The swashbuckling biologist
Shipwreck explorer, deep sea enthusiast, conservationist... Marine Biologist Michael Barnette is the adventuring scientist we all dreamed of growing up to be. He even has his own Wikipedia entry! Listen in as he tells us about the mysteries he's uncovered at sea.
Many thanks go to Michael Barnette for his time and great stories, and to Hadleigh Ford who produced the song "Wishful Thinking" featured in this episode.
For this podcast, we ventured away from home and enjoyed the hospitality of the Three Birds Tavern in St. Pete.
We experienced some electrical problems with our equipment, so apologies for the crackling on this one... just imagine it's the sound of new neural pathways forming!
Episode transcript
Parmvir: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back. We have the usual crowds: Raphael who's been battling this evening to get the sound to work. So thank you very much for that. We also have Angela, David and Arturo and this evening's guest is marine biologist Mike Barnett. Hey, Mike, how are you doing?
Mike: Good. How are you doing?
Parmvir: Glad to be here. So what we usually do is start off by asking you how you ended up doing what you're doing.
Mike: I'm a marine biologist just working for the National marine Fishery Service, which is a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) . Since I was little, I always knew I wanted to be a marine biologist.
Yeah. Since I was young kid watching John Cousteau and all the nature series on PBS and Attenborough, I've always known. So it's a, there's been no question as far as the direction I want to take in my life. My current portfolio is with the protected resources division. And I primarily work with endangered species.
Parmvir: Parts of your work actually involves the protection of sea turtles. Can you tell us about that aspect?
Mike: Sure. One of my primary responsibilities is working in fisheries, bycatch reduction of sea turtles. And one of our main objectives is reducing sea turtle bycatch and shrimp trawls. And what we've done over the years is modify the gear.
You know, the primary gear we're talking about here is trawl gear, which is used to harvest shrimp. We've realized that we can basically modify the gear with a turtle excluder device. What that is, is a grid you put in the mouth of the net, say a ramp where the shrimp go through the bar, spacing back of the net.
And the turtle hits that grid easily. They're directed up or down to a little trap door, in the net, so it can be released. So that's reduced the bycatch mortality of sea turtles and helped to contribute to the recovery of these species. One of the neat aspects of my job is I do a lot of foreign work because sea turtles are a global species.
Our fishermen here in the US shouldn't have to bear the burden of the conservation objective. So as part of fair trade people that want to import shrimp to the US had to play by the same rules. So we as TED experts, Turtle Exclusion Device experts, we go to these foreign countries. And when they import shrimp to the US we do a technology transfer.
We educate them on TED's. We've done that in the past 20 years. And then every year as Congress mandates us to go down there to inspect their fleets, to make sure they're playing by the same rules. They have an effective program. So either they get embargoed or they're certified to import shrimp to the US so I go all through Latin America, South America, Africa, Australia. It's a really neat niche that only couple people in our office get to do. And I've been fortunate enough to land in that that job. And it's been quite interesting
Parmvir: As far as marine biology goes in general, we were talking about how there are kind of parallels with space exploration.
Mike: Yeah, that's a very good point.
There is a lot of analogies between outer space and inner space. And there's a lot we just don't know past, say 150 feet. Recreational divers can cover a lot of shallow waters. We know quite a bit about nearshore, estury and waters and things of that nature. But when it comes to the deep ocean, it's basically largely unexplored.
There's a lot of technology, thankfully, just as it's helping with outer space research, it's helped with the interspace and deep sea exploration with ROVs, which were remotely operated vehicles. We also have AUVs. And the difference between the ROVs and AUVs is that ROVs are typically tethered. Whereas the AUV is, the "A" stands for autonomous.
They basically can be pre-programmed to go out and run surveys on their own. And then when they've completed that survey, they'll come to the surface to be recovered. So the vessel doesn't have to be onsite the whole time. So it's a lot more cost-effective. So there's a lot of new developments that are helping, and this is all scientists not just biological it's geological it's it's. I guess one of the surprises as I've got into marine sciences and is how little we really know about the ocean and you know how we exploit the ocean. You think that we would want to know more about it to do it responsibly. And usually it's an afterthought. Hopefully we can change that paradigm there a little bit. And the design. So we are more well-informed of what we're doing in the marine environment.
