherman today what he thinks of the vaquita and you are going to get an earful. Most who have followed government or NGO advice have either gone broke. Worse, you can’t have “vaquita tours” for rich Americans or see them frolicking from the beach since they’re shy and virtually invisible in their murky water (one fisherman told me his friends think outsiders made up the dolphin).

So in the end we have a story without any bad guys but one really tough decision. The fishermen have begrudgingly complied with the regulations but they haven’t really worked. The Mexican government – not known for its conservation prowess in other places – seems to have put in a genuine effort of money and time to solve this problem. The NGOs have done what NGOs do – try and save a charismatic species on the brink of extinction.

All that’s left is a question – one that will come up again, I promise you. When is it time to let a species go? Without local buy-in, conservation never really works. I mean, no one here wants anything to do with vaquitas and fishermen tell me if they find a dead one in their net, they just quietly slip it back in the water. It may be that in order to bring fishermen on board to help save other species in the Sea of Cortez, we have to let this one go. For people dedicated to saving the vaquita, like the ancient mariner, it’s been a journey filled with hard lessons.

He went like one that hath been stunned / And is of sense forlorn: 

A sadder and a wiser man / He rose the morrow morn.

All photos of Upper Gulf fishermen courtesy of Dominic Bracco II

Reporting and travel supported in part by The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Eel Problems

I've been away from the blog lately- finishing a dissertation chapter and researching my next one. My final chapter to write will focus on embryology and morphology at marine laboratories, and I've recently run across a problem: eels.

Did you know eels are problematic? They are, in a punny and scientific way, slippery.

I can truthfully say I've never been particularly interested in eels as a species. I knew nothing about them, and I didn't think my knowledge or lack thereof, would become a problem. But eels- they keep coming up in my research so I thought I'd sketch out here why they were so interesting to early 20th century biologists.

The mature form of the eel lives in particularly hard to reach places. They prefer to hang out near the ocean or estuary floor (some live in the ocean and some in fresh water), buried under mud or in rock crevices. This posed a huge problem for collectors of marine organisms in the early 20th century. Most collecting happened from boats- people threw nets or dragged the ocean floor- and examined what they could from these methods. Dredging involved basically dragging a metal object along the ocean floor behind a boat; some things looked like rakes or grappling hooks and others like big shovels. You can imagine what came up- slow-moving creatures, sponges, corals, sea stars, and sometimes a squid wrapped itself around the dredge. But eels, they're quick and slick and slippery and bringing mature forms to the service wasn't that easy.

The majority of eel forms that were collected during this period were from the surface of the water: eggs and leptocephalii. The leptocephalus, also known as the "slim head", is the larval form of the eel.

So far, these eels are sounding difficult, but not totally problematic. And actually a little boring. But here's where it gets good: Holy goodness these organisms end up all over the place!

Take, for example, the American eel. The American eel live in rivers on the Northeastern Coast of the United States in their mature form. But they are catadromous, meaning they migrate to salt water to spawn. Can you even imagine where they spawn? The Sargasso Sea. So, they swim from Eastern Estuaries into the Atlantic and lay millions of floating eggs and then, they die. The Sargasso Sea is big, and it's a gyre formation, meaning that things that float could end up anywhere. Down near the Bermuda Triangle, up near the coast of Newfoundland: there's much floating to be had- like a really long trip on the lazy river at Typhoon Lagoon.

The gyre of the Sargasso Sea.

Eels don't have feet, but imagine just floating around and around maturing in the Atlantic Ocean. 

So eel eggs (and leptocephalii) are just out there floating around. And when early 20th century marine scientists find them in their nets, they have to try to figure out what mature form they might become. This is super hard for three reasons: 

1. you can't match up eggs and mature forms based on collection location: as we just saw- there are just crazy eel eggs floating all over the place. Why would you think that something you found near South America had anything to do with a mature form that burrows in the mud in estuaries of the American northeast?

2. eel eggs and larval forms actually look pretty similar to each other- there's actually a time where nearly every eel species is just called leptocephalii because no one can tell them apart. 

and 

3. All this migrating during development meant that eel forms really needed something special at each part of their separate life stages and these needs were very difficult to transfer to the laboratory. So raising eels from egg to mature form wasn't really possible during this period. And, if you can't do that, it's hard to figure out what type of eel you're looking at. 

The migration of the American eel leptocephalii during its life cycle. 

