Season’s greetings COASSTers!
As we head into our next quarter century (!!), COASST is going strong even as we change with the times. Started in the era of ‘Covidity’, our online COASSTLite! trainings are now a staple of our program, with 21 sessions presented to over 80 participants in 2024. Another 136 people attended our 15 in-person trainings. Welcome all!
After almost 10 years, we’re sunsetting our marine debris program in favor of supporting the national debris program stewarded by NOAA and former COASST Science Coordinator Hillary Burgess. Don’t worry debris-ers! Your data have already been published in two scientific papers, we’re constructing a third, and – importantly – we are contributing the entire COASST marine debris dataset to the National Centers for Environmental Information to ensure its long-term accessibility and use in science and resource management.
On the creation side, our marine mammal project continues. This year interns Emma and Lexi amassed and catalogued hundreds of beached marine mammal photos, while Julia, Jackie and Charlie continue to be deeply engaged with marine mammal experts in the design of a new key. This coming year should feature COASSTer workshops to help us test, adapt and revise elements of our planned field guide. Stay tuned for an invitation from Allie to participate.
In research-land, 2024 was a great year for COASST scientific publications! A much-anticipated paper headed by Tim Jones (now with the British Antarctic Survey) detailing the COASST process of estimating the size of a mass mortality event “hit the stands” in the scientific journal Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. This work focused on the 2014 Cassin’s Auklet die-off, and estimates 400,000 birds (8-10% of the world’s population) died in that single two month event. Long-time COASSTers will remember the “daily survey” study on beaches surrounding the Columbia River; that tireless accounting of incoming carcasses day after day and month after month anchored our carcass persistence modeling effort.
Even more sobering is the Alaska common murre story published this year in the journal Science, and led by long-time collaborator Heather Renner from the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Remember our initial guesstimate that upwards of 1.5 million murres died in 2015-16? Wrong!! This colony-based study suggests the number is more like 4 million, or half of the entire Alaskan common murre population. Yeow.
Take heart COASSTers! We remain dedicated, as you are, to documenting and reporting these important ecosystem changes. Your commitment to the program, and to place, was documented in our third scholarly publication of 2024, this one led by long-time collaborator Ben Haywood, and published in Ecology and Society. Ben’s work showed that COASSTers connect to their beach through nature and the physical environment, but also through people and science. Moreover, those “non-nature” bonds strengthen over time in the program. Got a life partner, bestie, or grandkid you survey with? You know what we’re talking about.
Thank you for taking part in the efforts of our COASST community this year. We can’t wait to see what 2025 brings.
Happy Holidays!
Julia, Jackie, Allie, Charlie, and the COASST Interns
