Interview with Maui Marine Scientist Darla White

by Amy Fonarow

This interview was conducted on March 9^th, 2017.

While acting as the Special Projects Coordinator of Maui’s Division of Aquatic Resources, marine scientist Darla White met to chat at Sip Me – a local coffee shop in Upcountry Maui – to talk about her efforts to promote coral reef health, what it’s like to be part of the island’s scientific community, and what thrills her about fish.

Darla is now the Disaster Services Analyst for Pacific Disaster Center and co-coordinator for Eyes of the Reef on Maui, but the enthusiasm and information she shared with me in 2017 as is just as relevant – if not more so – today.

Fonarow: Hi, Darla! Thanks for meeting with me. I see that you’re big into, well, all kinds of stuff! What do you like about fish?

White: Everything. The more I learn, the more fascinated I become.

When I was getting my scientific diver certification out at Catalina Island, we were sitting in the kelp forest doing our little exercises, and this school of fishes comes through and just kind of hung with us like a bait ball, and it was the most mesmerizing and enchanting thing. It’s . . . I can’t even explain it. You just have to be in it.

I love predatory fish, so I almost went into research on marlin, but ended up just snowballing in the ciguatera work I was doing throughout my college career.

I chose ciguatera as the subject of my senior thesis, and I’m also interested in nearshore fisheries, so it was kind of a way of contributing towards that. I got to work with fishermen, and learn a whole lot about it. It went really well, and I kept getting funded. (Both laughing)

[Ciguatera] is the number one seafood poisoning in the world, so it affects a lot of people, especially those in the tropics who depend on fish as their primary source of protein. A lot of the research really goes towards the development of an indicator test kit for people to use to determine whether the fish they catch is going to make them sick. The thing is, the toxin itself is found in such minute amounts that it’s very difficult to get enough to work with. And it’s toxic at a very, very small level. It takes 0.1 parts per billion to make somebody sick.

Fonarow: Wow!

White: Yeah, that’s Pacific ciguatoxin. It takes more than that for the Caribbean ciguatoxin. I did my undergraduate thesis, my research experience for undergraduates, and my master’s thesis all on ciguatera.

Fonarow: And what did you learn?

White: Well, I learned that not much has changed over the past 50 years. (laughing) I found hot spots at Midway, and the ROI roundups provided fish for testing which Fish for Science mapped and showed a really big hot spot at Olowalu: about 60 percent of those fish were hot. It kind of averages about 20 percent across the islands, so 60’s big. It all boils down to the ecology of the dinoflagellate – the single-celled algae that produces the toxin. You can’t see it, so it makes it very difficult to study. We’d go out and collect it, filter it, and grow it. 

Fonarow: And then what?

White: Then you try and raise them in the lab, and get them to produce the toxin. It’s one of the bigger frustrations. Most of the time they would not produce a toxin in culture, so that means it’s some environmental driver, but like Dr. Hokama, who’s one of the leading ciguatera researchers in Hawaii – he’s retired now – he spent many, many years trying to figure out what those drivers were, to no real avail. Endless questions, endless . . .

As part of my thesis, because I was characterizing the toxin throughout the archipelago, I got to go on research cruises to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands! 

Fonarow: I was going to ask about that. I was wondering, “Can I start with that?” I’ve always wanted to go!

White: If you ever get a chance to go, do it. It’s beyond words, how magical that place is. 

As a biologist, I have a very varied background, because it’s all interesting! I really got interested in coral disease with Dr. Greta Aeby on my first research cruise in 2004. I went on a bunch of those cruises, and that’s indirectly how I ended up being the Eyes of the Reef coordinator for Maui.

In 2008, the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force meeting was in Kona, and one of my best friends in the whole world was staff for the Task Force out in Florida, and so I just went over to meet her and hang out on the Big Island, and I didn’t realize that “Oh, anybody can go!” [to the Task Force meeting]. It was amazing, and then my boss and the Kona folks could not make it to a climate change and coral reef workshop, so they asked if I wanted to go, and I’m like, “Oh, yeah! (laughing) Of course I do!!!”

That’s when I met Dr. Mark Eakin, the director of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch. They produce satellite predictive tools for coral bleaching based on sea surface temperatures. They’re not only great people, but they build amazing tools that help managers understand what’s coming their way, you know? That’s when I learned a lot about climate change and coral reefs, and just kind of made it my mission to tell everybody about that.

Fonarow: And when did you start the Eyes of the Reef?

