Nature's Archive Podcast

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00:00:00] Michael Hawk: Have you ever wondered how scientists unravel the ecological mysteries of bygone era is long before a systematic record keeping existed. Believe it or not. One part of that answer is in pirate journals and no, I’m not joking. Today I had the privilege of hosting Dr. Lauren McClenachan and associate professor of environmental studies in history and a Canada research chair in ocean history and sustainability at the university of Victoria. Throughout her career. Dr. McClenachan has been delving deep into historical Marine ecology, unearthing ingenious ways to examine past ecosystems. Our focus today. The intriguing concept of shifting baseline syndrome. It’s a topic that we’ve only grazed the surface of in previous nature’s archive conversations. In 2009, Dr. McClenachan authored a pivotal paper, examining the dwindling sizes of recreational Trophy fish off of the Florida keys. The study unveiled what seasoned anglers had long grasped that the once plentiful colossal fish of the area had become elusive. Shifting baseline syndrome arises when your first interaction with an environment establishes your own personal baseline. It’s a perceived natural or normal state.

[00:01:10] Yet this baseline of normal could markedly differ from your grandparents. And here’s where the surprise sets in the implications of this span, conservation and society. Dr. McClenachan helps explain these implications through a variety of eyeopening examples. And yes, you’ll even discover how pirates play a role in this narrative. So be sure to check out the show notes at podcast dot nature’s archive.com for links to all of the papers and resources that we talk about today and without further delay Dr. Lauren McClenachan

[00:01:41] Dr. McClenachan, thank you for taking the time to join me while you’re away on vacation even, in Maine.

[00:01:47] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, thank you for having me.

[00:01:49] Michael Hawk: And this discussion today, we’re going to delve into historical ecology and shifting baselines and it’s been something that, when I first learned of the concept, has really been of interest to me because it represents change that is sometimes ignored or misunderstood.

[00:02:06] So I’m looking forward to getting into that with you. But before we do that, can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Have you always been interested in the environment?

[00:02:16] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, I grew up in rural New England on a small farm and so spent a lot of time outside as a kid running around in the woods, and helping out on the farm. And I think, I was always really interested in what was going on outside. and then also, I think sort of relative to what we’re talking about, interested in the people who had lived on the land before.

[00:02:38] So sometimes when we were digging in the gardens, we would come up with old pottery shards and it was always really fascinating to sort of think about, you know, who had lived in this place and, on these lands before we had moved there. So yeah, I think I’ve always had a connection to, the environment and also the people, the history of the people who’ve lived in those places.

[00:02:55] Michael Hawk: So when you embarked on your collegiate career, did you know at that point that you were going to study some aspect of biology or ecology or something in that field?

[00:03:05] Loren McClenachan: when I was in college, I was really interested in environmental studies and understanding how people were impacting, the natural world. But I was also really interested in history, and so I kind of did both. but then, at a certain point, sort of gave up on the history and thought, I can’t really do both of these things.

[00:03:21] I have to pick one or the other. And so then really leaned into marine science and went and did a Master’s in focusing on fish and another marine species. And it was only, you know, years later, that I was able to put them back together again, the history the marine science.

[00:03:37] Michael Hawk: Yeah, that’s so fun. I love hearing stories like that, where there’s, an early passion someone is able to bring back into their focus and combine these, fields.

[00:03:47] Loren McClenachan: I always tell students that they should have a side interest, that you should always have more than one thing you’re interested in ’cause you really don’t know what’s coming.

[00:03:54] Michael Hawk: Can you tell me, what your ecological or environmental topics of focus have been for you in the last few years?

[00:04:01] Loren McClenachan: I’m really interested in long-term change in ocean ecosystems and the perceptions that people have about those changes and what they think of as natural ecosystems because those often have to do with what they want in the future. And so my work combines history and ecology to understand the ways that ocean systems have changed over decades to centuries.

[00:04:22] Michael Hawk: and then, if someone were to ask you. Say someone you just met, what value does your area of study provide to the public or to the environment? How would you answer that?

[00:04:34] Loren McClenachan: I think one of the things it does is really pull back the curtain on this immense hidden change that’s happened in the ocean. Um, and that’s useful because it reveals the ways that ecosystems have been in the past and potentially could be in the future, which is useful for conservation and restoration.

[00:04:51] Michael Hawk: do you have any, any like really surprising or amazing facts or anecdotes that you found really resonate with people when you’re explaining, you know, what it is you do?

[00:05:01] Loren McClenachan: I think the most amazing facts all have to do with the abundances of marine animals in the past. And so, some of the things that I study were so abundant in the past that they were either navigational hazards or navigational aids. So I started off looking at marine turtles and there were observations that sailors would navigate by the sounds of them splashing around the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean.

[00:05:23] other parts of the Caribbean, coral reefs were so, so abundant that they were things that people had to watch out for while sailing and oyster reefs as well in the Chesapeake Bay. So from, you know, from oysters to turtles to, to whales, to sharks, you know, the, just the abundances of marine animals in the past were, more than I think we typically imagine.