Parmvir: Yeah. I think I've always thought it very strange that anybody would kind of rely on a species for their, their kind of their living. And then for example, with the fish, they just fish things to extinction. But one of the other things I wanted to say was. With regards to the deep sea exploration. Do you think there are any kind of crazy beasties down there? I mean, I'm sure there are absolutely maybe hundreds of thousands of species that we know absolutely nothing about, but do you think there's anything kind of like big down there?
Mike: I don't know about big. Well, actually we do know there some, some big critters out there that we're finding, we're finding more and more about these deep water squid species and other molluscs out there, but there's, there are some, definitely some beasts out there. And it's, I'm not necessarily meaning large, but you have to understand these organisms have adapted to grow in a very hostile environment. There's no light, the pressure is extreme. You know a lot of these have bioluminescence. I mean, they almost look like science fiction and you've seen The Abyss or Avatar James Cameron, a lot of those, those critters that he's developed are actually based on real marine organisms.
Parmvir: So, this is not technically related to marine biology, but this is possibly one of the most fascinating, kind of, parts of having you on here as a guest is your hobby looking for shipwrecks. I mean, who does that?
Mike: Yeah, we're, we're a crazy bunch. I mean, we go out looking for piles of rusted metal, which if you saw on the side of the road, you wouldn't think twice about it. But for me it really gets me stoked because we're talking about time capsules. I mean, some of these wrecks have been down for hundreds of years and you could be the first person to lay eyes on this vessel since it basically dropped from the surface of the ocean. And, you know, everything is laying there. You can see personal effects on it. It tells a story, a tragedy. I mean, just the drama and the loss. In large part, these wrecks, we know that it was lost on such and such date, but that's it. Or sometimes we know it disappeared in route from say New York to New Orleans. But we don't really know what happened. And sometimes by looking at the wreck and investigating the wreck, you can put those pieces together to tell the, the story of the final moments of this vessel and the people that were aboard. To me that's what I find most gratifying is trying to identify all these lost shipwrecks.
The marine biology aspect of it is, you know, these are little ecosystems. A lot of times you're on the bottom of the ocean. It's just like a barren wasteland. And then you have this little oasis, the habitat that organisms can utilize for food and for shelter. So for me, it's, it's several different dimensions that are very appealing to me.
Parmvir: How many kind of wrecks do you think there are off the coast of, well, let's start with Florida.
Mike: Wow. To put a number on it. I mean, we don't really know for certain because a lot of times, especially say pre mid 18th century when we didn't have a lot of colonies, we never lost settlements along the coast of Florida. The ship wrecked.
If there were no survivors, there's no story to tell. You just knew the vessel didn't make it back to Spain or England or wherever it was going. So we're talking about thousands. I mean, if you want to put a number on it, a lot of times like when these vessels were coming across the Atlantic, again, we knew it departed let's say Liverpool on such and such date and it was intended to go to Boston or New York and never showed up. We don't know where it is. It could be 10 miles off the coast of the United States. It could be in the middle of the Atlantic for all we know. There's no debris, no survivors, just a mystery.
Parmvir: What do you think is to you personally, the most interesting or exciting thing that you've ever found about one of these wrecks?
Mike: That's a tough one because I always find something that just blows me away or knocks me over on each new wreck. We actually found an aircraft several years ago, that was a coast guard rescue aircraft, 1950s. There was a Mayday vessel sinking off the panhandle of Florida, and it was a amphibious aircraft. As the US coast guard came out Bay Borough here, here in St. Pete. Well, it was dispatched to go rescue these guys, and they dropped a watering pump down to them. And in the process, they ended up crashing and they found one guy, but the rest of the crew, the plane was never found. And we stumbled upon it just a few years ago in the process of trying to document the site and everything, I got to know the families of the crew men. I just found that just, it was very moving because here we have rescuers that turned into needing rescue. Then the families that just never knew what happened to their loved ones, it just shows that the coast guard puts it on the line. And sometimes pay everything for it, you know, for our wellbeing. When I'm a hundred miles off shore, it's nice to know that someone's there to save your ass, to be blunt about it. So, yeah,
Parmvir: Mike and the rest of the group here, have actually been having a little bit of chat before the podcast started. And you were talking about the aspect of your work that requires a fair bit of fundraising. And this is something that people don't necessarily think about when they think about science, they just say, okay, well we go into the lab, we do the work, but of course the money has to come from somewhere. And where does that come from in your, your field?
