Western Ecological Research Center

Transcript
Narrator: San Francisco Bay is truly an urban estuary. A great body of water surrounded by over 8 million people. One of the bay's distinguishing features has been the brightly colored salt ponds in the North, and particularly in the South Bay. These ponds were created in the past 150 years. Their function, simply to produce salt. Each pond has a slightly different salinity hosting either algae or tiny animals such as brine shrimp. Recently a group of partners including conservation organizations, the State of California and the Federal Government have purchased 10,000 acres of salt ponds in the North Bay and 15,000 acres in the South Bay. The goal is to restore these areas for natural processes to take hold. What has been a closed system for salt production will be reshaped with plants and animals in mind. Steven Schwarzbach, Science Center Director, USGS, Western Ecological Research Center About 80 percent of the tidal marshes in San Francisco Bay have been lost. They were lost to fill, they were lost to diking off for farm lands, they were made into salt ponds. The salt ponds that are ringing San Francisco Bay now, those ponds are between 50 to 150 years old and have been used to make salt. They represent this great opportunity now that they are in the public ownership to become the restoration template for San Francisco Bay. Music Montage thru title Wetland Revival Steve Ritchie, Executive Project Manager, CA State Coastal Conservancy I’m Steve Ritchie and I’m the Executive Project Manager for the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project. A collaborative effort working with numerous state and federal agencies and private outfits to try to restore 15,000 acres in south San Francisco Bay to tidal habitats like they once were. And certainly one thing we know is that nature will not respond exactly as we predict. Therefore, that’s why we really have to pay close attention to it. And that’s where science comes into the process. Adaptive management is the process by which we will allow science to inform our management decisions as we slowly modify the landscape over time. We actually are really running a huge-scale experiment here in South San Francisco Bay, and the opportunity to learn from that is immense. Narrator A number of agencies including a diverse group from the USGS (United States Geological Survey) are providing the crucial science that is needed to keep this restoration on track. Steven Schwarzbach It’s really a great example of integrated science and what USGS can bring to bear with biology, hydrology and geology. We’re mapping, we’re measuring, we’re modeling, and we’re observing systematically the birds, the fish, and the invertebrates. So, we have a lot of different scientists coming to bear on these questions of how to restore these wetlands. Narrator The initial purchase and restoration of salt ponds in the North Bay in 1994 has formed a sort of testing ground for guiding present work in the South Bay. John Takekawa, Research Wildlife Biologist, USGS, Western Ecological Research Center We have learned a lot from working in the North Bay salt ponds about how change in the ponds may alter their ecology. So, we’re learning about how if you open levees, how the differences in the pond bottoms and how the pond may fill up and become vegetated will change, and hopefully those experiences will help us learn about what will happen in the South Bay salt ponds as they’re restored also. Eric Mruz, Wildlife Refuge Specialist, US Fish and Wildlife Service The way Cargill ran it is that it was one big system. So they would never discharge any of the water back into the slough. So, they would have one intake they would funnel water all the way through these salt ponds and then as the salinity would get higher and higher into their concentrator ponds where they would extract the salt from it. So what we did is we broke it up into several smaller systems with all these intakes and discharges to funnel fresher water through. And what we’ve found is that the shorebird and waterfowl numbers have been increased by 100 percent, already, 120 percent in some ponds. So, you can tell that we’re starting to get fish in here we’re starting to get a lot of fish-eating birds in here. So, basically before that, there was only a few species that ate the brines, brine shrimp and brine flies. Music – while title displayed California Clapper Rail Habitat John Takekawa We’re also looking at the California clapper rail which is an endangered species and only found in the Bay Area primarily because the habitats that were lost -- the tidal marshes -- are its home. And what we’re trying to do is look at how the recovery of these may actually improve the populations of this species. Narrator The California clapper rail