Marie Poland Fish*, one of the most kick ass ichthyologists of the 20th century (and not just because her last name is Fish), tried figuring out what type of eel eggs she'd netted in the Sargasso Sea during the voyage of The Arcturus in 1925. Fish transferred the eggs to an aquarium on board ship and watched their development every day to try to ascertain what type of eel the eggs came from. She thought that they were American eel eggs, but couldn't rear them past the leptocephalic stage. 

So, I've been looking at the mystery that is eel taxonomy and development at the turn of the twentieth century. And I suppose I assumed it was a problem that was cleared up sometime between Fish's observations and now. But it turns out that we still don't know that much about eel development. What are they doing out there in the Atlantic? What do they even eat? 

While the pattern of migration has been worked out for the American eel, the life cycle of the Conger eel, who also spawns in the Sargasso Sea, is largely a mystery. 

Interesting. An interesting eel mystery.

*I'm sure I'll get around to writing a blog about Marie Poland Fish because she may just be a new hero of mine. She made her name, not because of her work with eel embryology, but because of her later work with the Navy on marine sound detection. She basically helped the Navy calibrate their sonars to differentiate between fish and other sources of marine noise. Super super cool. Also, her last name is Fish and she works on fish. Still kills me!

Riding Manatees, or, living with Endangered Species (Sea Turtles: Part II)

So, this post was supposed to be about sea turtles until I became completely upset about that fact that people will not, apparently against all better judgement, STOP RIDING MANATEES! They won't stop and it is upsetting me horribly.

In February of this year, The Daily Show broke the story that Tea Party members in Florida were fighting for the right for people to ride manatees after Anna Gutierrez was caught in photos trying to ride one in Fort De Soto Park. According to Tea Partiers, everyone should be able to ride manatees; it's our God-given constitutional right and no one should interfere (make of that what you will and watch this ridiculous video which may sway you that it's a stupid argument).

When I heard the story about Gutierrez in October, I was really confused. Manatees are not an animal that I see and think, "that must be an awesome thing to ride." In fact, they look proficient at very few things, including swimming, and seem to only have floating down as a form of mobility. In truth, I'm as confused about manatee riding as I am about the sea turtle riding I wrote about in my last post. But, people keep doing it. Some people are even belly flopping onto manatees from piers. Why? Because it's Florida and seriously, craziness shakes south (Think Texas or Antarctica)

Does this look like something you would want to ride? Take note of the tiny appendages and the obvious delight it takes in floating. 

My rage at manatee-riding fits nicely into the post I already had planned about living with endangered species, a topic I've been thinking about quite a bit lately. Alison Reiser's book examines the debate over ways to save the green turtle. According to Reiser, Archie Carr and other activists and scientists believed that the best way to save the species was to have it placed on the endangered species list, so that it would be illegal to sell, trade, transport, or purchase pieces of the organism in the United States. While Carr knew that other steps had to be taken to ensure the survival of the species, especially protecting nesting grounds, he felt that stopping all trade in the turtles was the best path. The other alternative, farming green turtles to supply the market with sustainable products from the species (including meat and shell) was deemed too risky, mostly because of the difficulties with getting these organisms to breed in captivity.  Reiser's work raises some questions about this debate (farming versus protecting as endangered species) but, in my opinion, farming remains an unconvincing avenue because of the difficulty of breeding green turtles in captivity. If you always have to collect turtle eggs from wild sources, are you really going to be able to grow the species in any appreciably manner? There's room for debate, but that's not necessarily what this post is about.

Instead, after reading Reiser's work I came across the manatee business listed above, and then a couple news articles that really made me think about the impact of endangered species conservation on human-nature interactions.

There are a lot of reasons that an animal might become threatened or endangered. In the case of the green turtle, it's tastiness (we'll call this over harvesting). Turtles, bison, passenger pigeons, many many other animals have been over harvested as a commodity, be it food or fashion.

Recently, sea turtles have been back in the news. In early June, Jairo Maro Sandoval was murdered by drug traffickers in Costa Rica while patrolling a beach for sea turtle nests. Maro Sandoval had previously called attention to the link between drug trafficking and turtle endangerment- the same beaches used by nesting turtles are also used by drug smugglers. In addition, it seems that many drug cartels with access to these beaches are poaching turtle eggs to trade for drugs. The ivory trade has been linked to larger networks of terrorism, illegal firearms dealing, drug and human trafficking. Last year, six Kenyan Wildlife Services Rangers were killed by poachers for trying to protect endangered elephants and rhinos.