Mike: Well, for my personal pursuits, you know, aside from my personal job responsibilities, I worked with a lot of my colleagues that have their research interests. We do a lot of volunteer work, whether it's specimen collection or documentation. But then there's also a lot like the shipwreck research or other marine biology pursuits that aren't really in my job title or job responsibility, we try to find grant work, or we do crowdsourcing things of that nature.
Because a lot of times we're talking about field research, which is not usually cheap because in the Gulf of Mexico, sometimes we're going a hundred miles offshore, obviously with fuel prices these days it's getting more and more expensive, and we're trying to find other avenues to, to share that burden so it's not coming out of our pockets.
For example, one of our pursuits, we're doing some diving off the West Florida shelf, about a hundred miles off the Tampa Bay. We're talking about an area rarely explored by recreational divers because of the depth 200 to 240 feet of water. Get a few dives there just to get wet. And we came across this area of unique species of coral called Oculina varicosa, which is the common name is ivory tree coral. And it stark white, which is unusual because most coral species, when they turn white, usually they're dead, but this is it's white when it's alive. So it's opposite of what you would typically find.
It's also a deep water species, which, most corals are shallow water, you know, where the light is, down to maybe a hundred feet or so, no one really knew anything about this. We knew the species was randomly found throughout the Gulf of Mexico, but this is an area where there was abundant growth. The only other place we knew it occurred was on the East coast of Florida on the central East coast, Florida all four piers to Cape Canaveral called Oculina bank.
I mean, there're several objectives. One, we want to map his habitat to see how extensive it was. Cause what are the odds we go in, the only place it was found, I mean, it could be going from miles or tens or hundreds of miles up and down this break. We also wanted to sample the coral to see their relationship to other colonies of this Oculina coral on the East coast.
Well, so we, we looked internally through my agency, my employer, and that came up empty. So we looked at other avenues and we ended up working with some commercial fishermen, actually, they basically donated their vessel time to take us out there to this area. And we recovered some specimens, the coral, I worked with some colleagues at LSU in Louisiana to do the genetic work. And as it turns out the species that is genetically identical to the population on the East coast of Florida. So that was several new finds was one, this habitat area existed at all. And then two it's genetically identical to the stuff on the East coast. So that was kind of a gratifying accomplishment.
Parmvir: So is there a big difference in the, the habitat of that coral on the, the different shores and is it then surprising that you actually see this on both sides of the Florida coast?
Mike: Yeah, that's a very good question, because on the East coast where Oculina thrives in these big thickets of coral, look like big bushes, of tumbleweed, that area it's, it's very dynamic. You have usually subjected to high current two or three knots of current, temperature variations is, it can be anywhere from 80 degrees Fahrenheit down to 48 degrees Fahrenheit at any given time. So it's radically dynamic, whereas in the Gulf, it's a little more stable. So the growth pattern is different. Whereas on the East coast, you have these massive thickets that form to basically try to break down the current, it grows from the inside outwards. In the Gulf, it's more, just encrusting where you have maybe a half a meter high, but then it grows everywhere. So it's different strategies, I guess, the way they try to adapt to live in those areas.
Parmvir: So do you also notice different species living within the coral or is it too early for you to look to have looked at this aspect?
Mike: We've actually seen some parallels between the two areas of the species that co-exist in the coral. I mean, it's. So there's habitat for other species and you have all these little branching, colonies of coral and Anthias and all the little fish, they get out there to avoid predators. And you also have a lot of vertebrates, little brittle stars. So there's a lot of similarities there, but it's just, it's more of the environment the coral exists in versus the utilization of it, coral itself.
