 I'm Jess Burton, I direct the Southern Maine Conservation Collaborative and we are a network of 21 conservation organizations seeking opportunity to have greater impact together than each organization can have on its own. And so we focus on relationships, partnerships and connections and I am so fortunate to have a very good connection and relationship with our speaker tonight, Sophie. Sophie worked with us this summer as a communications associate and we really, really benefited from her time with us and I am thrilled to hear about this project that she was fresh off of when she came to the collaborative this summer. So Sophie is a Maine girl born in Bred, went off into the world and got all sorts of great experience and education and now is back in Maine to make this a better place in so many ways. So without further ado, I hand it to Sophie. Oh, I can't get this from here, no we can't. Thanks for coming. Hi. I can't really see any faces but that's all right. Good evening everybody, thank you so much for being here. I'm very grateful to have this opportunity to share my research with a broader audience. Over the past few years I've given talks on this subject a number of times but mainly to an audience of academics or stakeholders so I'm really happy to be sharing it with the quote-unquote general public. This is really important to me because I feel that science often stays in its own silo. So scientists present scientific academic, excuse me, conferences. Scientists publish their research in scientific journals that are read by scientists. It's a very carpenter, sorry I'm also kind of sick, we're just going to skip that word. So occasionally science can breach the quote-unquote general public if a scientific magazine picks up a journal article that was kind of interesting or intriguing or controversial and then maybe a publication that has a little bit of a broader audience will find that interesting and in this way kind of science will trickle down to this broader audience so more often than not what this means is that the community is generally unaware of scientific research that can be happening in their backyard. So to illustrate this point how many of you in the audience and I'm going to put a caveat on this because many of you already know me. So how many in the audience who don't know me were aware that surf research was happening in the Gulf of Maine? One, yay, excellent, so we reached one of you. But generally I think that if you asked a larger population of people, not a lot of people would know that this was going on. So I'm very happy to have the opportunity to share it with you. And this means a lot to me because I'm very interested in engaging people in science. I'm interested in science communication and science literacy. So I really want to take a moment to thank the Portland Public Library and the Southern Maine Conservation Collaborative who is allowing me to do all that and also for hosting this event. So thank you and without further ado, surf research in the Gulf of Maine. Before I dive into this I kind of want to set the stage a little bit and describe how I ended up studying surfers in Maine. It's kind of an obscure topic. And I also want to know a little bit about my audience. So how many of you here live in Portland? Is that almost everybody? Well, not Tom, but you live nearby and what about how many of you like to go to the beach in the summer? Everybody almost. Who likes to swim when they're on the beach? And when you go swimming at the beach, what beaches do you like to swim at? Call them out. Scarborough. Higgins. Scarborough. Crescent. Fortunes Rock. Fortunes Rock. Which one? Sandy. Right. So we have lots of recreational beaches in our area. And what about surfers? Are there any surfers here? Yay! Okay. I have some surf wax for you guys too for all the surfers you came. I thought I would be able to throw it, but I'm not going to attempt to do that. So believe it or not, and maybe a little bit tangentially, you all have a little bit of a personal relationship to this research. So my research was part of the New England Sustainability Consortium's Safe Beaches and Shellfish Project. And this is a project that focused on water quality in the Gulf of Maine with respect to shellfish fed and recreational beach closures. And I just want to take a moment to recognize my advisor, Dr. Shannon Rogers, without her this research would not have been possible. And she also co-authored two papers that came out of this study. So a little bit more background before we dive in. As I said, the New England Sustainability Consortium's Safe Beaches and Shellfish Project was how this research came about. And this was a regional sustainability science initiative that focused on bridging the gap between science and policy. And this collaborative work not involved all of these eight universities and spanned not only states and institutions, but also disciplines. So it was a very large group of people focused on this issue of water quality with respect to shellfish fed and recreational beach closures. This is just a very small subset of that group. So I had the opportunity to work with everybody from hydrologists to biophysical scientists, economists and communication scholars, and many different disciplines were involved in this research. And, oops, I didn't go. OK, so I mentioned sustainability science. So sustainability is a term that I feel that we throw around a lot without really describing it or defining it. So I'm going to ask you guys or try to ask you a bunch of questions throughout this. So who here wants to say what sustainability is? What does sustainability mean? Anyone? Come on. OK. I have to call one of my friends asked to tell me what sustainability is. Nobody? OK. Anybody? Preserving and protecting. Preserving and protecting. So you can think about maybe that makes me think of resilience and thinking about future generations. So I mean, this is the thing I think that all of us this and here we are at a sustainability series. I don't know if people are just shy or it's just such an abstract word that sustainability can kind of, we use it all the time, but it can be a little bit removed. And I think it's important because of that to define sustainability science. So anybody here want to define sustainability science? No? OK. So according to these academic journals, this is what sustainability science means. And I don't accept you to read all of this text, but what I do want you to notice is what I've highlighted here. And as you can see, it's this relationship between human and natural environments. And so the hip lingo in the academic world for this connection is social ecological systems. So I think that we're all very much aware that human, the human and natural world is really intrinsically linked in many, many ways. And it really is this relationship that is at the heart of sustainability science. Now this may seem very, very broad, the human and natural world and the relationship between those, the social ecological system. And because of that, to answer questions posed in sustainability science, you need a broad range of knowledge. It takes many, many disciplines to