rarely flies. It forages for things like clams, snails, sometimes dead fish and even mice. They scour tidal flats and very shallow water, always with plants nearby for cover. The tidal marsh it calls home is one of the primary habitats being added back by the restoration. Illustrated graphically here the process of creating tidal marsh depends on the tides carrying in huge volumes of sediment to form a foundation where the marsh can develop and thrive. Music Bruce Jaffe, Research Oceanographer, USGS Right now I’m beyond my knees in mud, I’m in a side channel to Coyote Creek, and the only reason that I’m here and not underwater is because it is at a very low tide. The tide range here is 10 feet or more and 6 hour ago if I had been here I’d be under water by about 3 or 4 feet. What you see over here is the tidal marsh surface that’s at the level of the highest tides. And the importance of all this is that when the tides come in they bring sediment and that is what is going to fill up the salt ponds and bring them up to the desired level where then they can be colonized by vegetation and turned into tidal marshes and create new tidal marsh habitat. Music Narrator The team has used airborne surveys call LIDAR, sonar from boats, and sediment sampling to show where sediment is in the bay and how it moves around. The data are combined to form models that are used to forecast the outcomes of various changes to the system. The models are refined as the restoration moves forward. Bruce Jaffe, Research Oceanographer, USGS Another bit of uncertainty is what’s going to happen with climate change. In particular global sea level rise. Is there going to be too much stress on the system as the demand for sediment increases? Because when you raise the water, what has to happen for restoration to be successful is you have to put in enough sediment to keep up with the rise in the water. And so, that’s a big question. Its tremendous volumes of sediment. Just form the tidal flats alone it could be on the order of about 50 million cubic meters. That’s 50 Super Domes in New Orleans filled with sediment. Just an incredible amount of sediment. Narrator Water moving sediment is the key to this process. Throughout the bay and salt ponds water’s role is varied and dominant. The life struggling to survive here depends in many ways on the water, the water quality and the tidal forces at work. The existence and gate to raise and lower water levels in the pond add an unusual ability to control water flow of the overall system. Here the scientists are collecting data on just how much water is passing through the gates from the pond into South San Francisco Bay. Greg Shellenbarger, Research Hydrologist, USGS To do this we use an acoustic Doppler current profiler, which is a long name for a small instrument. Narrator It is measuring velocity or speed of the water and at the same time tracking the bottom. By towing the device back and forth in front of the discharge pipes, they can calculate how much water is passing through. This information has been crucial for developing the model that is used to determine how much water is likely to pass between the ponds and the bay. Greg Shellenbarger, Research Hydrologist, USGS The managers of these ponds need to know the volume of water entering South San Francisco Bay so that if there’s anything in the water in the ponds they can calculate how much of that is actually entering San Francisco Bay. Whether it’s a lack of oxygen in the water or if it’s phytoplankton, or perhaps mercury, or anything else that they might be interested in. Narrator Water enters and leaves the system through daily tides. Fresh water passes down the surrounding landscape through creeks which become sloughs and wind out into the bay. Dave Schoellhamer, Research Hydrologist, USGS Up these sloughs are some very large water treatment plants that put out very clean water. But it’s still a major issue we have to deal with. For instance, the big fresh water inflow into South San Francisco Bay during the summer is from the water treatment plants because there is no natural runoff during our dry summers. So, this is a very highly altered landscape, hydrologically. Also chemically, with the pollutants that are put in here by the existing urban area and by past practices. Upstream from here is the New Almaden Mercury Mine, which was at one point the largest mercury mine in North America. And the mine tailings from that can put quite a bit of mercury into these soils and into these sediments out in these sloughs. Narrator Here, samples are being collected for water quality and sediment load. Regular sampling of this type is taking place in all of the sloughs entering the South Bay. Scientists speaking Gauge heights 4.53 come down… Narrator This work takes place from land or from boats. This way