[00:05:42] Michael Hawk: And we’re talking a lot today about shifting baseline syndrome coming up. so I, I suspect that this is a kind of a sliding step by step process, but when you’re talking about having to navigate around coral reefs or oyster reefs, or with the turtles, what timeframe are we talking about where that was the case?

[00:06:01] Loren McClenachan: So those observations, largely come from the European explorers. So those that I just mentioned were mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries. yeah, I think there are, um, these sliding changes that have happened over time. And if we jump back, you know, over these, these century long timescales, it really becomes stark when we see these observations that, were some of the first that were, recorded in, by Europeans in these environments.

[00:06:26] Michael Hawk: sliding changes are easily missed, by people. and I guess that’s a good intro to defining, what is shifting baseline syndrome?

[00:06:36] Loren McClenachan: So shifting baseline syndrome is this idea that, the first time that you observe an environment, you, you think of it as natural and, um, all changes that you observe after that personally, you think of as, not natural. So you can imagine, you know, your childhood environment, the neighborhood that you grew up in.

[00:06:54] And if there’s been development since you grow up, you think of that as, as perhaps, not natural. And, What happens over the course of generations is that people, really lose sight of the longer term changes that have happened. and this, this idea shifting baseline syndrome was originally introduced by Daniel Pauly, who’s a fisheries scientist, and he was talking about fisheries managers who lose sight of these changes over generations, but it really applies broadly to fisheries as well as, changes to, to habitats or to, even to climate change, for example.

[00:07:24] it’s sort of a, intuitive concept, I think. , and often when I, talk about it, I show this cartoon that, really summarizes it pretty quickly, which is a picture of, this very dapper looking man in the 1950s with a large fish next to a man from today with a very small fish and they look equally happy and satisfied. And the, caption is something like find the hidden history lesson. And it’s, funny because it’s really not that hard to see. so I think there’s just all of these examples of the ways that we’ve, you know, lost sight of the, of the change that’s happened, in some cases over not very long periods at all.

[00:07:58] Michael Hawk: And so kind of hiding in plain sight, if you, if we stop and pause and think about it for a moment, then we see it.

[00:08:03] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:08:05] Michael Hawk: the couple of examples that we’ve given so far are pretty clearly, I would say non-natural. I realize that’s a bit of a thorny topic. What is natural? Things are always changing, but, there’s a basic definition we have to have. But independent of that, do you find that people sometimes confuse natural succession of ecological systems with an unnatural change? For example, somewhere in the Northeast, maybe it may have even been Maine, though I’m forgetting, there was a fire that had occurred on an island.

[00:08:39] And it was pretty devastating. This is maybe 50, 60 years ago, and in the early successional phase, a bunch of trees, I want to say they were birch trees, came in, and the people who visited the island really enjoyed the birch trees. They thought, wow, this is so beautiful, this like almost pure stand of birch with some understory.

[00:09:00] And now this island is moving to the next phase of succession. And new organisms are moving in, new trees are moving in, the birches are dying out, and people want to save this. They want to, retain that state. so I, I see that as an example of confusion between unnatural change and natural succession.

[00:09:21] Do, do you see instances like this?

[00:09:23] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, that’s a really great example. I mean, I think one of the fundamental ideas around, sort of understanding long term change and shifting baselines is that it really has to do with human values and what we want out of ecosystems. so I don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with people developing an attachment to an ecosystem in a particular state. as long as there’s an awareness of, you know, what else could be there and, people really love their birches. Then that seems like, you know, something that’s, that’s okay. I think the bigger issues come in when it’s, you know, something that has been, when I work on, you know, marine fish and things that have historically been, uh, really depleted.

[00:10:02] And then when they start to recover, then people think of that as, As unnatural. Um, and so that’s sort of where I’ve run into it more, but I can think of other, there’s another example actually from Maine along the lines of what you’re talking about where a road was blocking a wetland and turned it into a lake.

[00:10:17] And so people bought lake houses and developed attachment to things that were associated with that like boating and, and then a storm came through and wiped out the historical blockage and the state decided to not restore it as a lake and people were really upset as it sort of transitioned back to the more natural wetland, which has its own set of values and biodiversity and lots of other things that come along with that.

[00:10:39] And so I think that’s maybe one example that gets at that question of, you know, ecosystems can exist in different states and we derive value from those in different ways. so when, when there’s decisions to be made about, you know, sort of the collective, desires of a community. Some of these things can come into conflict.

[00:10:57] Michael Hawk: Yeah, that Lake wetland example, I think is really interesting and a good one because there are lots of instances where we’ve built infrastructure to modify the landscape in some way. And, uh, of course the infrastructure and even natural systems can be fragile if there’s a major storm that comes through.

[00:11:15] and I’m thinking about here in the Central Valley of California, there used to be this area in the Southern Central Valley called Tulare Lake. And it was a seasonal lake, shallow lake, that was turned into farmland back in the, I don’t know, early 1900s when, you know, the big water, projects were, were going on.

