Eye on Science: What do a newspaper reporter, a surfer and a marine ecologist have in common?
They’re all the same person! Meet Chela Zabin, who works in California for the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.
“People always think I swim with dolphins and do research with coral reefs,” says Chela Zabin, a marine ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, in Maryland. Yet Chela’s work takes place far from the white sand beaches of the tropics. Furthermore, her work takes her beyond even SERC’s usual focus—the Chesapeake Bay watershed and the Atlantic Ocean shores of the East Coast.
Chela, who has been with the Smithsonian for almost 20 years, works with a team at SERC’s research station in Tiburon, California, (affectionately called “SERC-West”) trying to restore native habitat along the San Francisco Bay’s coastlines. In one project, Chela is working with Olympia oysters, the West Coast’s only native oyster, which is starting to find its way onto dinner plates as part of a niche, gourmet-market enterprise. The Olympia oyster is a foundational species in the Bay, as it has an outsized role to play in the local marine ecosystem, particularly in terms of providing habitat for many small organisms.
Clockwise from front: SERC scientists Chela Zabin, Jessika de Jesus, Corryn Knapp and Jeff Blumenthal survey the existing Port of San Francisco seawall in May 2022. (Credit: Maureen O’Malley)
For another project, Chela and her team are building and testing a “living seawall,” a spot of hardened shoreline composed of urban infrastructure abutting the Bay. The wall protects the coast from flooding and also serves as an effective base for plants and animals to grow. “We’ve worked a lot in the intertidal zone [the zone that’s underwater at high tide and above water during low tide] where people are riding bikes and walking their dogs. On the seawall project, we’re downtown where what we’re doing looks rather strange to people walking by.”
The strangeness is not lost on Chela, who was once one of those passersby, watching from the outside as scientists did their work. Before she rolled up her sleeves to focus on habitat restoration, she spent nearly a decade observing and reporting on her local community as a print journalist.
During the 1990s Chela lived and worked as a reporter in Santa Cruz, California. Even from the newsroom, she was attuned to the loads of marine research taking place in the region. “There were lots of opportunities for the public to learn about marine biology. I always loved nature, but I didn’t consider it as a career path for me.” But then, at age 30, Chela had a self-described “crisis” and decided to become a surfer. “I’m 62 now and it’s crazy to think I had a crisis at 30, but my way of reacting to that was to go do something wild and crazy—so I learned how to surf.”
Spending time on a surfboard led her to witness nature in a way she never had before. “Otters munching on sea urchins, seaweeds I had never looked at up close,” she recalls. Her interest in marine biology kept growing, and she began proposing stories at her newspaper that would let her work with scientific researchers and cover local environmental issues. Her environmental reporting led her to discover something new about herself: “I could see conflicts arising around environmental issues where I saw scientists communicating poorly with the public. I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to be more active in doing research—I didn’t want to just be someone writing about it. I didn’t want to go back to the newsroom. I wanted to be in the lab.”
Chela working on a project to make an artificial seawall more hospitable to native plants and animals. (Photo courtesy of Chela Zabin)
Chela ended up going back to school. She earned a second bachelor’s degree at UC Santa Cruz in marine biology and went on to complete a Ph.D. at the University of Hawaii. From there, she met Greg Ruiz, the director of SERC’s West Coast lab, and the rest is history.
Chela has spent the last two decades trying to restore the native ecosystem in the San Francisco Bay. It’s a long, arduous process that takes a lot of patience. We asked Chela to take the long view and consider whether she’s seen progress in those two decades. “You always wish progress was much faster,” she said. “Yet I feel like we’ve gained a lot of knowledge and we’ve learned a lot that will inform the next steps to doing restoration. Part of the long process is that it takes many years to understand the ecology and how things work the way they do.”
How does Chela maintain her patience? “It’s like being told a really long story. Imagine a novel: You don’t just read it to get to the end. You read each chapter and think about what you learned in each chapter. Sometimes, it’s like a mystery, or a whodunnit. You might have some red herrings among the clues and you might find path where you think you know what’s going on but then there’s a surprise in the next chapter where you have a new perspective because you have a new year of data. If you enjoy the read, you enjoy the process.”
To Chela, there’s always more to learn. “I think all of us who work in ecology realize there’s so many factors that can affect what we’re seeing and what we’re observing. There’s even sometimes so much basic information about the organisms that we don’t understand. We have to be humble and let the animals surprise us. You think you know something and then you learn something new, and you have to adjust. You learn something new and realize what you thought you knew was wrong. That’s the fun of it.”
In the meantime, passersby are still stopping Chela and asking her what she’s up to. “It’s good to stop and explain what we’re doing, gauge our effectiveness as communicators, and modify what we’re saying. I want to help cast a light on our work in a way that makes people care about restoring the San Francisco Bay.” If you find yourself strolling the shoreline in San Francisco, and you see a bunch of scientists wearing shirts sporting the Smithsonian logo, one of them is probably Chela. Don’t forget to stop and say hi!
Eye on Science, our new biweekly series, will shine a light on our vast and varied body of work by bringing Smithsonian science into sharper focus. Eye on Science will tell the stories of the people behind the research, the discoveries they make and their inspiration. We will explore their passions, celebrate their contributions, and look more closely at how questions become solutions that can inform environmental policy, spur technological innovation, and promote community and collaboration across the globe.
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Posted: 8 May 2024
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Categories:
Environmental Research Center , Eye on Science , Feature Stories , Science and Nature