water samples cover the entire system, from upstream urban areas through the intertidal zone. Scientists speaking PH 7.36 Narrator All the way into the Bay. Scientists speaking DO is 5.68 Narrator Details of exactly what is travelling in the slough water and how much water is flowing are the kinds of data that help build the models of the overall system Dave Schoellhamer And so one of the things we’ve done is develop a numerical model of the Alviso Salt Ponds that we see here that looks at the water level's salinity, water temperature of the ponds so that the resource managers can use that model to manage the ponds to provide the optimal habitat for migrating birds. So that we may have fewer ponds, but they’ll actually be managed for waterfowl and not for salinity. John Takekawa Well, we have both terrestrial marsh birds but also a lot of migratory birds that come through in the winter and through the migration periods. And those birds, a lot of them are shorebirds and waterfowl that use the Bay Area as a stopping point on the way north and south from the breeding grounds. music Salt ponds again have been here a long time, so salt ponds are part of the environment that have been here over a hundred years so they’re not exactly a natural habitat but they’re certainly a long-term habitat. We just don’t understand what will happen if they disappear all at once so what we’re hoping is to have a phased-in approach of change where we can look at what value they have for natural resources including migratory birds. And as we do change, we’ll be able to adjust for the differences as we lose these habitats that have been here for quite a long time. Narrator Studies of shorebirds and terns are providing an important window into the overall quality of the salt pond habitat. Mercury washed down from the upstream mine tailing is of particular concern. It is toxic to fish, birds and humans. Part of the research focuses on reproduction. The scientists set out to determine the health of eggs and the young. *Voice of Angela Rex, Biological Technician, USGS, Western Ecological Research Center* We go out into any of the nesting areas and we take a lot of equipment with us, and when we get across to the islands we walk them very slowly looking for all the nests. Field Audio Egg number one Angela Rex When we come to a nest, we float the egg because there’s this little air pocket at the top. Narrator The air cell in the egg grows larger as the embryo develops. Based on how the egg floats, the scientists estimate stage of development of the egg. Angela Rex And once we’ve aged all of the eggs and numbered them all, we put a little bit of flagging to mark it but not a lot because we don’t want predators to find our nests. And we track them. We go back once a week and we see how the nest is progressing. Narrator They collect a few eggs to determine the mercury content and to get a close look at how the embryo is forming. They check the bill and the other appendages and confirm their age approximations before sending it off for mercury analysis. Music Narrator As the chicks hatch the team's work becomes a bit more exciting and difficult. Funky Music Narrator Here they are collecting Forster’s tern chicks, many of whom are close to leaving the nest for good. Funky Music Scientist One Fifty, weight Sara Stoner-Duncan, Biological Technician, USGS, Western Ecological Research Center So we work with, the study works with three species mainly it’s the Forster's terns, American avocets and the black-necked stilts, and these are the Forster's terns. So, we are basically nest monitoring, finding out if mercury is affecting their nest success. Narrator They are fitted with an identifying leg band and measured. Feather samples are taken to test for mercury and then the young birds are released. These terns are fish eaters. The fish in their diet are also collected and tested for mercury. Scientist Oh, That’s interesting. Joel Shinn, Biological Technician, USGS, Western Ecological Research Center On the mudsuckers they’re extremely slippery, there’s no scaling that you can feel with your hands and their eye’s are a little bit further apart than the gobies, which you can see are right on the top of it’s head. Narrator Details on contamination throughout the food web are crucial to understanding the condition of the evolving habitat. Music, Ambient Sounds Narrator The scientists are working to learn how an exploding gull population is impacting other birds in the area. The picture is not good. They have placed radios for tracking on 62 gulls. Each day they use telemetry to locate the birds. A fixed tracking station in the gull colony records when the wired gulls enter and leave. Angela Rex, Biological Science Technician, USGS, Western Ecological Research Center We’ve ringed the South Bay in garbage