[00:11:35] And this year, with our very rainy winter, the lake reemerged and all this farmland was covered by water. And that’s an interesting, similar challenge because people grew up thinking of it as farmland, even though it had been a lake for thousands and thousands of years prior to that and it’s nature pushing back trying to, get its lake back.

[00:11:55] Yeah.

[00:11:56] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, that’s a great example. I think another set of examples is around, um, invasive species. Sometimes people get, attached to particular species that aren’t native to their environments. And if there’s efforts made to, to eradicate those, sometimes there’s conflict again about that. So, yeah, I think there’s lots of examples.

[00:12:14] Michael Hawk: and that’s such a good one. It seems like every year or two, there’s a new major invasive species entering our ecosystems and it’s the new normal for a whole generation of people. Why do you think, when we’re talking about shifting baselines, that there are so many examples in marine systems?

[00:12:31] Loren McClenachan: I think it’s because, we’re humans are terrestrial animals. I think we just have a much shorter set of observations under the ocean than we do in terrestrial systems. And so, in marine systems, we developed scuba and the ability to essentially be aquatic animals for short periods of time in the 1960s and 1970s.

[00:12:51] And so scientists began to use those and study those systems, a few decades ago. And so we have observations coming out of that history of marine science, but the average person doesn’t spend a lot of time underwater. And so I think there’s just a lot less, sort of knowledge about the changes that have happened.

[00:13:08] Michael Hawk: that makes sense. And I saw too, on your, on your website that you classified some of your research and some of your interest as historical marine ecology. So I’m, I’m curious about when we’re talking historical in view of there not being a lot of observations from pre 1960s, for example, or the observations are different.

[00:13:28] What kinds of sources, how do you find historical information given this kind of uphill battle that you have to face?

[00:13:35] Loren McClenachan: Yeah. So the, the field of, um, historical marine ecology really developed, in the last 20 years. And it was because of observations of scientists who had been doing scuba-based research for a few decades, that this discipline, came about. And essentially it was the idea that, some of the observations that they were making about rapid changes in these ecosystems, just didn’t really make sense based on the knowledge that they had developed so far. So, if I can give an example, there’s, in the Caribbean, was one of in Jamaica was one of the places that a lot of this, , scuba-based research was going on. and you know, in the 70s, people were making observations about coral reefs and the species that lived in them.

[00:14:16] And then in the early 1980s, a disease event came through and wiped out one species of urchin, which grazes on coral reefs and essentially acts as tiny little lawn mowers taking the algae off of the reefs. and so a disease event came through and wiped out all of these urchins in a year. and the reef quickly transitioned from being dominated by coral to being overgrown by algae.

[00:14:39] And this was really surprising to the scientists who were observing it because they thought one species of urchin really shouldn’t be that important. and so this led to the idea that, you know, maybe over longer timescales, other things had happened in these ecosystems and they really obvious thing in retrospect is the idea that we had been fishing in these systems for hundreds of years and essentially reducing the resilience of these, of these ecosystems.

[00:15:03] and so historical marine ecology developed as a way to try to take a time machine back and to see if we could understand what these ecosystems looked like before scientists were in the water, making these observations. And so the archives became, you know, the new frontier in some ways of marine ecology, where we were going back into places that historians had been, um, you know, and sources that historians had been using for their work, but not necessarily thinking about it in an ecological context and thinking about using historical documents to understand long term ecological change. And so the work that I do is, really aimed at, using archives and using, the documents that exist in them, like nautical charts and photographs and descriptions of, of these ecosystems over, over decades to centuries to see if we can piece together some of that information and some of the change that happened prior to the 1960s.

[00:15:54] Michael Hawk: Yea, and you mentioned that cartoon, which when you were describing it, it made me think of your, 2009 paper where you looked at. the paper is called Documenting Loss of Large Trophy Fish from the Florida Keys , with Historical Photographs. Can you tell me about what that paper is, how you came across this kind of treasure trove of historical records?

[00:16:17] Loren McClenachan: So I started my PhD right when this field of historical marine ecology was getting started. And I think at that point there was an interest in understanding long term change, but really not a great sense of the types of information sources that were out there. And so I spent about a year and a half going to lots and lots of different archives.

[00:16:35] I was focused on the Florida Keys and the Caribbean, trying to see what sorts of sources existed. Um, and it was actually the very last archive that I was visiting in, in Key West, the Monroe County Public Library, which is a relatively small public library that has a really great backroom with, a small archive.

[00:16:53] and I was working in that, in that archive and I was working with the archivist, basically saying I’m interested in anything that can tell us about long term change. Um, and I had been there, uh, about two weeks looking through old newspaper clips and things that were interesting, but not really useful in the way that I was hoping.

[00:17:08] And then he came out one morning with this big box of, pictures. Uh, and he showed them to me and said, I don’t know if these are useful, but we have hundreds of them in the back. And there were these pictures of, people on recreational fishing or had just come back from recreational fishing trips in the 1950s and 1960s, um, and there was just these immense, immense fish in the, in the photographs and immediately it was like, a giant light bulb went off because it was essentially the shifting baselines cartoon, but in real life.