White: Eyes of the Reef was officially born after a long process in 2009. It was part of a directive by the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force in 2002 to each of the U.S. jurisdictions with a “list of known problems” to create local action strategies to address these problems. So, the Eyes of the Reef is the community – or first responder – component to Hawaii’s Rapid Response Contingency Plan. It encompasses climate change and marine disease as well as an invasive species local action strategy. Greta Aeby was the coordinator for that local action strategy or LAS.

Fonarow: You said there was a list of problems they came in with . . .

White: There were of number of problems that were identified – I actually have a list, and it’s online, too. Everything from overfishing, land-based sources of pollution, climate change, marine disease, overuse, people not . . . there’s another way to say it, but, people not being informed.

Fonarow: It’s impossible for everyone to know everything all the time. Nobody would be an expert, and I’d have no reason to talk to you.

White: Like they say, you never stop learning, right?

The LAS’s all came with funding for coordinators, and that was a really productive process. Since then, there have been a lot of congressional budget cuts, and so things have changed a bit. Instead of spreading the money too thinly, and getting things done here and there but no real moving forward, the state decided to prioritize sites, and put together what little money there was to create successes in priority locations. On Maui, that’s Kahekili, which is north Ka’anapali. We called it Kahekili because of the beach park, and it confuses locals. Locally, it’s called “Airport Beach.”

The Division of Aquatic Resources that I work for has three things they are legislatively authorized to do: create MPAs, restrict gear, and set bag and size limits. This was the first time that fisheries management has ever been used to save a reef.

Fonarow: Wow! In America?

White: In America, some say in the world, but we don’t really know.

Fonarow: Nice job! While snorkeling there, I’ve thought that the reef looks amazing and huge – much more expansive than others at beaches accessible to tourists. (I notice Darla wincing at my bubbly take on the area.) Okay, I know I’m a layperson, so you’re the expert, but um . . .

White: There’s less fish than there should be. And that was one of the supporting data points behind making this an herbivore fisheries management area, because compared to Marine Life Conservation Districts – which are our only proxy for what is an intact system – the parrotfish population at Kahekili was 10 to 15 percent of what you’d find at MLCDs, so we know it’s overfished, because the habitat is great. One of the reasons we focused there was because the habitat can support fish life; it’s still in pretty decent shape even though it’s taken a really hard hit.

Fonarow: Can you explain reef resilience and recruitment pulses, plus the successes and challenges taking place in your incredible project at Airport Beach?

White: We got really lucky with Kahekili. Right at the beginning of the designation of the fisheries management area, there were two large recruitment pulses of the larval young-of-the-year [the baby fish] – that were ready to come out of the water column and settle on the reef. We got to watch them grow up in the KHFMA because they weren’t being harvested, and the ones that were there, we got to see them get bigger, too, and now we’re seeing larger size classes, because they’re not being harvested.

Size matters when it comes to fish, right? They eat more algae, (excited laughter) and that’s the whole point. 

Fonarow: And they lay more eggs, right?

White: Yes! Exactly! The larger ones are the reproductive stock, because as a fish grows, it’s putting a lot of energy into that growth, and when it becomes larger, it grows much slower, and a lot of that energy that was going into growth now goes into reproduction.

Fonarow: Oh! (applauding)

White: Yeah, it’s an exponential increase in reproductive capacity, which is fantastic, and not only are there more eggs, but the babies swim faster, they survive longer – they’re fatter, basically, because they have more food stores. They can escape predation better; they’re just more fit.

Fonarow: More likely to survive.

White: Yes, it’s a “fish-eat-fish” world. It’s an everything-eat-fish world. (Both laughing) Parrotfish, especially – they getto a decent size so they can actually escape predation. The little ones are fish food, but the bigger ones are really hard to catch!

Resilience is basically talking about coral reef health. The healthier a system is, the more likely it’s going to be able to fend off stressors – both locally and globally. It’s the local stressors that we’re killing them with, but they need to be healthy for the global stressors that we have less control over.

Recruitment are young-of-the-year that are coming from a “seed source” location. Most of the critters on the reef spawn, right? They throw their gametes (eggs and sperm) into the water column, and the magic happens. That’s what we call a “source,” and where they recruit out of the water column and onto the reef is called a “sink.” We know Kahekili’s a sink, which is great, so it’s coming from a source. Darla pauses expectantly, practically buzzing with excitement.

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Fonarow: Where’s the source?

White: Good question! (laughing) The US Geological Survey (USGS) has done so much work to look at this question around Maui Nui. For five years in a row, they deployed drogues at the same time as the coral spawned. Drogues are commonly used in oceanographic studies, and are comprised of a float with underwater sails that move with the currents. Surface currents and the currents below the water can act quite differently. From the model studies done by USGS, it looks like Olowalu is a large contributing source to all of West Maui and Molokai. This is the reason you may have heard Olowalu called the “Mother Reef.”