The intersection of poaching and other illegal activities has caused a crisis, not just for endangered species, but also in the environmentalist community- where deaths of conservationists is on the rise. Below is the chart for the number of environmentalists killed in 2002-11 (see how they compiled the data here).  Animals are still over harvested for commodities. The combination of violent drug cartels, illegal poaching, and a concerned international community of environmentalists has caused a rise in violence.

Another route to extinction is human encroachment upon habitat. In some ways, this is probably the most overarching of the problems. The manatee falls into this category- as do many species, especially plants, that occupy a niche ecosystem and don't evolve quickly enough to combat human interaction, introduced species, or other results of human habitation. Manatees can't get away from boats and they have a very limited range in which to feed and breed- a range that is now inhabited by the dreaded power boat and screaming children. Hence, decline.

The Florida panther is an animal that struggles to co-exist with humans. Most of the deaths of panthers can be linked to automobile accidents. As of April 29, 2013, 6 panthers have been fatally struck by cars in Florida, and the number will rise throughout the summer season. Efforts have been made to build wildlife corridors that will allow panthers to range broadly without encountering humans (or where humans will know to be cautious) but more corridors are needed. The car is not the only danger for Florida wildlife. A highly endangered key deer was found last week on Big Pine Key with its head caught in a Doritos bag. Luckily, a sheriff's deputy saw the deer and removed the bag, but the detritus of human habitation directly effects animals. No need to bellyflop on the deer (although I'm sure someone in Florida has tried- see above statement about insanity shaking south).

But there is another form of extinction that links these two- endangerment due to human intended decline. Let's face it- when we think about extinction, we'd rather think about these other two forms- humans needed food or they just didn't know better. But there is a more pointed form of animal extinction and it usually involves predators that feed on animals we find tasty. Mark Barrow has written about the systematic killing of raptors by Europeans because they were considered unwanted pests that killed the beautiful and yummy birds we wanted around. Other animals, including wolves, big cats, and pennipeds (seals, sea lions, etc) have all been targeted by human ranchers, fishermen, and farmers as nuisance predators that literally take food out of human mouths.

It's easy to think that humans might have outgrown this ridiculous stage of over killing large predators. It makes sense in some respect that a rancher would protect their cattle by shooting a single predator that has found a tasty hunting ground, but merely killing animals because they are of a predatory species doesn't make much sense. We understand, right, how important these creatures are to a healthy ecosystem? But it's clear that humanity hasn't outgrown the inclination to kill "pest" species and this has made the news lately.

In an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine entitled "Who Would Kill a Monk Seal" Jon Mooallem looks at a spat of recent monk seal killings in Hawaii. In a previous post, I talked about the Hawaiian monk seal and the lengths that are being taken to preserve this species. Since 2009, several monk seals have been viciously killed- beaten to death or shot. But no one has come forward regarding these killings, even though there is a sizable reward involved. But why would someone kill a monk seal?

Protection of the monk seal has changed the environment of the Hawaiian islands- not just for the seals but for humans. When endangered animals move back into human populated areas, human use of those areas can be changed- fishing rights might be revoked, access to resources decreased for humans and increased for the seals; even beach goers have to monitor their activities so as not to startle monk seals that may be nesting on the beach. This protection of nature is seen as coddling by many human inhabitants of the islands- if an animal cannot survive on its own, it should not survive. But, it is also seen as inherently unfair to the human population and the protection of these animals has lead to violent episodes against endangered species. Mooallem highlights the bizarre overkill of endangered species throughout the United States. Check out the horrible list of killings:

In North Carolina, for example, hundreds of brown pelicans have recently been washing ashore dead with broken wings. The birds, nearly wiped out by DDT in the 1970s, are now plentiful and often become semi-tame; they’re known to land on fishing boats and swipe at the catch. One theory is that irritated fishermen are simply reaching out and cracking their wings in half with their hands. In March, in Florida, someone shoved a pelican’s head through a beer can.