[00:17:37] And so it was these pictures of, people and it was, one of the reasons it was really useful is because there were so many of them and because they were consistently taken. So it was a man who had a business in the age before everybody had a camera in their pocket, you know, in the form of a cell phone, he would go down and take pictures of tourists who had gone out fishing.

[00:17:56] And presumably he sent those off to the tourists, but then he kept copies of them. And when he passed away, he donated them to the library, which is where I had come across them. And so I was in Key West and I went and took repeat photos, in the same sort of vein and then compared them. And so I had this essentially a time series of, change over the last 50 years in the size and the species that were being caught on these recreational fishing boats.

[00:18:22] And so that allowed me to make some estimates of the changes that have happened over that time scale.

[00:18:29] Michael Hawk: And can you summarize what the changes were that you observed?

[00:18:32] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, the biggest one is just, we found, I found a 90% decline in the size of these large trophy fish over that 50 year time period. So there were changes in the species that were, that were being targeted over time. but. Essentially we’ve replaced these large trophy fish that we think of as, as being, these massive, catches and these massive fish on the reef with really small, , fish that have, essentially, replaced the fish, both in the ecosystem and then also in the, in the fishery itself, and you know, the, the people are, going out and spending the same amount of money to, um, have experiences to catch these very small, very small fish.

[00:19:09] Michael Hawk: Yeah. And they, and they still come back with big smiles on their face when you take the photos, right?

[00:19:14] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, exactly. That’s and that’s the shifting baseline syndrome. Um, interestingly, I went out, there were two captains who were taking people on these, charter boats. So people pay for an afternoon of fishing. So I did that on two of these boats that were still going out. And one of the captains had been there since the seventies, and I talked to him about what I was doing.

[00:19:32] And he said, yeah, it’s frustrating. I, I go out and the fish just aren’t there anymore. So he had that longer term, set of observations. And then the other guy had actually just purchased the company and, really didn’t, have that, that same sort of sense of, of that change. So, saw it even in the, in the people who were there.

[00:19:50] Michael Hawk: And the scientist in me or the, the researcher in me is wondering, as you saw the sizes of the fish decrease, was it on a same species basis? In other words, were you seeing the same species, just smaller, or was it because of some of the larger fish are just no longer there?

[00:20:08] Loren McClenachan: Because some of the larger fish are just no longer there. Yeah, that’s a really important clarification. It’s not that individual fish are shrinking, although in some cases in some places that isn’t effect of overfishing. In this case, it’s that the bigger fish are just not there anymore. And some of them, for example, one of the fish that shows up in a lot of those little pictures is called a goliath grouper.

[00:20:28] It’s this massive, they grow up to 800 pounds, these, these massive fish. Um, and those, fish are actually protected.those fish can’t be caught anymore or they couldn’t be caught anymore actually, when I was doing this. There’s been recent changes in that fishery, but, , part of it is actually us getting smarter and, making, laws and protections for some of these species that are now endangered species.

[00:20:48] Michael Hawk: So maybe that’s a little bit of a silver lining in the, uh, in the research that you, or at least in the discovery that you made.

[00:20:54] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:20:55] Michael Hawk: What are some other resources that you’ve found to give a peak into the historical record of, marine systems? Like photographs are obviously great, but I suspect you found some other interesting sources.

[00:21:08] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, I found some really great things. Um, photographs, I think are really, really useful. Um, I’ve also worked with nautical charts. They have, often some really detailed information on changes to habitat like, like coral reefs. Accounts and narratives of people traveling. So I worked with, some early pirate journals, um, and descriptions of, travels through the Caribbean, which was really fun.

[00:21:32] restaurant menus. There’s lots and lots of different sources that exist that tell us about long term change. And I think one of the things that’s really fun about this work is thinking about what would have motivated somebody to write something down or record something in the past, and that often has to do with the values that those species or ecosystems held to people at different points in time.

[00:21:53] Michael Hawk: I have to say that just sounds like such an interesting field to be able to go back and read pirate journals, as part of, part of your research. There’s probably a whole generation of kids that you could just, you could hook them on ecology just through that angle.

[00:22:08] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, it’s really fun and it’s really fun to, sort of note the ways that people were really observant of their environments in the past. So there was this one pirate named William Dampier, who was just an amazing natural historian. He recorded the different species of mangroves, and he was really interested in turtles, which is how I came across him.

[00:22:27] But his, narrative of his voyages and his trip around the world really includes a whole lot of ecology, actually, which is, sort of surprising, I think.

[00:22:36] Michael Hawk: Yeah. I suppose it’s surprising at the same time. I, in my mind, I have this vision of a graph that shows like time on one scale and then ecological awareness on the other scale and we’re kind of continually declining. Hopefully we’re bending that curve back upwards here in recent years. But, if you’re making a living on the water, I guess you really have to understand those systems to be able to do that.