Fonarow: If you think about it, as a tiny, tiny fish, that’s a long way! 

White: Yeah. Currents help them out, but the larval forms have a lot of vertical movement, and then take advantage of the smaller currents called Ekman spirals, and thus have a lot more control over where they want to go, which is pretty cool. 

Fonarow: How do they decide where to go?

White: Chemical cues. Sound. We’re still learning a lot of these things, but we do know that corals respond to chemical cues, and science has learned in recent years that sound matters, especially to fish.

You can hear a reef! It’s quite loud.

Fonarow: I heard that reefs are like forests in that they’re louder, you know, at dawn and dusk. Is that true?

White: That’s a very good question. I don’t know. But, Dr. Marc Lammers and his PhD student Max Kaplan can answer that question; they have the EARS project here. They record audio sounds on coral reefs on Maui and around the world.

Fonarow: Okay, this probably won’t be in the final interview, but just for my own understanding, the Division of Aquatic Resources and the Department of Land and Natural Resources . . . Is DAR a division of DLNR?

White: Yes, DLNR’s the department, and has ten divisions, of which DAR is one. We’re the management agency for the life in the water from the high tide to three miles out. DAR created the herbivore management area at Kahekili Beach Park. I was hired in the first place as a coordinator for that effort, and part of that position was putting together an amazing group of volunteers to collect data on herbivore grazing pressure – by species, by size, by what they’re eating. We had a five year amazing effort; we’ve got some real rock star data collectors out there in the community. That data has actually been used by a number of researchers – both locally, and for comparison to other regions as well.

As Special Projects Coordinator I also coordinate with our partners – other agencies’ researchers who are doing work in the area. They’re great people doing great science, and I’m personally having a great time being a part of the collaborative effort. We have this group called the Maui Coral Reef Recovery Team, and we’re actually meeting tomorrow!(“Tomorrow” in this case was March 10^th, 2017.) 

Fonarow: Oh, you are? Excellent! What are the objectives of that group? And what’s your role on the team?

White: So, we’re multi-stakeholder. We have lots of expertise from scientists, fishermen, water quality, County, EPA. There’s a lot of technical expertise, whether in science or culture or fishing–

Fonarow: Cool! Like the advisory council for Papahānaumokuākea, and like the Maui Nui Marine Resource Council?

White: MNMRC actually facilitates the MCRT. The Chairperson is Dr. Bob Richmond, and if you Google him, he’s a pretty amazing guy – he’s the Director of the Kewalo Marine Lab over on Oahu. He used to be at the University of Guam. He’s done a lot of work with corals and sedimentation. He’s done a lot of work with the community. We have everybody from like, Dr. Eric Conklin, who’s the Marine Director for the Nature Conservancy, Manuel Meija – he does a lot of community co-management work, and Dr. Eric Brown – the marine ecologist. He’s been on Maui for forever, and he’s actually on Molokai as the marine ecologist for the national park at Kalaupapa. Oh my gosh: Wendy Wiltse from the EPA, Russell Sparks, Dr. Alan Friedlander – he’s the chief scientist for the Pristine Seas initiative with National Geographic as well as the Ocean Tipping Points project, and I mean – the list just goes on like that. (laughing) Dana Reed, she’s our clean water person. And we have recently John Gorman, from the Maui Ocean Center.

The team acts sort of like a mini U.S. Coral Reef Task Force for Maui and Hawaii, and right now we’re doing a lot of supportive measures for the Governor’s 30 by 30 initiative, that he announced at the International Union for Conservation of Nature meeting.

DLNR Chairperson Suzanne Case also supports the initiative. The plan is to put 30 percent of our marine resources into network “better managed areas” by 2030 – for the longevity of our marine ecosystems as we move into warmer and more acidic oceans. It’s quite the process, because you need to understand what the ecology needs, and you need to understand what the people need. You need to understand where you can have successes – realistic successes, and find those sweet spots.

Fonarow: And so that’s what everybody talks about? To decide where the sweet spots are?

White: Well, it’s a bigger process, but, there’s a lot of synergy behind ensuring the longevity of our marine resources into the future, through the eyes of reef resilience. It’s like, “Where are these resilient spots? How do we create this network of connectivity, where we have sources and sinks feeding each other?” And, when you allow fish to grow big and old in protected areas, they are the reproductive stock that goes outside of those areas, and seeds everywhere else. And so you can actually design it so that you’re getting the maximum dispersal. 

You can seed places, and if we have a major bleaching event, you know, all of your eggs aren’t in one basket (both laughing) – quite literally! 