Parmvir: Excellent stuff. So now we'll move on to some questions that we have from people listening. Now with regard to the conservation of the turtles. Well, what I have here is, I didn't know this was the case. Why should we care?
Mike: Why should we care? I mean, there's intrinsic value to these species, you know, being out there, whether it's, you know, just being able to view them and knowing they exist and also, yeah, they, they do form useful services. I mean, they are part of the food chain and actually they used to be part of the diet for a lot of Floridians back in the day. That was a very big fishery in the Florida keys. And actually there are people today that really would like to see them recover so they can fish them again. I hope that doesn't happen. I think they have more value out there. And I don't know if they can sustain what we did to them back in 1800s.
I mean I guess the most direct answer to that is, you know, every species that we lose is one closer to us. Do we really want a world where it's just human beings and asphalt? I hope not. That'd be boring.
Parmvir: So are they close to extinction? I mean, I don't know where they are on the scale of being endangered.
Mike: All the, all the sea turtle species that we have in US waters are either considered threatened or endangered as far as their proximity to being extinct I think we're, we're definitely a long way away from where we were in the 1970s. I mean, for example, I mean, the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, which is at one point point we were down to maybe five to six hundred nests globally of these species because they utilize the Gulf of Mexico. They nest in basically certain areas of Mexico and along the Texas coast. And they were on the brink of extinction. It would have been very easily, another five, seven years. And they would have been blinked out. I mean, to the point where they just wouldn't be able to reproduce and sustain the population, they would have collapsed, you know, whether genetic bottlenecks or whatever. But thankfully we had a lot of actions that tried to reverse that course and that trend and whether it was, you know, protecting the nesting habitat and protecting it from Parvis, from poachers, from local coyotes or raccoons and things, they needed to basically shelter them, the nests, cage them out, reared, them out until they could get back in the water. We also had a lot of fishery management changes, primarily TED's: Turtle Exclusion Devices to try to reduce the impact of our fisheries.
We've done that for other fishers as well, like the longline fisheries. We have lighting ordinances here in Florida, trying to allow these turtles to nest without causing all sorts of problems, that lighting issues, where they wander into the streets and get run over by cars. Thankfully, we're definitely in a much better place than we were two, three decades ago. And we're seeing all the species Leatherbacks are kind of lingering a little bit, but we're seeing Loggerheads are on the rebound. Kemps really have gone, they've gone ballistic. Which is just a huge success to, where we're basically looking at the next five to seven years, potentially downlisting them from endangered to threatened.
So yeah, in our lifetime, we're looking at these some of these species, potentially being downlisted or removed entirely from the endangered species list, which is it's major considering where they were, you know, only 20, 30 years ago.
Parmvir: So we have a question here from Austin. It would seem that some consider the deep sea, the last frontier still to be fully exposed. How much of the ocean do we really know about in terms of biology and ecology? So would you say 50%, 75, 25%?
Mike: I think you're, you're off by several orders of magnitude there. We we've barely scratched the surface. In the, in the sciences, a lot of times, you know, it's dated science and we're constantly trying to get better information, especially when it comes to deep water environments.
So maybe 10% really. I mean, there's just so much out there in the open ocean that it could be species that are pelagic species, but deep water pelagic species that you just never would encounter unless you're in the middle of the Atlantic somewhere say 2000, 3000 feet. There's so much, we don't know. We don't know what we don't know. I think is probably a fair way to assess that.
Parmvir: Inquiring minds would like to know what you think the biggest difficulty in becoming a marine biologist is.
Mike: Probably the biggest difficulty in becoming a marine biologist is finding a job, to be blunt. I mean, to give you an example. I mean, there was. At university, I mean, we, marine science was a pretty large discipline at the college I went to, the University of South Carolina and of the graduating class. I knew probably 40 or 50 people that were close friends and maybe 10% of them are still in that field. It's something you have to do your, do your time, really to do, you know, you start off being a technician, getting at the time, five, six dollars an hour working your way up. Yeah, it's not a glamorous field.