[00:22:59] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, that’s a great point. I mean, people needed to know where freshwater was, and so they read, they wrote it down. They needed to know the turtles were, were interesting, but they also were a source of food, and so a turtle nesting beach was a place where future sailors could come and potentially get something to eat.

[00:23:13] So it was really practical information too.

[00:23:16] Michael Hawk: So I had to look it up. William Dampier, the pirate actually has a genus of plants named after him. And he was the first European to collect specimens of this plant on a voyage to Australia in the late 16 hundreds.

[00:23:28] Dampier is characterized, not just as a pirate, but also an Explorer, depending on which reference you’ll look at. So a very interesting fellow for sure.

[00:23:37] So that 2009 paper with the photographs of the fishers returning and seeing how that changed. That’s obviously very, it’s a dramatic and easy to see, case of shifting baselines. do you have any other examples that are perhaps similarly obvious once, you know, like once they’re in front of us, uh, they become obvious.

[00:23:58] Do you have any other examples like that?

[00:24:00] Loren McClenachan: Yeah. I mean, I think, there’s just lots of examples that have come out, um, in the last 20 years around these massive changes. So that work found a 90% decline in the size of the largest fish that were caught in the Florida Keys. There was work from, from Maine, from this part of the world that showed a 90% or more decline in the abundance of cod, on the Scotian Shelf since the Civil War. , one of the early papers in this field showed a 90% loss of, pelagic fish like billfish and tuna caught on Japanese long pit, longline fisheries since the 1950s. So, I think it’s, it’s really sort of stunning that across these different geographies and time scales and species and ways of measuring, it’s a really consistent finding, which is this 90% or order of magnitude loss. there’s a Canadian journalist, who I think put it really nicely and saying that, we live in a 10% world. So the world that we’re living in now has, you know, in various ways that you look at it, 10% of the abundance and the biomass and the productivity that it had, you know when you look farther in the past.

[00:25:03] Michael Hawk: I had a previous guest Allen Fish, who talked about this concept of endangered abundance. And I thought that was really interesting. It’s another lens on shifting baselines where we don’t realize that some of these abundancies of organisms don’t exist anymore. And I always think back to experiences I’ve had where there has been an abundance of some organism and how moving of an experience that is.

[00:25:26] Like when you see 200,000 snow geese all together on one lake or, you know, something like that.

[00:25:33] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, no, absolutely. I went. , I think it was 2010. There was a, a really big return of sockeye salmon in the Fraser River in British Columbia. And I went, I happened to be there and I went to see it. and it was exactly like these historical descriptions, like people write about like being able to walk across the backs of fish, and it was ,the river was just just full of salmon.

[00:25:57] And you just think like that’s the way it was, that’s the way it sort of should be naturally in lots of different systems. Yeah, so when you, you get glimpses into these really abundant systems, it’s really humbling.

[00:26:09] Michael Hawk: In your historical ecology work, have you been able to look into traditional ecological knowledge or other indigenous knowledge as another point of reference?

[00:26:22] Loren McClenachan: So people who spend time on the water really have deep understandings of, of lots of different things about marine ecosystems that most people don’t. And that many scientists don’t either just because of the sort of constant observations over long periods of time. So I’m actually in Maine now doing interviews with lobster fishermen about their observations around, the food webs, in these ecosystems and people are out on the water daily, sometimes more are making observations in lots of different environments.

[00:26:50] And so, there’s just really rich knowledge there. I recently moved to British Columbia where, there’s a really strong, Indigenous history and I personally haven’t done work in this area, but there’s a lot of really great work, that shows, sort of the ways that Indigenous communities have managed, these marine resources , over thousands of years in sustainable ways.

[00:27:13] so not just knowledge of the way the systems work, but the ways that humans can interact sustainably with these, ecosystems, or there’s lots of different examples of that. Reef net fishes, fisheries for salmon, for example, is this really elegant gear that’s really minimally impactful that’s existed for thousands of years in the Salish Sea. Clam gardens is another example of a way of increasing the productivity of, food sources and essentially farming these marine systems. Another example is this spawn on kelp fishery for, for herring, which allows the fish to spawn first and continue to reproduce in the ecosystem.

[00:27:50] So, it really is, the case that these, the fisheries that developed over the last 150 years, these commercial settler fisheries really are a lot less sustainable than, than the fisheries that existed for thousands of years, and I think there’s a lot of efforts to, both understand the way these, these systems work and to return rights to people who are able to continue those fisheries into the future.

[00:28:12] Michael Hawk: , when I first heard this concept of shifting baselines in marine systems, the first thing I thought of is, well, yeah, I’m, I’m old enough to have recognized that the fish that are available for purchase at the grocery store have changed over the years. So I suspect that’s a very concrete way in which people can see a shifting baseline happening.

[00:28:35] You know, if you ask your parents, what fish did you use to buy, you know, 30 years ago, if they’re omnivores, they probably have a very different answer, you know, as compared to what’s available today.