And the Community Marine Managed Areas are a huge component of this, right? Having communities take ownership of their marine resources is critical to the survival of these resources as we move forward. It’s been just a beautiful process.

It brings communities together, and they learn a lot about the resource and then figure out what’s important to them, and they really take ownership of it, and it’s a really beautiful thing to watch, because then, everybody, like, gets it. Everyone gets that the management agencies are not trying to take away; we’re trying to create more. Fishermen, managers, Hawaiians: we all want the same thing – more fish for the future in better, healthier ecosystems, and DAR is doing that through the lens of resilience; creating healthy places that will stand the best chance with some of the global threats. Does that make sense?

Fonarow: Yes! Absolutely. 

White: Good! Actually, you can get your own, self-paced certificate from reefresilience.org.

Fonarow: Kahekili was chosen as one of the few places to keep looking at. Why is it a unique place, in the world?

White: The reef at Kahekili Beach Park had seen almost a 50 percent decline in coral cover in ten to fifteen years’ time, so that’s a really short amount of time for an awful lot of coral loss, and a lot of other factors played into that. As I mentioned before, it had the structure to support fish life. That’s a really big deal, because you need that three-dimensional city. We knew that there were algal problems, we knew that there was a reduction in herbivores, and we knew that the invasive algae that were there were not just edibles for fish, but they were preferred edibles. The fish really like that stuff! 

There was also a stack of literature that says if you have enough herbivores, you can really help balance it, even in a nutrient-rich environment. Also, it’s in an area that’s a high resort area. Even as accessible as it is, it’s unique, as far as the human community there. A lot of things lined up.Russell Sparks, my boss, he’s from Maui, and he did the culturally appropriate thing: he went to the fishing families from the area, and talked to them, told them what we knew, what we wanted to do, and got their support, because they understood what we were trying to do – target the herbivores to do what we call their “ecological services” – you know, eat algae, we need more of them to do it! We know we have a nutrient input in the site: the water from the Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility injection wells pumps right out there on the reef – a number of studies [one at link] have demonstrated this.

The injection well water adds to the nitrogen, and fresh water, which is localized acidification – and there’s a variety of cascading effects from that, as well, but (as an aside) some of that new science is coming out very shortly.

So, Russell went to the families, and we had a lot of support by-and-large because we weren’t shutting it all off. The fully protected, no take, marine protected areas are not as palatable as they should be. I just say that because the benefits outweigh the costs, and this particular area has buffer zones on each side; so any fish that recruit to the area are going to have a really high site fidelity and probably not wander off. 

We’re not closing the refrigerator; we’re just trying to keep it running and healthy and stocked. And if you have more herbivores, you’ll attract more carnivores. And fishing is not only allowed, but is encouraged. That’s the whole point – to make it good for everybody, as shoreline protection, for snorkeling, diving, fishing, etc.

But with the new rules, explaining what herbivores are and which fish they are was challenging, so the Ka’anapali Makai Watch was created, and Liz Foote coordinating that effort was a huge deal – she’s amazing. Under the Hawaii Coral Program, which focused the money on priority sites, Puakō was designated one on the Big Island, and Kahekili on Maui. We showed a lot of success, so in 2011, the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force designated West Maui a priority watershed for the Pacific, so we have Tova Callendar as our West Maui Watershed Coordinator, working on land-based mitigation efforts to hopefully stop a lot of the things that are impacting the reef. 

Fonarow: The point source pollution, sedimentation . . .

White: You’ll hear fishermen say all the time, “What about the land-based sources of pollution?” And it’s like, “There’s that, too! Yes, absolutely!” This is meant to help address that. There’s a watershed plan in Hawaii.

Hawaii’s still kind of behind the curve on watershed plans. Having this plan means that it is now eligible for funding to help mitigate those problems. For West Maui, you get in there, do it, work out some of the bugs and hopefully, it can be used as a model throughout the state. 

Fonarow: Is it being used as a model now?

White: Well, there’s a lot of challenges – especially on the land-based side of things. You’re dealing with major landowners who sometimes say they want to be a part of it, but are not always there when their participation is needed. And there’s very real issues, like, with the County. If you install these stormwater baskets, then they actually have to have trucks and people who drive them and run the program. There’s always maintenance, and so you actually have to build that into the future funding. And that’s always challenging. Even building a rain garden to help naturally filter out pollutants before they hit the ocean is no small task, but the community totally wants to be involved. 

Liz is actually coordinating the West Maui Kumuwai Campaign, where the community can get involved to do plantings and stuff like that. They’ve got that little white board where you write down your pledge, and you take a picture of yourself. “I promise to . . . always wash my car in the yard, or to not reproduce, or to buy ocean-friendly products, etc.”