Around the country, at any given time, small towers of reward money sit waiting for whistle-blowers to come forward. This winter four bald eagles were gunned down and left floating in a Washington lake (reward: $20,250); three were shot in Mississippi ($7,500); and two in Arkansas ($3,500). Someone drove through a flock of dunlins — brittle-legged little shorebirds — on a beach in Washington, killing 93 of them ($5,500). In Arizona, a javelina, a piglike mammal, was shot and dragged down a street with an extension cord strung through its mouth ($500), and in North Carolina, 8 of only 100 red wolves left in the wild were shot within a few weeks around Christmas ($2,500). Seven dolphins died suspiciously on the Gulf Coast last year; one was found with a screwdriver in its head ($10,000). Sometimes, these incidents are just “thrill kills” — fits of ugliness without logic or meaning. But often they read as retaliation, a disturbing corollary to how successful the conservation of those animals has been.

It's clear that some animals, especially predators, are considered more dangerous than other endangered species. The debate over legal wolf hunting seasons has escalated in the last few years- spreading from the west to Wisconsin and the midwest. In an article today in the Times, Guy Gugliotta reports that the spread of large cats has caused less problem than wolves, possibly because cats scare easier or perhaps because a larger cultural stereotype of wolves (which they consider vermin and disposable).

Regardless of cultural perception of certain species over others, the reintroduction and success of certain  endangered species has hit an unexpected roadblock: What happens when you successfully bring back a population of animals that might not be able to co-exist with humans? In Mooallem's article, he raises an interesting point. While it is scientifically proven that these animals were part of the food chain and the environment before they started to decline, they are not perceived by the humans inhabiting the area now as being part of the natural landscape. They are perceived as dangerous interlopers.  Instead of seeing these organisms as a triumph of human action and science, they are seen as soaking up human resources and changing an environment that can and does exist without them. And in a sense, it's hard to argue with this reasoning: if you've lived your entire life in the same spot and never seen a bear in your neighborhood, is it going to seem very natural to see a grizzly strolling down your street?

Environmental Historians have often struggled with the problem of how humans perceive "wilderness." It's a question that has been asked consistently in the field. Something to add to this is the question that seems to come from reintroduction of species: how important is the lived experience of environment to the conception of "nature" and "wilderness?" And how does this lived experience limit certain aspects of conservation and environmentalism? While we might be able to scientifically save species, will the culture developed around their absence allow them to be reintroduced and thrive next to human populations?

I hate to be such a debbie-downer about species preservation. And I hate to leave you with such a sad taste in your mouth. I suggest reading Mooallem's article- it is both informative and even handed. The voices of islanders who clearly dislike the encroachment of monk seals are balanced by those of conservationists and I think presented the issues from both sides nicely (something that is rarely done even-handedly in my opinion). It is sometimes easy to dismiss individuals who would kill an organism we ourselves find precious and worth saving- but often the reasons for the resentment and killings are dehumanized. I'm not saying that there is anything right about ivory poachers or anyone that has killed a monk seal, but the reasons that these people believe are valid deserve to be reported on and Mooallem does this nicely.

But I hate to leave you in such a sad state. Really, not everyone is out there bellyflopping on endangered species all summer- and conservation efforts at zoos, aquariums, and public schools has lead to more and more children and adults that recognize the importance of preserving endangered species. So here's something huge:

This week, U.S. Fish and Wildlife suggested that chimps in laboratories be added to the endangered species list. Read here for the implications of this suggestion.

The very fact that I am forced to ask the questions above means that the efforts of conservation and environmental groups have, in so many ways, surpassed expectations. We are struggling with how to live with panthers, manatees, chimps, monk seals, and key deer. 10 years ago, I don't think many environmentalists would have thought this would be a problem. Instead, they saw a clear and quick path for all of these species to extinction. So we keep trying, and in the process, we address the issues above. Because it matters.


**I apologize for all the Florida Bashing but really, my fellow Floridians make it too easy**

Turtle Soup- Sea Turtles Part I

I've been away from the blog for a few weeks experiencing the marine environment instead of just writing and dreaming about it. I just got back from spending some time in Cape Canaveral, Florida. While I was in Florida, the sea turtle nesting season started, and everyday while walking to the beach I saw signs like the one below warning me about not disturbing nesting turtles from May 1-Oct. 31.

In addition to being reminded daily about the nesting season, Frederick (Fritz) Davis (my Master's advisor at Florida State University) gave me a beach reading book: The Case of the Green Turtle: An uncensored history of a conservation icon   by Alison Rieser. I'd previously read Fritz's book, The Man Who Saved Sea Turtles: Archie Carr and the Origins of Conservation Biology  and Rieser's book dove-tailed nicely with that story of Carr, his research, and political action to save sea turtles from extinction.  