[00:28:46] Loren McClenachan: Yeah. And when I first became aware of this in the nineties, um, the big fish that everybody was serving and that was showing up in all of the, in the grocery stores was orange roughy. Um, and this is a, fishery that was discovered in the seventies. They’re amazing fish. They live in really deep waters and they grow really slow and they’ve been documented living up to 250 years.

[00:29:06] So really, not a fish that is able to withstand a whole lot of fishing and that fishery is now, you know, a small percentage of what it was in, at its heyday. And so that’s not something that you see really very much anymore and probably shouldn’t be showing up in grocery stores. But I think one of the big changes overall is that, if you go into a grocery store in LA or New York or anywhere in between, you’ll see sort of the same fish, right?

[00:29:31] You’ll see salmon, you’ll see tuna, you’ll see cod. and that’s because the seafood chains are just really homogenous. Now we import something like 90% of, our fish in the US and we really like the, the top predators, the lions of the sea. And so, seafood chains in these systems used to be a lot more local and they used to be a lot more diverse.

[00:29:51] And I think part of that just has to do with changes to markets and changes to preferences. So, you know, where I am in Maine right now, there’s still, historically there was, there were fisheries for mackerel and, and herring and other things that were food fish. and now if those exist at all, they’re there for bait for, feeding to bigger fish.

[00:30:09] And in some cases, those fish still exist out there. I was actually just out on the dock last night fishing for mackerel with my son and we ate it and it was delicious. but preferences have really changed and markets, don’t reflect, you know, what’s sometimes locally abundant.

[00:30:23] Michael Hawk: Okay. So that’s a good point. The, you know, what we see in the grocery store, there are other reasons for the change, in addition to shifting baselines. And I’m interested in the orange roughy example. When that fishery came to light and it was basically opened to the world. I’m curious how this, how this happened, like where is the root cause of the overfishing of the orange roughy fishery? Did they not realize how slow growing they were or were there just no regulations? I mean, what are your thoughts on that?

[00:30:52] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, I think probably both. they’re deep sea fish. they are accessible by, really deep bottom trawling. typically what happens is when these new, uh, resources are, are developed, people go out and fish them and are making lots and lots of money really quickly.

[00:31:08] And regulations often take a little while to catch up with that. Um, so I don’t know the particular history of the orange roughy, sort of regulations, but you know, there’s lots of examples of that. There was, a paper called something like, Globalization and Robing Bandits in Marine Resources, which documents the ways that, global markets really push the development of really intensive fisheries, to feed these seafood chains.

[00:31:33] and by the time a local government realizes what’s happening, our local community realizes what’s happening, it’s sort of, already come and gone. that paper was looking at, uh, sea urchin fisheries, I believe. for example, here in Maine, there was the sort of very tail end of that, that fishery developing in the 1990s.

[00:31:50] And there was a lot of effort put into, diving for urchins, um, and that fishery was sort of a decade old thing. By the time the Maine government realized it was a problem, it was, you know, sort of moved on to the next place.

[00:32:02] Michael Hawk: In addition to the paper that you mentioned that I’ll link to in the show notes, I’ll see if I can find any other good resources about the orange roughy fishery or that condition in general and include those. So from a, say a restoration ecology perspective, what risks do shifting baselines present and what would you recommend practitioners of restoration ecology do to avoid those risks?

[00:32:26] Loren McClenachan: I think from what I’ve seen, the biggest risk is if we only encounter animals as rare, that’s what we think of as normal. And so, you know, one example that I alluded to, earlier was the goliath grouper in the Florida Keys. And so this is a fish that has existed, in great abundances for centuries.

[00:32:44] it was fished intensively over the last century and it was protected in the 1990s because of, a realization that it was, it was really, depleted. And since then it started to come back, which is great. But, people who, have recently moved to the Keys, for example, will say things like there’s more now than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.

[00:33:03] which is true, but it’s also just part of the story. And so in the absence of a longer term perspective, those voices really dominate the narrative about change and, and the policies that should be developed. And so I think one of the things to be aware of is that often there is this longer history and that historical sources can provide this longer context and sort of the, the scale that’s relevant for, for ecology.

[00:33:28] and so in the case of the goliath grouper, there’s been pressure to reopen the fishery essentially every year since it was closed in, in the 1990s. And it just was successful in this last year, which I think is unfortunate. I think partially that’s a result of, sort of sense that, you know, things are, things are better than they were in terms of the populations and these fish that people were used to seeing rarely in these ecosystems are coming back. They are, some people are considering them to be a nuisance now. and so, you know, I think part of, the role of historical ecology is to really just provide this sense of the ways that ecosystems can be, , and the ways that they, probably in some cases should be if, conservation continues.

[00:34:07] Michael Hawk: , that’s such a good example. And I can think of lots of instances where, you know, hunting, I think is a good proxy for this, without dwelling on that too much. The other thought that came to mind is I’ve had many discussions. A few years ago, there was a paper released about the state of bird populations.

[00:34:25] And I think the takeaway was something like 3 billion birds lost. I think it was 3 billion compared to 1970. And I remember there being a kind of backlash maybe to that among people that I’m friends with on, online. Some agreed fully because I have a lot of ecological friends and then, other folks we’re like, wait a minute.