dumps so we’ve created an artificially high population of California gulls. But we’re thinking that the study will show what they do when they have chicks to feed because they change to more local, more natural food sources. So the predation rate on the native population which are already being stressed by habitat loss in the area and numerous other stressors now on top of that we’ve added this incredible predator that’s going in. And we found that last year 70 percent of the avocet chicks in the neighboring ponds ended up here. And only one of them lasted five days, the rest were gone in two. Music, Ambient Sounds Narrator In addition to tracking the gulls the team is using laser-triggering nest cameras to monitor the nests of stilts and avocets. Each time a parent bird or predator approaches the nest, a short segment of video is recorded. The scientists visit each nest camera bi-weekly. Removing memory cards with recorded video and replacing batteries. Images from the cameras reveal a wide range of animals feeding on the eggs and young. It’s gulls, skunks, raccoons, ravens, foxes and more. Under these conditions prospects for the native nesting birds including stilts, avocets and terns are not great. John Takekawa As we restore the areas, the gulls have come in making it a little more difficult to predict the response of the birds we want. So the migratory shorebirds may be able to breed in this area as they have in the past or they may be consumed by the gulls who actually come in and raid their nests and have affects on the young chicks that are bred in this area. Music Narrator Just as the nest study of shorebirds and terns led to the revelation that gulls are a growing problem, the wide variety of science under way here provides crucial input on choices, questions and uncertainties. Steve Schwarzbach What we need to achieve though is a whole landscape-level restoration. The right mix of habitats. They have values now. What are those values? What are the tradeoffs? And because you’re working and manipulating with so much of the system, you really need to have predictive models to tell you what will happen, and then you need to go out and ground truth those models for water movement, hydrology, salt, sediment and the response of wildlife. Steve Ritchie We’ve already seen numerous changes in the system as we’ve just re-plumbed the ponds to stabilize them so we can go forward with our restoration. But when we look out 50 years or so, we will have restored thousands of acres of tidal marsh here in the South Bay. So, we’ll have recovery I believe of the California clapper rail and salt marsh harvest mouse. We’re also going to have a vibrant set of wildlife out in the old pond areas. They won’t be ponds any more, it will now be really a wildlife refuge that will also have a number of trails going into it so that people can actually access that and experience that, which is so critical here in the urbanized Bay Area. At the same time, we will make sure that we build in flood protection as well for Silicon Valley. So those three things together. A vibrant natural system out there that people can get to and yet doesn’t pose a threat to them in terms of flooding. Narrator The sudden availability of these salt ponds is really a great moment in Bay Area history. A reversal of the trend of eliminating wetland habitat. As the understanding of the overall system evolves, challenges and uncertainties are inevitable. Science is there to provide some practical clarity to the process. Music Montage Narrator If early results are any indication, quality of life in the Bay Area will only get better as the salt ponds transform into more natural habitat. Greg Shellenbarger This restoration is the largest restoration in an urban environment ever undertaken. And so, it’s been very exciting because the knowledge on how to restore a salt pond to tidal wetland or as a managed bird pond -- these questions are really unanswered as of yet. John Takekawa We’re really kind of stepping into new ground in restoration. And that is that restoration activities like these haven’t occurred widely in the past so we’re kind of learning as we go, but the more we kind of ground it in basic sciences and understanding, providing information that helps to guide the decisions, the more likely the decisions will be the correct ones. Dave Schoellhamer It’s the interaction of the hydrology, the chemistry and the ecology that’s really driving a lot of the resource management issues out here and what the Fish and Wildlife Service and State Coastal Conservancy need to know to best manage the restoration and achieve their project objectives. Steve Schwarzbach The fact is that an early investment of science in assessing how to best restore the ponds will pay big dividends for decades and generations. The End Music