Both books are difficult to read- partially because I'm a Florida State girl so I have trouble reading books that place Florida Gator's in the spot light- but mostly because, sitting on the beach in Canaveral, having just passed a sign suggesting that communities care about these creatures, I was appalled to read about the horrific treatment of these defenseless ocean giants in the past. The pictures in Rieser's book are jarring to say the least, so I'll only recount one disturbing portion. In Chapter 2, the author discusses the treatment of green turtles in Australia in the mid 20th century. In the 1940s and 50s, turtle riding was a popular attraction on the Great Barrier Reef. During nesting season, people would turn nesting female turtles on their back so that they could not return to the ocean after egg-laying- preserving them alive but immobile for riding the next day. 

The next day, tourists got their chance to ride the females as they struggled to return to the water. Although this practice didn't involve killing the animals, it seems particularly cruel to ride an animal who is ponderously slow and out of its element. According to the National Geographic caption of the second picture, once the turtles made it into the water, the process of riding became much harder and this turtle shook off her rider and plunged deeper within moments. Good on you, turtle!

The largest threat to sea turtles wasn't riding them; it was the use of turtles and tortoises around the world to supplement sailor rations and stave off scurvy during the age of exploration. Today, we associate scurvy and its cure with fresh fruit, specifically lemons and oranges. But this is a colloquial and limited understanding of vitamin C and how to get it. If vitamin C was only obtainable via citrus, how did peoples in Artic areas avoid this painful condition? In fact, many marine organisms contain vitamin C in their flesh. The chart below shows the vitamin C content of the marine diet of animals the constituted the Inuit diet before the arrival of Westerners. After contact with explorers, Inuits began to rely more heavily on canned foods, or adopted the process of cooking their food instead of eating it raw, which you can see below would lead to a rise in scurvy pretty quickly.

Garci and Smith, "Vitamin C in the Diet of Inuit Hunters in Holman, Northwest Territories" Artic 32:2 (June 1979)  135-139.

Explorers in warmer climates also developed scurvy, ran out of rations, or longed for fresh meat instead of dried tack for months on end. They satisfied dietary and gustatory cravings with sea turtles. Sea turtle meat is high in Vitamin C and apparently quite tasty if consumed fresh.

While sailors developed a taste for turtle out of desperation, the importation of the delicacy into their home ports caused a new culinary craze. Consuming turtle soup was an indication of class- served at royal dining tables and in the newest restaurants. Wealthy people looking for a way to distinguish themselves through food consumption found turtle soup fit all the bills of culinary exclusivity. The best turtle soup relied on fresh turtle flesh and fat- meaning that turtles had to be transported live from warmer waters to Northern docks. In addition, the preparation was no easy task. The chef had to dismember the turtle, and this was gory and time consuming.

Trubek, "Turtle Soup" Gastronomica, The Journal of Food and Culture 1:1 (Winter 2001) 10-13.

Turtle soup was supposedly tasty, but more importantly, it was expensive and the mere inclusion of the delicacy at a European table demonstrated enormous wealth. Many different types of turtles were eaten by sailors, including the Galapagos Tortoise, but European and American turtle soup relied on two species: black diamond terrapins from the Atlantic Coast of America, consumed in fancy New York Restaurants like Delmonico's, and the green turtle, shipped and consumed throughout the rest of the world.  

Marine zoologists, ecologists, fisheries biologists, and aquarists became aware of the rapidly declining tortoise and turtle populations by the turn of the 20th century. The United States Bureau of Fisheries, under the direction of Huge Smith, set up a captive breeding facility for terrapins at their marine laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina as early as 1912. In 1928 Charles Townsend, the Director of the New York Aquarium, imported some of the last remaining Galapagos tortoises to points throughout the United States for captive breeding. And by the 1950s, Archie Carr among others began steps to establish marine sanctuaries and protected breeding and nesting grounds for green turtles. 

Even though it was the last of these three to be protected, the green turtle was the only one still being hunted for food. Americans had lost their taste for terrapin by the time Smith began his breeding program and the damage to the Galapagos tortoise population was then primarily caused by introduced predators, not consumption for food purposes. But due to advanced canning techniques, the demand for green turtle meat for turtle soup was at a high when Carr began his crusade. 

