Jake Tepper wants to find a way to reverse the decline of coral reefs around the world. (Photo courtesy of Jake Tepper)

When Jacob (Jake) Tepper was an eighth-grader, he and his dad traded in their 20-gallon saltwater aquarium and transferred its inhabitants — an anemone and a pair of clownfish — to a spacious 50-gallon reef tank. They added corals and a porcupine pufferfish who begged for food by squirting water at passersby. And then there were the stowaways: bristle worms, snails and other ocean organisms that hitch a ride on the “live rock” that aquarium hobbyists often use in their “refugia” (connected tanks where beneficial flora and fauna live without predation).

“It was a self-contained marine ecosystem,” says Tepper, an OSU marine biology student. “Different life forms would pop up and dominate the system. I would spend hours just staring at it, observing.”

Fish were a fixture for Tepper. Growing up in Massachusetts meant catching sunfish on the Charles River and fishing for cod and striped bass in Gloucester. His 50-gallon aquarium eventually gave way to a 100-gallon tank in the basement of his Newton home. But he wasn’t satisfied to be on the outside looking in. At 13, he took up scuba so he could swim with the fish. His most enthralling dive happened in the Cayman Islands.

“You descend a hundred feet beside this vertical rock wall that reaches a depth of 3,000 feet and is covered with purple and pink corals,” he says. “Then you turn around and look at the open ocean, this vast blueness without boundaries. It’s mind-blowing.”

After visiting colleges around the country, he chose Oregon State for its top-notch marine biology program. “I wanted to have experiences outside the classroom,” he says. “This program offers lots of opportunities.” On top of that, he enrolled in OSU’s University Honors College.

Right away, he zeroed in on coral reefs for a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) undergrad research program. The summer after his freshman year, he worked on a joint experiment with a lab in Florida to study macro-algae (seaweed) encroachment in Key Largo, where corals are struggling to compete for habitat. “Why are the algae winning?” was the research question for Tepper and his team, led by OSU microbiologist Rebecca Vega Thurber. “What’s the role of micro-organisms like bacteria and viruses?”

Diving at Pickles Reef, Tepper collected mucus from the coral with a syringe for DNA analysis and took samples of three algae species, two brown and one green. He communicated with his dive partner using basic scuba hand signals and messages scrawled on underwater clipboards. His Rescue Diver and Scientific Diver training proved essential, particularly when one of his buddies was low on air and needed to share Jake’s.

Tepper presented his experiment at HHMI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40gGgzZdiZc). Next fall, he heads to Bonaire for more reef research through the Council on International Educational Exchange. And as OSU’s most recent recipient of the prestigious NOAA Hollings Scholarship, he will be working with a NOAA scientist on yet another project, still to be decided.

“My focus is on marine conservation biology,” Tepper says. “Coral reefs are dying. Hurricanes, pollution, overfishing, farm runoff, ocean acidification, big city wastes, disease — all these things destroy reefs. I want to do research on reefs that will lead to the creation of a lot more marine protected areas.”

“I want to work with people to get everyone on the same page — get everyone to understand one another, so we can create solutions that work.” — Elliott Finn (Photo courtesy of Elliott Finn)

What runs through the life of author Norman McLean is a river. In the life of Elliott Finn, it’s a plant.

Vegetation, wild and domestic, wends through every childhood memory: playing hide-and-seek among fruit trees in his parents’ sprawling Soap Creek garden near Corvallis. Dashing through botanical gardens and greenhouses with his little brother Ian. Scrambling up and down granite boulders and hidden canyons among the shadows of Joshua trees in Nevada. Witnessing, after a heavy rain, an eruption of desert sunflowers on the “barren, hardscrabble terrain” of Death Valley.

Even the internship he did with Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley after his sophomore year at Oregon State had a plant component. Amidst the legislative hearings, policy briefings and phone calls from constituents in Washington, D.C., Finn got to do a “super-interesting, super-random” project about a dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) on the U.S. Capitol grounds, a 1985 Arbor Day gift from Oregon’s longtime senator Mark Hatfield.