Narrator:

San Francisco Bay is truly an urban estuary. A great body of water surrounded by over 8 million people. One of the bay's distinguishing features has been the brightly colored salt ponds in the North, and particularly in the South Bay. These ponds were created in the past 150 years. Their function, simply to produce salt. Each pond has a slightly different salinity hosting either algae or tiny animals such as brine shrimp.

Recently a group of partners including conservation organizations, the State of California and the Federal Government have purchased 10,000 acres of salt ponds in the North Bay and 15,000 acres in the South Bay. The goal is to restore these areas for natural processes to take hold. What has been a closed system for salt production will be reshaped with plants and animals in mind.

Steven Schwarzbach, Science Center Director, USGS, Western Ecological Research Center

About 80 percent of the tidal marshes in San Francisco Bay have been lost. They were lost to fill, they were lost to diking off for farm lands, they were made into salt ponds. The salt ponds that are ringing San Francisco Bay now, those ponds are between 50 to 150 years old and have been used to make salt. They represent this great opportunity now that they are in the public ownership to become the restoration template for San Francisco Bay.

Music Montage thru title

Wetland Revival

Steve Ritchie, Executive Project Manager, CA State Coastal Conservancy

I’m Steve Ritchie and I’m the Executive Project Manager for the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project. A collaborative effort working with numerous state and federal agencies and private outfits to try to restore 15,000 acres in south San Francisco Bay to tidal habitats like they once were. And certainly one thing we know is that nature will not respond exactly as we predict. Therefore, that’s why we really have to pay close attention to it. And that’s where science comes into the process. Adaptive management is the process by which we will allow science to inform our management decisions as we slowly modify the landscape over time. We actually are really running a huge-scale experiment here in South San Francisco Bay, and the opportunity to learn from that is immense.

Narrator

A number of agencies including a diverse group from the USGS (United States Geological Survey) are providing the crucial science that is needed to keep this restoration on track.

Steven Schwarzbach

It’s really a great example of integrated science and what USGS can bring to bear with biology, hydrology and geology. We’re mapping, we’re measuring, we’re modeling, and we’re observing systematically the birds, the fish, and the invertebrates. So, we have a lot of different scientists coming to bear on these questions of how to restore these wetlands.

Narrator

The initial purchase and restoration of salt ponds in the North Bay in 1994 has formed a sort of testing ground for guiding present work in the South Bay.

John Takekawa, Research Wildlife Biologist, USGS, Western Ecological Research Center

We have learned a lot from working in the North Bay salt ponds about how change in the ponds may alter their ecology. So, we’re learning about how if you open levees, how the differences in the pond bottoms and how the pond may fill up and become vegetated will change, and hopefully those experiences will help us learn about what will happen in the South Bay salt ponds as they’re restored also.

Eric Mruz, Wildlife Refuge Specialist, US Fish and Wildlife Service

The way Cargill ran it is that it was one big system. So they would never discharge any of the water back into the slough. So, they would have one intake they would funnel water all the way through these salt ponds and then as the salinity would get higher and higher into their concentrator ponds where they would extract the salt from it. So what we did is we broke it up into several smaller systems with all these intakes and discharges to funnel fresher water through. And what we’ve found is that the shorebird and waterfowl numbers have been increased by 100 percent, already, 120 percent in some ponds. So, you can tell that we’re starting to get fish in here we’re starting to get a lot of fish-eating birds in here. So, basically before that, there was only a few species that ate the brines, brine shrimp and brine flies.

Music – while title displayed

California Clapper Rail Habitat

John Takekawa

We’re also looking at the California clapper rail which is an endangered species and only found in the Bay Area primarily because the habitats that were lost -- the tidal marshes -- are its home. And what we’re trying to do is look at how the recovery of these may actually improve the populations of this species.

Narrator

The California clapper rail rarely flies. It forages for things like clams, snails, sometimes dead fish and even mice. They scour tidal flats and very shallow water, always with plants nearby for cover. The tidal marsh it calls home is one of the primary habitats being added back by the restoration. Illustrated graphically here the process of creating tidal marsh depends on the tides carrying in huge volumes of sediment to form a foundation where the marsh can develop and thrive.