Because sea turtles usually returned en masse to only a few beaches to lay eggs, they were especially vulnerable to egg and turtle poachers. Carr urged governments to protect known nesting grounds, but the harvest of turtles in other locations continued to deplete the species. In addition to protecting beaches, Carr and other concerned scientists and citizens sought to prohibit the legal trade and sale of any products from the green turtle. Reiser's book highlights the importance of getting the green turtle placed in the "red book"- the first listing of species thought to be critically endangered or close to extinction (first published in 1964- the green turtle was added in 1966). It's difficult to describe a "normal" year of turtle activity merely by numbers: Carr and other biologists struggled in their conservation efforts because turtle visitation to particularly nesting grounds varied greatly year to year (see the chart below). It was difficult to get an accurate count of the species because they only nest once every few years (and they often return to the same beach up to three times in the same season).  The struggle to get the species listed as endangered revolved around the effort to accurately estimate the number of turtles left with such variable data and Davis and Rieser both highlight these difficulties in their work. 

The acknowledgement of the green turtle as endangered effectively stopped the trade in green turtle (something with implications I will talk about in Part II) and helped environmentalists raise awareness about the plight of the species. 

While vacationing in Cape Canaveral, I didn't see any see turtle nests- it was a bit early in the season. But just south of that location is the Archie Carr National  Wildlife Refuge near Melbourne, Florida. Established in 1991, the refuge provides protective habitat for another type of endangered turtle- the loggerhead- although green and leatherback sea turtles also nest on the 20.5 miles of beaches. So far this year 12 leatherback turtles have laid egg clutches on the beach but no green or loggerhead turtles. The chart below shows the nesting numbers from 2001 to the current season. 

Sea Turtle Nests by Year and Species 2001 - 2013 (Includes south Brevard County, Sebastian Inlet State Park, and north Indian River County)
	2013	2012	2011	2010	2009	2008	2007		2006		2005		2004		2003		2002		2001
Loggerhead	0	18,809 (record year!)	11,841	14,468	10,374	11,410	7,902		10,828		11,085		9,138		12,598		14,209		15,645
Green	0	3,419	6,023 (record year!)	4,479	1,332	3,138	4,490		1,609		3,638		982		670		2,970		198
Leatherback	12	51	77 (record year!)	59	41	29	74		19		68		19		53		19		47

http://www.fws.gov/archiecarr/updates/index.html

Sea turtle conservation efforts are ongoing. Turtle soup is a thing of the past, you would be hard pressed to find a large group interested in riding turtles on vacation (although you can volunteer at the Archie Carr Sanctuary for "turtle watch"), and through public outreach and education beach goers are warned they should be conscious of light pollution and dune trampling. But humans continue to expand into the environment that nesting turtles require to survive and conservation efforts sometimes depend on the economics and culture of local populations- something I'll write about in Part II.

But I'd like to leave this blog post on a happy, if incredibly vulgar, note- so enjoy this hilarious Onion article about loggerhead turtles that was published a week ago. I ran across it while researching this blog post and laughed my butt off. Disclaimer: it is vulgar. http://www.theonion.com/articles/animal-facing-extinction-in-2003-fucks-its-way-bac,32417/?ref=auto 

Hashime Murayama: Immigration, WWII and the Importance of the Scientific Career Path

On Friday, this photo of George Takei at the Rowher Internment Camp in Arkansas came up on my Facebook feed. The image, combined with my current research on marine science illustrators, led me to think about why internment camps, and the history of immigration, matters greatly to both the history of science, and to individuals who may be interested in pursuing scientific careers in today. 

Betty Smocovitis has written a paper on the impact Masuo Kodani's status as a Japanese immigrant had on his career as a geneticist in the mid- 20th century. Unlike other immigrant groups, Japanese immigrants had less support structure within the United States, and during WWII this lack of support lead to a drastically different war experience. Kodani was born in California and was a citizen, but his wife was a Japanese citizen (they met as students at Berkeley), and the Kodanis were interned at Manzanar during the war. Masuo continued to work on genetics in Manzanar and published work with Ledyard Stebbins. His experiences during the war were difficult, but the end of the war did not alleviate his suffering. Continued stress over the threatened deportation of his first and second wife lead to an unstable career after the war. In response to threats of deportation, the Kodanis moved to the United States, back to Japan, and after his second marriage, eventually to Columbia, Missouri- a career trajectory based, not on new and better opportunities  but fears of deportation. 