All of his recollections come with Latin names. “There are eight species of the pitcher plant genus, Sarracenia,” he says, referring to the fly-eating flower that was his special favorite as a kid. He and his dad, a plant geneticist, experimented with cross-breeding Sarracenia and growing the cobra lily (Darlingtonia californica), Oregon’s only native pitcher plant species. Finn rattles off a series of multisyllabic species names and then smiles a little sheepishly. “When both of your parents are horticulturalists, it’s normal to know those terms.”

Connecting People, Solving Problems

But plants are just the buds on Finn’s ambition. It’s the bigger picture — the intersection of ecosystems and human systems — where he hopes to make his mark on the world. His double major — biology and EEPM (Environmental Economics, Policy and Management) — is his attempt to wrap his arms around both nature and humanity for the protection of each. He’s tried lab research but finds it tedious. Instead, he leans toward negotiation, conflict resolution, communication, interaction. For this member of the University Honors College, it’s integrating a “broad range of topics and ideas” that interests him, rather than zeroing in on one “super-specialized area of study.” An inspiring winter abroad in Chile, for example, showed him how environmental policy and community-based fish-and-wildlife management have converged for effective conservation.

“I want to work with people to get everyone on the same page — get everyone to understand one another so we can create solutions that work,” says Finn, who will graduate in fall term. “I’m interested in constellations and connections, in human relationships with one another and the planet, and how science can be applied to solution-making.”

Earth’s future hinges on national concerns being incorporated into regional and local frameworks, he explains. Big federal laws like the Clean Air and Clean Water acts are, of course, critical. “The challenge now is to find points of collaboration for local and regional environmental decision-making,” he says. He cites the work of OSU political science professor Edward Weber, who argues for “grassroots ecosystem management” — local stakeholders plugging into global problems such as climate change and then tackling them on a smaller, more personal scale. “Blanket solutions aren’t the answer,” says Finn.

Still, it’s the Plant Kingdom that lights up Finn’s face most brightly. One spring afternoon, for instance, he’s simultaneously marveling at and worrying about something he just learned in his ecology class: How desert plants like Joshua trees were “classically dispersed” by mastodons and ground sloths, now extinct, and how the trees are in trouble because they depend on a single endangered species of moth for pollination.

“On one hand, it’s sad,” says Finn. “It’s definitely disappointing. But it’s a call for us to pay attention, to make sure it doesn’t occur.”

(Illustration: Santiago Uceda)

Lionfish memo to coral reefs in the Bahamas: There’s a new predator in town. Native to the South Pacific, the invasive lionfish is reducing the abundance of native fishes on coral reefs in the Bahamas (see “Deep Ecology,” in Terra, spring 2008). OSU zoologist Mark Hixon leads a team of graduate students and other collaborators working to understand the impacts as well as the factors that naturally control this voracious predator in its native habitat.

In lab and field studies conducted in 2010, they are comparing Bahamian reef systems with and without lionfish and have demonstrated that lionfish outcompete Nassau grouper, which are native to the Bahamas, for access to reef shelters. Lionfish do not eat small grouper, and grouper do not affect lionfish as either a predator or a habitat competitor.

Ongoing studies include lionfish behavior and ecology in the invaded and the native ranges and daily activity observations, as well as patterns of growth and survival.

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See Mark Hixon’s 2010 “Oceans of Life” presentation, including videos of lionfish feeding.

For information about supporting research and teaching through faculty endowments, contact the Oregon State University Foundation, 1-800-354-7281 or visit CampaignforOSU.org.

This lionfish (Pterois volitans) swam to within six inches of the camera as the shot was taken. “We think that he saw his reflection in the glass and was trying to scare off his ‘rival,’” says Robbie Wisdom. (Photo: Daniel Wisdom)

When talk turns to the mud-dwelling creatures of the deep seafloor, Mark Hixon jumps up from his swivel chair, strides to a cabinet in his office and swings open the door. Taking out a long cardboard box, he gently lays it on his desk.

“This,” he says, reaching inside, “is a sponge from just off the Oregon coast. Isn’t it cool?”

He holds up the dried organism, an 18-inch-long spire the color of raw pinewood, delicately honeycombed. Its tousle of roots tells you why scientists long classified sponges, mistakenly, as plants. In your hand it is nearly weightless.