Music

Bruce Jaffe, Research Oceanographer, USGS

Right now I’m beyond my knees in mud, I’m in a side channel to Coyote Creek, and the only reason that I’m here and not underwater is because it is at a very low tide. The tide range here is 10 feet or more and 6 hour ago if I had been here I’d be under water by about 3 or 4 feet. What you see over here is the tidal marsh surface that’s at the level of the highest tides. And the importance of all this is that when the tides come in they bring sediment and that is what is going to fill up the salt ponds and bring them up to the desired level where then they can be colonized by vegetation and turned into tidal marshes and create new tidal marsh habitat.

Music

Narrator

The team has used airborne surveys call LIDAR, sonar from boats, and sediment sampling to show where sediment is in the bay and how it moves around. The data are combined to form models that are used to forecast the outcomes of various changes to the system. The models are refined as the restoration moves forward.

Bruce Jaffe, Research Oceanographer, USGS

Another bit of uncertainty is what’s going to happen with climate change. In particular global sea level rise. Is there going to be too much stress on the system as the demand for sediment increases? Because when you raise the water, what has to happen for restoration to be successful is you have to put in enough sediment to keep up with the rise in the water. And so, that’s a big question. Its tremendous volumes of sediment. Just form the tidal flats alone it could be on the order of about 50 million cubic meters. That’s 50 Super Domes in New Orleans filled with sediment. Just an incredible amount of sediment.

Narrator

Water moving sediment is the key to this process. Throughout the bay and salt ponds water’s role is varied and dominant. The life struggling to survive here depends in many ways on the water, the water quality and the tidal forces at work. The existence and gate to raise and lower water levels in the pond add an unusual ability to control water flow of the overall system. Here the scientists are collecting data on just how much water is passing through the gates from the pond into South San Francisco Bay.

Greg Shellenbarger, Research Hydrologist, USGS

To do this we use an acoustic Doppler current profiler, which is a long name for a small instrument.

Narrator

It is measuring velocity or speed of the water and at the same time tracking the bottom. By towing the device back and forth in front of the discharge pipes, they can calculate how much water is passing through. This information has been crucial for developing the model that is used to determine how much water is likely to pass between the ponds and the bay.

Greg Shellenbarger, Research Hydrologist, USGS

The managers of these ponds need to know the volume of water entering South San Francisco Bay so that if there’s anything in the water in the ponds they can calculate how much of that is actually entering San Francisco Bay. Whether it’s a lack of oxygen in the water or if it’s phytoplankton, or perhaps mercury, or anything else that they might be interested in.

Narrator

Water enters and leaves the system through daily tides. Fresh water passes down the surrounding landscape through creeks which become sloughs and wind out into the bay.

Dave Schoellhamer, Research Hydrologist, USGS

Up these sloughs are some very large water treatment plants that put out very clean water. But it’s still a major issue we have to deal with. For instance, the big fresh water inflow into South San Francisco Bay during the summer is from the water treatment plants because there is no natural runoff during our dry summers. So, this is a very highly altered landscape, hydrologically. Also chemically, with the pollutants that are put in here by the existing urban area and by past practices. Upstream from here is the New Almaden Mercury Mine, which was at one point the largest mercury mine in North America. And the mine tailings from that can put quite a bit of mercury into these soils and into these sediments out in these sloughs.

Narrator

Here, samples are being collected for water quality and sediment load. Regular sampling of this type is taking place in all of the sloughs entering the South Bay.

Scientists speaking
Gauge heights 4.53 come down…

Narrator

This work takes place from land or from boats. This way water samples cover the entire system, from upstream urban areas through the intertidal zone.

Scientists speaking
PH 7.36

Narrator

All the way into the Bay.

