Bilinski Fellowships at Bodega Marine Laboratory 2022-2023

Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski’s life goal was to be “independent and challenged intellectually.” They strongly valued self-sufficiency, a sense of ambition, and above all, responsibility. Their legacy continues in their nonprofit corporate foundation that provides fellowship funds for post-secondary education for students who have demonstrated and will maintain both the highest academic achievement and good moral character.

 Bilinski fellowships  are awarded to outstanding doctoral students whose selected projects, based at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, exhibit innovation, collaboration, and are a key component of the student’s final dissertation. The 2022-2023 awardees featured here successfully bridged the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities in their projects. As a result, recipients were each awarded $25,000 to assist with tuition, stipend, and research expenses.

Graduate Group: Ecology

Alisha’s graduate research is interested in disentangling the independent effects of salinity and various parameters of the seawater carbonate system on shell building in coastal bivalves, which can be difficult for many to relate to in their daily lives. She enjoys using storytelling as a way to show people how connected we all are to coastal environments and their inhabitants. Alisha met John Harreld when she participated in BML’s AAUS Scientific Dive course, and found an unexpected sense of community when listening to John’s enthusiastic storytelling about nautical history, shipwrecks along the Sonoma Coastline, and the society he helped co-found to continue collecting shipwreck data.

Similar to the ‘unseen’ chemistry modifications occurring in the coastal ocean, prior use of the coastal ocean resulted in a seafloor littered with nautical history. Through the sharing of stories, a collaboration and friendship began. Therefore, for the Bilinski Fellowship, she decided to partner with John and the Sonoma Coast Historic and Undersea Nautical Research Society (SCHUNRS) to help translate data collected by SCUBA trips and archival searches, into stories that could foster greater connections between people and the parts of the coasts that are largely ‘unseen’ from the shore. She is lucky enough to have visited more than a few shipwrecks during her time as a scuba diver, and strives to share the excitement and history of local nautical legacies with others that may not be able to explore underwater.

Her stories come in the form of blog posts about a local shipwreck in Russian Gulch, CA called the Maggie Ross that is often talked about as a hoodoo ship, one that seemed to catch more misfortune than success over her four years at sea. After many conversations with John and studying his very thorough notes of the ship’s history and wreck site data, she drafted blog posts,  built a story site , and  mentored an undergraduate student through the Bodega Marine Lab-Santa Rosa Junior College internship program  to create an additional blog post, resulting in various styles of media content that SCHUNRS may use to tell the story of the Maggie Ross ship in the future.

Graduate Group: Population Biology

Claire is studying seasonal predation changes in eelgrass systems around Tomales Bay and Bodega Harbor. Her research, like many ecological studies, is inspired by careful natural history observations of a specific area. Likewise, artists often focus their work on the natural world around them and yet still manage to capture broad universal feelings and sentiments. For Claire's Bilinski project she will work with a UCD art professor to explore this connection between place-based ecology and art through a field trip based class for upper-division art majors.

Graduate Group: Population Biology

Karolina believes that experiential learning fosters lasting growth in students by facilitating hands-on connections of concepts in the field. As a Bilinski fellow, Karolina worked with Tomales high school teacher, Ms. Alison Sherman, to create tailored immersive tours of BML and BMR for freshman biology, marine science and AP environmental science students. Under the guidance of Bodega Marine Reserve steward, Luis Morales, and research coordinator, Jackie Sones, students traversed the Bodega cliffs and rocky intertidal zone to learn about land-sea connections, the impacts of diversity, keystone species, and historical land usage. In the lab, students met with White Abalone Captive Breeding Program members Blythe Marshman and Nora Frank to explore behind the scenes what it takes to conserve an endangered species. Finally, the Bodega Ocean Acidification Research junior specialist, Manny Delgado, gave students a tour of research spaces at Bodega Marine Lab in addition to showcasing a “Day in the Life” sampling of ocean water for ocean acidification research. Each tour wove together core ecological concepts with the humanities to reveal how integrated we are with our environment.

Graduate Group: Population Biology

Much of the value of science comes from disseminating research findings to a wider audience. However, few graduate programs in STEM contain classes about how to distill years of research into something that members of the broader public can understand. To help graduate students learn how to succinctly explain their research, Emily organized and participated in a graduate-level seminar at UC Davis that trained 11 graduate students to effectively explain their dissertation in the format of a short video that is accessible and engaging for a general audience. Ecology is a very visual field of research and ecologists often work in very remote, but visually stunning environments. Film is a way to bring an audience into the field or laboratory with a scientist, to learn more about the process and value of research. The class was led by Eric Sanford, a UC Davis professor and marine scientist, as well as professional filmmaker,  Grant Thompson . To end the course, Emily organized two  public film festivals , one in Bodega Bay and one in Davis, California.