“There’s a whole host of things that live down there,” says Professor Hixon, an internationally known marine ecologist in OSU’s Department of Zoology.

The astounding array of seafloor organisms — brittlestars and bivalves, marine worms and sea pens, cold-water corals and sponge species by the score — plays a vital role in ocean systems by providing food and shelter for finfish and shellfish. Before manned submersibles and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) gave scientists direct, deep-water access, Hixon says, many viewed the teeming ocean mud as empty ooze. Now they know the seafloor is the “nursery” for many of the finned species humans eat.

Hixon’s research on fish population dynamics has taken him to most of the planet’s oceans, both temperate and tropical. One of the world’s leading authorities on coral reefs, he has been cited in scientific journals more often than any other coral-reef ecologist in the Western Hemisphere over the past decade, according to the Thomson Institute for Science Research. He was ranked third worldwide behind two scientists who live adjacent to coral reefs year-round.

One big mystery relevant to both fisheries management and marine conservation is whether and how isolated populations of adult fish are linked. Understanding these links will help answer questions such as, Can protecting fish in one location compensate for overfishing in another location? Hanging in the balance are decisions about marine reserves that, while designed to sustain fisheries, have raised fishing industry concerns.

In two ongoing studies — one in Hawaii, the other in the Bahamas — Hixon and his graduate students are investigating connections among isolated populations of coral-reef fishes. They are studying the demographics of the yellow tang on Hawaii’s Big Island and the bicolor damselfish in Exuma Sound off the Bahamas. They are sampling DNA from adult and juvenile fish at multiple reefs. Their goal is to understand the drift patterns of fertilized eggs and larvae that travel with tides and currents in a process known as “larval dispersal.” And they are testing whether a high level of larval connectivity is also reflected in the population dynamics of adult fish.

Ultimately, the answers will guide conservation and management, not only of fish, but of the reefs themselves. These complex ecosystems brim with more species than anyplace on the planet, even tropical rainforests. And many are dying. Pollution, global warming and overfishing have degraded about 20 percent of Earth’s coral reefs so far. Another 50 percent are at risk. In Hawaii, the yellow tang, coveted by the aquarium trade for its brilliant color, was depleted until the state created marine reserves along the Kohala-Kona coast to protect them. Preliminary data from Hixon and his colleagues suggest the reserves are working. “Long-term policy about marine reserves must be based on data rather than hearsay,” he says. The yellow tang genetics, still being analyzed in Hixon’s lab, will reveal which of Hawaii’s reefs need replenishment from spawn drifting in from highly productive “source” reefs and where those respective reefs are located.

Ocean Views

In his three decades as a fish ecologist, Hixon has dived in oceans from the Pacific to the Atlantic, the Caribbean to the Coral Sea. Studying marine science at UC Santa Barbara was, for him, just a natural extension of a sea-centered boyhood as a surfer and the son of a naval officer. As the family moved from one coastline to another, young Mark – a fan of Sea Hunt and ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau – had a recurring dream: He would be standing on the beach trying to imagine what lived beneath the heaving seas when, suddenly, the water would disappear, revealing fishes “swimming around in the air.”

As a doctoral student in the 1970s, he shivered through dozens of bone-chilling dives in cold-water kelp forests. These days, he relies on small research submarines in the frigid northern waters as he studies the ecology of coastal marine fishes, focusing on what naturally regulates populations and sustains biodiversity. His scuba gear gets used mostly in warm-water ecosystems.

The tropical reef research, part of OSU’s top-ranked efforts in conservation biology, has relevance here in Oregon. “Off Oregon, it’s impossible to gather the enormous amount of data we can extract from warm, clear tropical waters,” Hixon says. “However, once our methods are developed and tested in the tropics, we can bring them home to Oregon.”