Scientists speaking
DO is 5.68

Narrator

Details of exactly what is travelling in the slough water and how much water is flowing are the kinds of data that help build the models of the overall system

Dave Schoellhamer

And so one of the things we’ve done is develop a numerical model of the Alviso Salt Ponds that we see here that looks at the water level's salinity, water temperature of the ponds so that the resource managers can use that model to manage the ponds to provide the optimal habitat for migrating birds. So that we may have fewer ponds, but they’ll actually be managed for waterfowl and not for salinity.

John Takekawa

Well, we have both terrestrial marsh birds but also a lot of migratory birds that come through in the winter and through the migration periods. And those birds, a lot of them are shorebirds and waterfowl that use the Bay Area as a stopping point on the way north and south from the breeding grounds.

music

Salt ponds again have been here a long time, so salt ponds are part of the environment that have been here over a hundred years so they’re not exactly a natural habitat but they’re certainly a long-term habitat. We just don’t understand what will happen if they disappear all at once so what we’re hoping is to have a phased-in approach of change where we can look at what value they have for natural resources including migratory birds. And as we do change, we’ll be able to adjust for the differences as we lose these habitats that have been here for quite a long time.

Narrator

Studies of shorebirds and terns are providing an important window into the overall quality of the salt pond habitat. Mercury washed down from the upstream mine tailing is of particular concern. It is toxic to fish, birds and humans. Part of the research focuses on reproduction. The scientists set out to determine the health of eggs and the young.

Voice of Angela Rex, Biological Technician, USGS, Western Ecological Research Center

We go out into any of the nesting areas and we take a lot of equipment with us, and when we get across to the islands we walk them very slowly looking for all the nests.

Field Audio
Egg number one

Angela Rex

When we come to a nest, we float the egg because there’s this little air pocket at the top.

Narrator

The air cell in the egg grows larger as the embryo develops. Based on how the egg floats, the scientists estimate stage of development of the egg.

Angela Rex

And once we’ve aged all of the eggs and numbered them all, we put a little bit of flagging to mark it but not a lot because we don’t want predators to find our nests. And we track them. We go back once a week and we see how the nest is progressing.

Narrator

They collect a few eggs to determine the mercury content and to get a close look at how the embryo is forming. They check the bill and the other appendages and confirm their age approximations before sending it off for mercury analysis.

Music

Narrator

As the chicks hatch the team's work becomes a bit more exciting and difficult.

Funky Music

Narrator

Here they are collecting Forster’s tern chicks, many of whom are close to leaving the nest for good.

Funky Music

Scientist
One Fifty, weight

Sara Stoner-Duncan, Biological Technician, USGS, Western Ecological Research Center

So we work with, the study works with three species mainly it’s the Forster's terns, American avocets and the black-necked stilts, and these are the Forster's terns. So, we are basically nest monitoring, finding out if mercury is affecting their nest success.

Narrator

They are fitted with an identifying leg band and measured. Feather samples are taken to test for mercury and then the young birds are released. These terns are fish eaters. The fish in their diet are also collected and tested for mercury.

Scientist
Oh, That’s interesting.

Joel Shinn, Biological Technician, USGS, Western Ecological Research Center

On the mudsuckers they’re extremely slippery, there’s no scaling that you can feel with your hands and their eye’s are a little bit further apart than the gobies, which you can see are right on the top of it’s head.

Narrator

Details on contamination throughout the food web are crucial to understanding the condition of the evolving habitat.

Music, Ambient Sounds

Narrator

The scientists are working to learn how an exploding gull population is impacting other birds in the area. The picture is not good. They have placed radios for tracking on 62 gulls. Each day they use telemetry to locate the birds. A fixed tracking station in the gull colony records when the wired gulls enter and leave.