Graduate Group: Ecology

Understanding the success of habitat restoration is vital for assessing past and future projects and gaining public support. A collaborative project involving researchers from UC Davis Bodega Marine Lab and Portland State University focused on tidal marshes in Tomales Bay, CA, gathering data on public perceptions and restoration, as well as environmental monitoring data from the Giacomini wetland restoration. Survey results showed that the community is knowledgeable and supportive of restoration efforts, with a particular interest in hydrological function, habitat for fish and wildlife, and sea-level rise resilience. The researchers suggest including social values, highlighting the importance of vegetation for habitat provision, and using marsh channel sinuosity metrics to communicate hydrological function and habitat availability for fish and other wildlife. Additionally, they recommend incorporating sea-level rise resilience metrics and conducting community surveys pre- and post-restoration to track human benefits and improve communication with the public.

Graduate Group: English

In a unique partnership with the Redmond Proficiency Academy (RPA) in Redmond, Oregon, George Hegarty developed and implemented “Blue Humanities - Ocean Stories,” an interdisciplinary oceanic studies course for high school students. Co-taught by Hegarty and RPA Humanities teacher Matt Killpack, the class, which emphasizes the ocean as a space for critical inquiry, is designed to encourage students to think differently in and beyond the classroom.

Working together as a ship’s crew, the students and teachers navigated three phases of learning over the course’s 50+ hours of instruction. Through studying various media, the first part of the class introduced students to various ways of thinking about and researching the ocean. Students then used that knowledge to collaboratively construct and report on a case study of a specific California coastal site, ranging from Salmon Creek in the north to Encinitas in the south. The class culminated in a trip to the Oregon Coast, where students visited Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center and the Newport Aquarium to learn from people who live and work on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

Studying various narratives about the ever-changing ocean required the students and teachers to assume an interdisciplinary approach to thinking about the challenges researchers face when considering the relationship between the ocean and anthropogenic climate change. Moreover, they were able to do so as research teams, which emulates the types of collaborations necessary to effectively explore the complexities of a rapidly heating planet. Hegarty is hopeful that the class will reach more learners at RPA and beyond, as the Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Fellowship has given him the opportunity to gather the audio and video footage that immerses students in their sites and to make the curriculum widely available online for instructors around the world.

Graduate Group: English

In 1579, English explorer and privateer, Sir Francis Drake, landed his ship, The Golden Hinde, somewhere along the Pacific Coast of North America. He named his landing spot Nova Albion meaning New England, and the writing around his landing gifts the Pacific Coast to the English Nation. Although the coordinates pointed to what is now Point Reyes, CA, the mystery surrounding where Drake landed continues to haunt the imagination of scholars and hobbyists alike. There are no direct accounts of Drake’s voyage and no illustrations—despite Drake being a prolific writer and map maker. The lack of first-hand accounts has opened up Drake’s exploration to a number of theories—some more plausible than others. The mystery of where he landed has continued to proliferate in the modern western imagination with, amongst other things, a hoaxed plate of brass and the Unchartered video games and movie based on an image of Drake as a buccaneer and rebel. However, the various narratives and fascinations surrounding his expedition have continued to distract from the harm caused by his landing.

Kirsten Schuhmacher’s project works explicitly against the desire to explore and uncover the “truth” of Drake’s expedition. Instead, it shows what we know based off of what we have, and works to illuminate all of the ways that we continue to experience Drake and his legacy. She has created an exhibition titled, California Albion, that is ongoing in its documentation of Drake’s imprints along the Pacific coast. For this project, she spent a good amount of time in Point Reyes and in Bodega Bay engaged in place-based learning. She also traveled from Point Reyes to Victoria, BC, stopping along the coast at many of the proposed sites of Drake’s landing. Ultimately, her project sought to shift the conversation from the question of “where Drake landed” to “how the ambiguity of his landing continues to enact colonial and ecological harm.” 