Fonarow: You’ve mentioned the challenges that exist, and I would like to know how you personally . . . keep going. How do you keep your enthusiasm up? Stay stoked?

White: Because I love these ecosystems, I’m passionate about them, and I know – we have the knowledge, we have the tools. We. Can. Do this. I mean, it’s going to be a different world, and I’m not here to paint anything rosy.

The stressors are big, and they will come more often, and it’s going to be a big challenge, which is why it’s SO urgent and important to really change our mindset, and take action – change our behaviors. 

That’s the tough one; some people go very extreme and like, “Oh! Don’t drive a car!” and it’s like, no. Just reduce your energy usage. You can reduce your energy usage from 10 to 50 percent actually incredibly easily. And not only that, it’s going to save you money. And not only that, it’s going to save our environment. And all these collective actions of people changing their behaviors in small ways – just by fractions, can really buy our corals time.

They’re amazing, hardy, adaptable creatures. We’ve been treading on them so hard for so long, and they’re having some trouble hanging in there, but – if you remove the stressors, then they are incredible at rebounding.

Fonarow: Wonderful!

White: But we would need to buy them time, and all of those things that buy them time save us money, so I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be doing that. By-and-large the number one thing we need to do is reduce our CO2 emissions – the most important thing that needs to be done to save coral reefs. A lot of that has to do with our energy usage. Cutting back on that and supporting renewables saves us money.

Single-use plastics? Stop it! Just stop it! They photodegrade, they end up in the food chain. It’s not healthy for any of the wildlife. Don’t do straws. Don’t do lids. Carry your own stuff around with you; it’s okay.

There’s a lot of very small ways that collectively, we can make a big difference. At the end of the day, we need our legislators to make the big changes, and our current administration is dismantling all of it, so we have to resist that, too.

Fonarow: How are you resisting it?

White: It’s just such a farce. I’m like, “Seriously? You’re undoing a, a century of work.”

Fonarow: I know. I called Representative Gabbard and left her a message: “Can you please vote against the bill to . . . completely dismantle the EPA?”

White: The environment is so important, and so many people are just not connected to nature. People live in cities, and they just don’t come in contact with it, but your food does not come from Safeway, it comes from nature.

We need clean water, clean air. We need ecosystems intact for them to thrive . . . especially the ocean. A lot of people don’t understand that 50 to 70 percent of the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean. And we need a healthy system to keep that going.

Fonarow: Really? 50 to 70 percent? How does that work?

White: By planktonic photosynthesis. The tiny single-celled plants in our oceans – diatoms and dinoflagellates – give off oxygen through photosynthesis that uses the energy of the sun and takes in carbon dioxide. Just like a tree, but vastamounts. It’s the carbon cycle at work!

Fonarow: So, as humans, where do we really fit in on this planet that we share?

White: Oh, we’re such an invasive species. We’re going to have to really change our ways, and become a part of the ecosystem. Instead of “intensive agriculture,” we need “extensive agriculture.” What will we do to feed back into the system?

Where we take, we need to replenish; we can’t borrow without giving back. And the more people we have, the more we need, and you know, that’s an issue, too. It’s a big one. We’re the problem, but we’re also the solution.

Fonarow: And where do you fit in?

White: I’m just trying to do my small part in science. There are so many questions to ask, and the science is actually bringing us closer to answers that drive solutions.

I also like to communicate the science to decision makers and the public, and hopefully try and work on a little bit of that education component. Most people don’t have their head on a reef most of the time, right? So one of my favorite things is taking people in the water. We call it the “Snorkel Tour,” (laughing), where we take people to actually visually see what it is to fix an ecosystem, and then try to comprehend how much effort is going into it.

The best way to fix an ecosystem is not to break it in the first place. A lot of folks get really excited about coral transplantation and stuff like that, and those are all good efforts, and there’s a lot of reasons to follow that line of research, and DAR actually has a really good program doing that on Oahu, but it’s not realistic to expect you’re going to get anything larger than a football field without many, many millions of dollars.

So . . . take care of what we have. Because we actually have a lot. And there’s a lot worth saving. I’m hoping that my small contributions will add to the larger team effort.

Fonarow: I appreciate everything that you’re doing to educate, to find more information, and just also . . . the hope that you infuse into it all.

White: Thanks! The problems are large, but unless you start working on them, they’re not going to solve themselves.

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About Amy Fonarow

Science communicator Amy Fonarow distills concepts both scientific and environmental by producing interviews, articles, videos, and presentations that engage, inform, and energize diverse public audiences.

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This piece was prepared online by Panuruji Kenta, Publisher, SEVENSEAS Media