Angela Rex, Biological Science Technician, USGS, Western Ecological Research Center

We’ve ringed the South Bay in garbage dumps so we’ve created an artificially high population of California gulls. But we’re thinking that the study will show what they do when they have chicks to feed because they change to more local, more natural food sources. So the predation rate on the native population which are already being stressed by habitat loss in the area and numerous other stressors now on top of that we’ve added this incredible predator that’s going in. And we found that last year 70 percent of the avocet chicks in the neighboring ponds ended up here. And only one of them lasted five days, the rest were gone in two.

Music, Ambient Sounds

Narrator

In addition to tracking the gulls the team is using laser-triggering nest cameras to monitor the nests of stilts and avocets. Each time a parent bird or predator approaches the nest, a short segment of video is recorded. The scientists visit each nest camera bi-weekly. Removing memory cards with recorded video and replacing batteries. Images from the cameras reveal a wide range of animals feeding on the eggs and young. It’s gulls, skunks, raccoons, ravens, foxes and more. Under these conditions prospects for the native nesting birds including stilts, avocets and terns are not great.

John Takekawa

As we restore the areas, the gulls have come in making it a little more difficult to predict the response of the birds we want. So the migratory shorebirds may be able to breed in this area as they have in the past or they may be consumed by the gulls who actually come in and raid their nests and have affects on the young chicks that are bred in this area.

Music

Narrator

Just as the nest study of shorebirds and terns led to the revelation that gulls are a growing problem, the wide variety of science under way here provides crucial input on choices, questions and uncertainties.

Steve Schwarzbach

What we need to achieve though is a whole landscape-level restoration. The right mix of habitats. They have values now. What are those values? What are the tradeoffs? And because you’re working and manipulating with so much of the system, you really need to have predictive models to tell you what will happen, and then you need to go out and ground truth those models for water movement, hydrology, salt, sediment and the response of wildlife.

Steve Ritchie

We’ve already seen numerous changes in the system as we’ve just re-plumbed the ponds to stabilize them so we can go forward with our restoration. But when we look out 50 years or so, we will have restored thousands of acres of tidal marsh here in the South Bay. So, we’ll have recovery I believe of the California clapper rail and salt marsh harvest mouse.

We’re also going to have a vibrant set of wildlife out in the old pond areas. They won’t be ponds any more, it will now be really a wildlife refuge that will also have a number of trails going into it so that people can actually access that and experience that, which is so critical here in the urbanized Bay Area.

At the same time, we will make sure that we build in flood protection as well for Silicon Valley. So those three things together. A vibrant natural system out there that people can get to and yet doesn’t pose a threat to them in terms of flooding.

Narrator

The sudden availability of these salt ponds is really a great moment in Bay Area history. A reversal of the trend of eliminating wetland habitat. As the understanding of the overall system evolves, challenges and uncertainties are inevitable. Science is there to provide some practical clarity to the process.

Music Montage

Narrator

If early results are any indication, quality of life in the Bay Area will only get better as the salt ponds transform into more natural habitat.

Greg Shellenbarger

This restoration is the largest restoration in an urban environment ever undertaken. And so, it’s been very exciting because the knowledge on how to restore a salt pond to tidal wetland or as a managed bird pond -- these questions are really unanswered as of yet.

John Takekawa

We’re really kind of stepping into new ground in restoration. And that is that restoration activities like these haven’t occurred widely in the past so we’re kind of learning as we go, but the more we kind of ground it in basic sciences and understanding, providing information that helps to guide the decisions, the more likely the decisions will be the correct ones.

Dave Schoellhamer

It’s the interaction of the hydrology, the chemistry and the ecology that’s really driving a lot of the resource management issues out here and what the Fish and Wildlife Service and State Coastal Conservancy need to know to best manage the restoration and achieve their project objectives.

Steve Schwarzbach

The fact is that an early investment of science in assessing how to best restore the ponds will pay big dividends for decades and generations.

The End

Music

Wetland Revival

The role of science in restoring south San Francisco Bay's salt ponds to wetland habitat

www.SouthBayRestoration.org

Wetland Revival

California Clapper Rail Habitat

The End