[00:34:46] I see more crows and gulls and starlings than I’ve ever seen. And I think that’s another example of the subtlety of ecological history, because those are birds maybe that are doing well as generalists, but, don’t really reflect the state of the environment in a way.

[00:35:05] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, absolutely. And I think sort of those shifts in, you know, not just the abundance, but the species composition, like who is, who are we seeing? What are the species that are out there, is another part of the shifting baselines syndrome. And, you know, to bring it back to, to, to Maine, which is where I’m sitting and looking out at the water.

[00:35:23] you know, I think lobster is the big fishery here. for a long time, it was the most valuable fishery in the United States, the Maine lobster fishery. Um, and that’s great, but it’s also because of long term changes that have happened with the reduction of cod and ground fish and other, other species that were historically, much more abundant in these waters and people who have been here for a long time, know that and they have those observations.

[00:35:49] But, um, we did some work with, interviewing some younger lobster fishermen and some of them don’t have any sense they don’t have any memory of, of the codfish that used to be here. And they, you know, say things like, I can’t really imagine that they would be here. This is a, this is a place for lobsters. So I think, I think there are these, these pretty rapid shifts that can happen, around, you know, who is supposed to be here and what species should be considered natural in these ecosystems.

[00:36:14] Michael Hawk: So how can we improve upon this state and improve the amount, or type of ecological knowledge that’s passed along from generation to generation?

[00:36:25] Loren McClenachan: I mean, I think, there’s a lot of, you know, good news stories, too. So I think I’ve been talking a lot about declines and, and changes that have happened, that aren’t positive, but I think there’s also some really nice examples of, the ways that baselines and history can be used to improve both, communities and ecosystems.

[00:36:44] And I think highlighting those, and, sort of demonstrating the value in a, in communities, to this information is, is a big part of that. So, you know, one example, from this part of the world, again, from Maine, , comes from, the restoration that’s happened around, removing dams from rivers.

[00:37:00] So there’s a long industrial history in New England. and with sort of global changes in manufacturing, a lot of those, those factories haven’t really been productive for decades. And so some of the dams associated with them are starting to come out and communities are actively restoring rivers for, fish, like alewives, which are small fish that migrate up the rivers to, to spawn and, have their babies.

[00:37:22] And so, as those restoration projects are successful, the recovery of alewives has just really been stunning. So, you know, these dams have been blocking this, this habitat for hundreds of years. they’re removed and the very next year, a million fish come back, which is just a really, sort of heartening thing to, to show that if you, if you remove the, if you stop fishing the fish, and if you improve their habitats, then they’ll, in some cases respond really, really quickly.

[00:37:48] And this not only benefits, fish, but also as they come back, the things that eat them start coming back too, the birds of prey. And, in some cases, the social benefits are really big too. So in some of these communities, fishing for alewives has started up again.

[00:38:02] There’s often, in some places, there’s these festivals that come in the spring as they alewives are migrating to come observe these massive amounts of fish coming through that, you know, bring in tourism and, and build a sense of community and in some of these towns that, you have been suffering in some ways from the loss of manufacturing.

[00:38:18] And so I think, unshifting the baselines and these examples where restoration brings things back in a, in a way that benefits the communities that surround them. I think that’s one of the best parts about doing this work.

[00:38:31] Michael Hawk: Yeah, it’s interesting because shifting baselines is fundamentally a kind of a psychological, phenomenon. And what you’re talking about here. The other thing that came to mind that I think about a lot is loss aversion and removing a dam, it’s really easy to think about, what are you going to lose in removing that dam?

[00:38:49] Uh, and what you just pointed out was a long list of gains that people can experience from removing that dam. So I think we have to also actively push back on our instincts of only focusing on what we’re losing, and, remembering what we’re going to gain, which is sometimes harder to envision, but that was a great example.

[00:39:07] Loren McClenachan: Yeah. And sometimes it’s, it’s surprising. I think some of those, those benefits are things that people were expecting. They were expecting, you know, maybe the fish would come back, but that all of those sort of add on effects are not necessarily, what was set out to be accomplished, and sort of seeing the ways that these projects can exceed our expectations, I think, is also really nice.

[00:39:29] Michael Hawk: Yeah, we need more good news and we need to make more good news.

[00:39:32] Loren McClenachan: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:39:34] Michael Hawk: so how else can people use this concept of shifting baselines to make change or just simply lead a more sustainable life?

[00:39:41] Loren McClenachan: Um, I mean, I think sort of understanding the ways that, communities and individuals can think more broadly about what they want in their backyards and in their communities and envision more creative solutions to accomplish those goals. I think that’s one of the biggest ways that these ideas and these concepts can, can help.

[00:40:03] I think there’s, been talking a lot about, about Maine, which is where I’m sitting right now. But there’s examples from other parts of the world too. There’s a really nice example from South Australia, where similar sorts of historical documents from nautical charts and fishing records showed these really abundant oyster reefs in the past.