Graduate Group: Population Biology

Keira is a 4 ^th  year PhD student at UC Davis and the Bodega Marine Laboratory studying the impacts of climate change on coastal ecosystems. Growing up an avid musician, she has always been aware of and inspired by the emotions that music can elicit. As she continued in her scientific career, she also began to understand the complicated emotions surrounding climate change, ranging from despair and sadness to hope and inspiration. She wanted to bring together music and science to create meaningful compositions inspired by our ecosystems and impacts we have on the natural world.

She contacted Kai Maurer-Mabanglo, a UC Davis graduate and skilled composer, to collaborate and compose a piece inspired by climate change in our local coastal ecosystems. The piece incorporates “found sounds” from the environments on the UC Davis Bodega Marine Reserve and is comprised of three movements that capture the ebb and flow of emotions we experience when contemplating our effects on the ecosystems we love. The piece is accompanied by a video created by Kai, a 3D rendering of locations at the Bodega Marine Laboratory and Reserve layered over each other to create a hypnotizing representation of movement. About the piece, Kai says “My goal was to capture how the ecology of Bodega Bay is constantly reinventing itself to survive in the ever-changing land/seascape due to rapid environmental shifts. Entire systems are swept away and forced to rebuild from the remains of others. Organic and synthetic textures mix and create something wholly new in the search of comfort in a world that never stops moving."

The piece was played before the film festivals presented by Emily Longman (a Bilinski Fellow), Eric Sanford, and Grant Thompson in Bodega Bay and Davis. The piece was also played at the “Nicrocosms: Studies on scavenging and renewal” art exhibit curated by Tracie Hayes, another Bilinski Fellow.

Graduate Group: Population Biology

Nicrocosms: Studies on scavenging and renewal is an outdoor group exhibition showcasing the work of 9 artists engaging with themes related to the life history and ecological research on a scavenging beetle present at the site. Beetles in the genus Nicrophorus, or burying beetles, search for a small carcass that they then bury in the soil in order to reproduce. A pair of burying beetles will work together to defend the rare, ephemeral, and high-nutrient carcass from microbial competitors and other interested organisms. They bury the carcass together and the female will lay eggs nearby. Once the carcass has been protected, buried, and preserved, both parents use the carrion to feed their larvae when they hatch. In Tracie Hayes' research at the Bodega Marine Reserve, she uses experimental chambers in the field to investigate the effects of temperature, competition, resource quality, microhabitat, and fog regime on burying beetle reproductive success. She has been calling these chambers nicrocosms, after Paul E. Hopwood et al.’s 2016 paper in Ecological Entomology. In this paper, nicrocosm is a play off of microcosm or mesocosm, an experimental set-up used in ecology to run controlled manipulations in small spaces that are still relevant to and part of the natural world. The root cosm, though, holds an even greater weight, meaning “world,” “order,” and “universe.” In this way, each nicrocosm in the field encapsulates an entire universe: an answer to an ecological question, the life’s work of an unseen beetle, birth and death, and the passing of time.

This exhibition consists of works that serve as nicrocosms themselves, portals into the often overlooked and misunderstood world of scavengers. Burying beetles, in many ways, are the ultimate scavengers: they rely on and are adapted to a fleeting resource, and they play a crucial role in processing the dead so that those nutrients can be used again by the greater ecosystem. Whether using local and found materials, circular and sustainable processes, visual storytelling, or some combination, each artist provides a novel way to see and experience the living world we are within. 

Graduate Group: Hydrologic Sciences

From July 15th to July 18th, William Speiser and his collaborator, Jordan Benton, displayed their work at their exhibit titled “Coast In Color”, hosted at the Bodega Marine Laboratory. The exhibit was the culmination of their research funded by the Bilinski Fellowship, focusing on the coastal dynamics of Northern California.

Utilizing photography and computational analysis, Speiser and Benton examined the physical processes shaping the Northern California coastline. Advanced computer algorithms analyzed photographs and satellite imagery, isolating colors to quantify geophysical elements. Photography captured both short-term and long-term natural processes in areas of active study by labs at BML.

Photography and computational outputs were printed on large sheets of recycled acrylic and hung in the South Wind Courtyard of the Bodega Marine Laboratory. Animated by coastal breezes, these artworks furthered the dynamical theme of the exhibit as they swayed with each gust. Supplementary to the hanging display, audio and video recordings from areas surrounding BML were digitally enhanced and analyzed using computer vision and artificial intelligence algorithms. These played in the hallway leading to the exhibit, offering an immersive experience for visitors.