Smocovitis states that:

"Neither attaining the status of lead researchers in a stable work environment, nor being rendered entirely invisible in the scientific power structure at the time, Kodani occupied a social and intellectual space where his skills could be exploited and his insights make the occasional news, but where he was nonetheless doomed to play the role of temporary assistant or associate in any laboratory setting." (365)

Masuo's experience during and after the war are mirrored by those of a man I have been studying, the scientific illustrator Hashime Murayama. Unlike Kodani, Murayama was a Japanese immigrant, as was his wife. He came to the United States in 1905 and married his wife Nao in New York City in 1910. His sons were born in 1911 and 1919. 

The Murayama family in 1925.

Hashime was hired by National Geographic as the first staff illustrator in 1921. Known for his meticulous attention to detail combined with a romanticized style, his paintings were printed not only in National Geographic but in other scientific publications.

While little information exists on Murayama's work before or after WWII (although his paintings are readily available online- google him and you'll find little or no personal data but loads of beautiful watercolors being sold as prints), some stories survive. In Alice Carter's book on the history of illustration in National Geographic, she tells the tale of the Hashime's visit to the New York Aquarium to view living trout and salmon for a new illustration. The director of the Aquarium, Charles Townsend, had fresh fish brought in for Murayama to paint, but all of the fish died within days because the water temperature was too high. Despite the difficulties, Murayama produced amazing images from living specimens (see the one above). 

In 1941, Hashime was fired from National Geographic because of his immigrant status (even though, similar to Kodani's biography, his German immigrant counterparts were not fired) . He was interned with his family twice during the war- although little information exists about where they were relocated. These internments were short; Hashime's work with George Papanicolaou was considered important to American health and therefore a priority by the government. Before his work at National Geographic, Murayama worked at Cornell illustrating cell cultures. As Papanicolaou's work on cervical cancer accelerated during WWII, he chose Hashime to illustrate the cultures. It was this highly technical work that kept the family out of relocation camps- but the damage had already been done to his career path. 

It is somewhat easy today to find Murayama's marine illustrations; it's equally as easy to find his name in academic publications written by Papanicolaou who never failed to give Hashime credit for his amazing illustrations--but Murayama's accomplishments and his role as one of the principal scientific illustrators of his generation have been largely forgotten. 

In some sense, the fading of Murayama into history involves the change in his work during and after the war. Before he was fired from National Geographic, Murayama was a scientific illustrator, but in a certain sense he was also an independent artist. His style and his paintings were utilized in multiple ways- not just magazines but scientific publications and as stand-alone art. Hashime signed all of his work, a detail that is telling. His work, which is today sold in print form as "art", was also regarded in the early 20th century as both "art" and "illustration." 

Murayama in his studio at National Geographic. Known for his meticulous but romantic painting style, many of his scientific illustrators were also seen as stand-alone artwork.  Carter, The Art of National Geographic, 18.

Because of his immigrant status and treatment during the war, Hashime Murayama switched careers- from somewhat independent artistic illustrator to cell culture illustrator and an extension of the scientist's toolbox. Murayama was able to utilize one aspect of his artistic ability, his highly meticulous eye, but his romanticized vision of nature was stripped from his work. Hashime didn't sign his cell culture drawings for Papanicolaou, and even though he was acknowledged continuously be the researcher for his efforts, his work later in life failed to achieve the vision, or the personal freedom, exhibited by his work before the war. In fact, his images of cell cultures don't come up readily in google images and must be accessed in the papers for which they were published (Papanicolaou and Trout, 1941). Most of Murayama's drawings for Papanicolaou's research remained behind the scenes- part of the scientific process of understanding cervical cancer smears- not meant for public consumption. 

Murayama's biography is the exact opposite of many scientific illustrators during this period. Individuals like Charles Bradford Hudson and Charles R. Knight went from operating as an extension of researchers' tools to painting independently as naturalistic artists with a developed vision of their own.   Hudson and Knight were lauded for their artwork later in life and considered themselves independent artists, not scientific illustrators, during their final years. Murayama had found the success of an artist before the war, but due to his immigrant status, was pushed back into the laboratory work out of which he had advanced years before. 

Kodani and Murayama's biographies highlight the importance of internment and immigration research to the history of science. Both men experienced life altering events during WWII- not necessarily based on their experiences within these camps, but the changes in life course and career course that their immigrant status imposed. We must ask ourselves, what is the proper path through a scientific career? And what happens when that path is upset by circumstances beyond a person's control? If it is the case that the scientist or scientific worker must follow very specific paths through their career in order to achieve certain status, and those that are derailed are relegated to sideline, but still highly important, positions- what might this say about the role of race, class, and gender in science?