[00:40:19] and those were used to help restore habitat for recreational fisheries. There was some funding that was available for that, but there had been sort of fraught conversations about how to spend that money and, the realization that it could be spent in restoring these historical oyster reefs that would provide also the benefit to recreational fisheries was said to be sort of a circuit breaker to the conversation around, policy for these fish.

[00:40:44] So I think, again, these positive, these good news stories, , can hopefully provide some motivation to think about what’s happening in, your own backyard.

[00:40:54] Michael Hawk: Do you have any other examples of shifting baselines, other papers, other things you’ve come across that might resonate with people, make it more relatable?

[00:41:02] Loren McClenachan: Yeah, I think there’s a couple of, examples of different types of sources that can be used to understand long term change. Um, one of those is an example that comes from, of all things, restaurant menus that, were kept, because of their, their beauty. There’s these, um, restaurant menus that were, in Hawaii that a colleague came across, in the private collection of somebody that he knew and decided to try to collect up more of the, of those, and restaurant menus give us a sense of what people are consuming, in particular locations and in a place like Hawaii, which is really distant from, the places that we get our fish.

[00:41:40] A lot of the things on the menus were locally caught and so it gives a sense of what was happening under the ocean as well. And so he was actually interested in seeing if turtles showed up on those menus because that’s what he was studying and they didn’t. But what we did find is that there was this shift in the species that people were catching and consuming, in the early part of the 20th century.

[00:41:59] So from, say, the 1940s to the 1960s, a shift from, from eating reef fish that live close to shore to eating, bigger fish like tuna that live, farther offshore. And importantly, this was a period of time where there just really wasn’t any other fisheries information. So fisheries data began to be collected in the 1970s and 1980s.

[00:42:17] So this was a period that we didn’t really have a lot of information about. And so this allowed us to piece together the changes to the fishery that had happened, in the early part of the 20th century and showed this early, uh, depletion of these, of these reef fish that were harvested.

[00:42:33] Michael Hawk: And that’s an interesting contrast too, because it’s pretty well documented how impacted the terrestrial systems in Hawaii are. So I’m sure there’s an interesting comparison to be made there as well. So for people who would like to learn more about historical ecology or even marine ecology or shifting baselines.

[00:42:53] Do you have any resources, any recommendations, things they can go, watch or read or, listen to, for example.

[00:43:00] Loren McClenachan: So yes, Daniel Pauly has an excellent TED talk, I think for, for a few years back that, um, talks about these, these issues really eloquently and has some really great examples. his original paper that introduced this idea is published in a scientific journal, but is really accessible, actually.

[00:43:14] It’s a one-page paper called Anecdotes in the Shifting Baseline Syndrome in Fisheries. and I would recommend that anybody actually read that paper who’s interested in, in sort of getting into these ideas. I think there’s, you know, there’s also been the application of this idea to lots of different topics, outside of fisheries.

[00:43:32] And so, I think there’s, lots of work that, that’s come around since then.

[00:43:37] Michael Hawk: One thing I like to ask is, if you could snap your fingers and have the general public see some aspect of ecology or the environment in the way you do, what would that be?

[00:43:52] Loren McClenachan: I think one of the things that I really love about this kind of work is that it shows the ghosts of these systems and it shows sort of what used to be, in places. And I think sort of the, it awakens some sort of creativity, I think about thinking about , what these systems, could have in them.

[00:44:11] And so, I don’t know if there’s a way to sort of, um, you know, I don’t know if that sort of translates to what you’re, what you’re asking, but, you know, I think that, the. connection between, , you know, reading and, and sort of understanding the histories of places, which is sometimes, you know, can be kind of dry and, and separate from, the lived experience.

[00:44:31] I think sort of bringing those, sort of making those connections and bringing those things together, I think would be the thing that I would hope for.

[00:44:38] Michael Hawk: And through my lens, the way I translate that is to, uh, question current reality in a way.

[00:44:47] Loren McClenachan: That’s a, that’s a much better way of putting it. Yeah, that’s good.

[00:44:51] Michael Hawk: And if people would like to, , follow your work in particular, how can they do that?

[00:44:57] Loren McClenachan: yeah, I have a website that has some more information about the work that I do and the people. I have a really great group of people that I work with at the University of Victoria. that’s a great place to sort of connect and, and see some of the stuff that I’m up to.

[00:45:10] Michael Hawk: Great. And is there anything else that you’d like the listeners to know about?

[00:45:15] Loren McClenachan: Uh, no, this has been really fun. I really appreciate your interest in the topic. And yeah, thanks for the opportunity.

[00:45:21] Michael Hawk: All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me. This has been a topic I’ve been wanting to discuss for so long. I’m happy to have finally had the opportunity to do it with you. And, thank you again. And I appreciate you and the work that you do.

[00:45:33] Loren McClenachan: Great. Thank you so much.

[00:45:35] Michael Hawk: Before wrapping up, thank you to Michelle Balderston for editing help this week thank you to the Patreon patrons for your continued support and everyone who has left ratings and reviews of the podcast.