It's, I've had a very interesting path, you know, going from college to field technician to doing inland and marine resources, so I've got fresh water as well, as marine resources trying to diversify a little bit, and then doing fishery management again, $25-27,000 a year, which isn't, wasn't a lot of money back then. Definitely not a lot of money now. And this is, 20 years ago. Then sometimes luck plays a part in it. I ended up getting a job working for Ted Danson of yeah, of Cheers fame, yeah. He had an environmental organization called American Oceans Campaign. Basically, you know, lobbyists up on Capitol Hill. So it was totally different going from science in the field of science to management now to policy.
It was interesting to see that aspect of the business, I guess I would thought of business, but just seeing that aspect of how science is utilized and sometimes misutilized to make a point and make policy and regulations. But it was still, again, it was a novel experience. And then coming down to work for the National marine Fishery Service now doing more, more science oriented than policy. It's been a long, strange trip.
You just have to, you have to want it and keep, keep with it. If you're a kid and wanted to be a marine biologist, you want to be Jacques Cousteau, you gotta stick it through. And so that's, that's where I am now. Thankfully, still doing the job that I love.
Parmvir: This person would also like to know if you have any advice for aspiring book authors, that's from Arturo.
Mike: To your question yeah I've, I've published three books on Florida maritime history and shipwrecks and also write for several magazines. And I guess my biggest piece of advice is definitely if you have any inspiration, write. Just do it. Unfortunately, the book industry is, is. Anyone knows print media, is on its last gasps, which actually opens up new paths. I mean, for, for, you know, eBooks now, you know, it's, it's more and more easily accessible to sell, publish, and to put stuff out there to your friends using social media.
But as far as you know, the becoming a New York times bestseller. Yeah, I think that's an antiquated notion. It's it's a different, different world now.
Parmvir: Well, there you go for the budding authors. Thank you so much, Mike for coming out and speaking to us this evening, the lovely music was produced by my friend Hadley Ford.
And it's a track called "Wishful thinking" inspired by the quotes of Carl Sagan. Thank you so much to the Three Birds Tavern for hosting us. It's the best scotch egg I've had in a long time!
[Musical outro]
Mike: Is this family friendly?
Parmvir: Um not necessarily [laughs]
Mike: I was doing work, this is probably 14, 15 years ago, we were doing some dives out in the Gulf of Mexico. And we're doing deep dives, you know, we're going 240 to 250 foot. This is, you know, that's kinda moderate depth, but if you're down there for 30, 40 minutes of that depth, you have to decompress, which means your, as you ascend through the water column, you're stopping at certain depths and spending time there, to off gas, get rid of inert gases that build up and your, your system. And if you don't and you surface too quickly, you can, you have decompression illness, called the bends. Which can be crippling. It can be, it can lead, you can be paralyzed. It causes a lot of problems you want to avoid at all costs. Well in between dives I was, I didn't used to have the best diet practices and I was just snacking on these fat free Pringles, which anyone knows one of the, one of the ingredient is olestra, which is yeah,had some really interesting side effects. I won't repeat here, but if you are interested and curious, look it up, Google it. So I went after eating quite a few of those. I went into a dive and had a great dive. It was fantastic. And coming up and I'm, I still got about an hour and a half ago and my stomach, all of a sudden decided to rebel against me.
And it was vicious. It hurt so bad and it was something vicious was just. Something was brewing and it was, it was only getting worse. And as I got shallower, I'm looking up and wondering, should I screw it all and just get bent or just try to grin and bear it. And it bears saying that I had three other friends on the water with me and they knew I was not doing so well.
And it finally got the point where it was, you know, I want to die and I'm hurting so bad. And I never thought I could do this in the water, but somehow was able to basically disgear, de-gear, myself, get my wetsuit down. And then. You had a volcanologist? Yeah, it was it was an eruption.
And my friends, my poor, poor friends in the water witnessing this and then realizing the current is taking it towards them. Is watching them just scatter. I mean they're scarred to this day. It was, it was bad, but then it was, oh, so good, and then just so embarrassing at the same time, it was just so many emotions going through my brain.
But when you gotta go, you gotta go sometimes, underwater, top side doesn't matter.
Parmvir: Here endeth the lesson!
Mike: I'm so sorry for that.
Parmvir: For future scientists. You guys have to top that story. If you're out there!