Such research is timely. Governor Ted Kulongoski is leading an initiative to create marine reserves in the Oregon Territorial Sea to replenish and preserve the state’s marine ecosystems and fisheries. Hixon’s work will help test the effectiveness of Oregon’s reserves. For example, in the 1990s, Hixon, who chairs the Marine Protected Areas Federal Advisory Committee, witnessed a post-trawl patch on Oregon’s continental shelf from the portal of a research sub named Delta. He and his team were surveying fish populations on the rocky reefs between Bandon and Cape Blanco, a fish-rich outcrop called Coquille Bank, when they stumbled upon a muddy area deeply scarred by groundfish trawl nets. An adjacent area unmarred by trawl tracks provided a readymade control site. The researchers decided to conduct a comparative study, the first-ever documentation of trawling impacts on the deep mud seafloor off North America’s West Coast.

The contrast was stark. About half as many groundfish species were living in the trawled area as in the untrawled area. Numbers of individuals, too, were significantly lower in the trawled site. Most striking, though, was the disparity in sea pens and other invertebrates. Members of the jellyfish phylum, the fragile, soft-bodied sea pens stood out brightly in Delta’s spotlight as it scanned the sediment in the lightless depths. Forests of the flowerlike stalks of yellow-and-orange polyps were anchored in the untrawled mud. But where the nets had passed, sea pens were virtually absent, Hixon and Brian Tissot of Washington State University reported in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology last year.

Sea pens and other such invertebrates can’t swim away when their habitat is disturbed. Nor can they quickly rebound. These “sessile, slow-growing, long-lived species,” Hixon notes, “are likely to recover slowly” from the effects of bottom dragging.

“What we saw off Coquille Bank,” Hixon concludes, “was completely consistent with studies conducted all over the world showing that bottom trawling has severe impacts on seafloor habitat.” Unfortunately, Hixon and Tissot’s findings were dismissed by the Oregon trawl industry, which questioned their validity, despite appearing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

“My greatest frustration as a scientist happens when any special interests reject peer-reviewed science,” says Hixon. As Chair of the Ocean Sciences Advisory Committee for the National Science Foundation, Hixon notes that rejection of scientific findings about climate change and ocean acidification stem from the same attitude. Hixon likes to quote Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World: “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

For Hixon, biology and conservation have become inseparable as threats to the oceans continue to grow. “The challenge,” he says, “is to successfully walk the fine line between scientific objectivity and personal advocacy. Some scientists refuse to walk that line, but I did not abdicate my citizenship when I became a scientist.” Discovering how to connect science (left-brained and analytical) with public engagement (right-brained and passionate) is as urgent to Hixon as tracking fish movements across reefs. Data alone won’t save our oceans. “People must feel it here,” he says, placing his hand over his heart, “to value not only themselves and the present, but also to value others and the future.”

To that end, he and Professor of Philosophy Kathleen Dean Moore, director of OSU’s Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature and the Written Word, are investigating the psychology of conservation communications: how to craft messages that effectively change minds and behaviors.

Mark Hixon wants our progeny to inherit a world still relatively intact. He wants tomorrow’s children to have a chance to dive into the pulsating rainbow of biodiversity that is the tropical reef. “You feel as if you’ve fallen into a universe of stars,” he says. “It really, truly is amazing.”

Meet the photographers, Daniel and Robbie Wisdom

Protecting tropical reefs is a passion for these two graduate students in OSU’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences. The Idaho natives plan to live in Australia where they can pursue scuba and underwater photography. Both are enrolled in OSU’s Marine Resource Management program. Daniel works with Assistant Professor Kelly Benoit-Bird analyzing fish-school movements with high-frequency sonar. Robbie is studying cooperative marketing programs for small seafood micro-canners in the Pacific Northwest with Gil Sylvia, superintendent of the Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station in Newport.

See Mark Hixon’s 2010 “Oceans of Life” presentation for the F.A. Gilfillan Memorial Award

• Mark Hixon’s Web site
• Department of Zoology
• College of Science
• National Science Foundation
• National Undersea Research Program
• OSU Foundation

OSU news releases

• OSU Recognized for Coral Reef Research (9-24-07)
• ‘Ten Commandments’ Could Improve Fisheries Management (2-19-07)
• OSU Marine Biologist to Chair Federal Advisory Committee (10-19-06)
• Experts Propose Major Mapping Program on Oregon Coast (3-22-06)