answer one question. And not just disciplines, but different knowledge systems. So sustainability science has to do with social ecological systems. So to answer that, you need to have some understanding of ecological knowledge. So ecological knowledge can be contributed to by all of these different types of knowledge. So there's scientific knowledge, there's traditional knowledge. I think of traditional knowledge as our lobstermen out in the bay who have been doing it for years. They have this knowledge just from their daily activities, their livelihood. Indigenous knowledge is knowledge that is gained from First Nations populations. And then we have local knowledge. People, because they're in a local place, have knowledge of an ecological system. And together, if these are all contributed to ecological knowledge, you get a more holistic or more well-rounded understanding of the local ecological place. So this is a term that I want to also define because we'll be talking about it a little bit later on. So the idea of local ecological knowledge is really the idea that when someone is inherently and intrinsically connected to a place, they gain an understanding of their local environment. So I hope that makes sense. And if it doesn't, I can define it now or provide more definition or I can move on. Does anybody want to? More. More. Okay. Do you want to ask me specifically how I could better define it? Well, sometimes I think of local ecological knowledge goes no further than, hey, Christ, I'm going to hook a trash out tonight. Right. Damn. Yeah. So it's more of just hanging out in a place just because you go to a place and you're there a lot. I mean, you can't say that you have, that person has local ecological knowledge to this extent. It really means being intrinsically and inherently embedded in this place. So as we move through this talk and we talk about surfers, I hope that it'll become more apparent what local ecological knowledge is. So I'm going to move on so that we can get into this gnarly surf research. So here we are, surfers in the Gulf of Maine. And just to recap and bring everything together, sustainability science, the study of social ecological systems. But more so, sustainability science is place-based. So water quality is a regional issue, but we're focused on water quality in southern Maine and New Hampshire with this project. Sustainability science is problem-driven. So we're having issues in our coastal waters at our recreational beaches because there's a threshold of contamination where when bacteria levels are above that, it's a risk to human health and safety. So we all want to have safe waters in which to recreate. And lastly, it's solutions-oriented. So you can see in this image here all the different types of beach users. Everyone from volunteers, from the stewardship network who are taking time out of their lives to clean up the beach. We all know we have a bustling tourist population that visits our beaches in the summer. And then also summer campers who use the beaches as a playground. And you all know the punchline already. Surfers are also an important stakeholder group in our coastal beaches in southern Maine and also New Hampshire. So why are surfers an important stakeholder? There aren't that many of them, right? Compared to everybody else who goes to the beach, maybe surfers are a small subset to that population of the larger beach-going population. However, surfers are also more vulnerable to water pollution than these other beach stakeholder groups. And this is for a number of different reasons. So surfers, even though they may be a smaller population of those visiting the beach, frequent the beaches more often than anyone else. They spend longer periods of time in the water and become fully immersed in the water. They are more apt to ingest water, get cuts and scrapes through which microbial pathogens can enter. And then probably most importantly is they also surf when the waves are the biggest during or after storm events. But during that time, the water quality is also at its poorest. So they're in the water when the water quality is not very good. And so surfers tend to be a sort of elusive group, but despite this, there has been some research on them. So what we know in the academic field is that surfers ingest up to 10 times more water than people who just go swimming in the ocean. There's also a study out of Oregon that found that there was a higher incidence of illness in surfers who participated in, quote unquote, risky behaviors. And these were surfing near an outflow, surfing during an advisory, and surfing during rain or after rain, rather. And then there's also a lot of evidence that surfers care a lot about their environment and even see themselves as stewards of the environment. And last, they play an important socioeconomic role in our community, which is evident through the number of surf shops up and down the coast all the way from here in Portland down to the mass border in Seabrook, New Hampshire. So this is what we kind of know already about surfers, and now I'll move on to what we wanted to find out. So we approached the study of surfers and water quality from the angle of risk perception and decision making. So generally, we wanted to understand what surfers consider to be risky, whether they consider water quality to be a risk and whether or not this impacted their decision to surf or not to surf. And I just am going to give a little something away. Just notice that in our research questions, we didn't ask about this local ecological knowledge. So I'm just going to put that out there, not give anything, not give too much away, but this is what we wanted to learn from surfers. Excuse me again, I'm sorry, I'm a little sick. So this is our study area. We focused on southern Maine and New Hampshire, seven beaches in Maine and five in New Hampshire. And as you can see, the closest one to us is Higgins and the farthest away is all the way down at the mass border in Seabrook, New Hampshire. And as you can see, these beaches are geographically close, but in this chart, this demonstrates that there is a vast difference in water quality. So the first column here is from a National Resource Defense Council report called State of the Beaches that came out in 2013. And B-A-V means beach action value exceedance. So this was the health level, the percentage of time where the beaches went over that level. So what they're worried about are bacteria that cause human sicknesses, so like E. coli, and there are fecal indicator bacteria that can be tested for that. So that's what they're testing for. And so in this report, they ranked the states with coastlines from cleanest to dirtiest. New Hampshire was number two, one shy of having the cleanest beaches in the 30 states with coastlines. What do you think, where do you think Maine landed on that list? Anyone want to take a guess of the 30? We were 27th. Three shy. And okay, so I just want to make a caveat. You talk to healthy beaches, they're great. They will tell you that there's a big difference in sampling. So in Maine, we tend to sample where we think we will get a positive, and not everybody does that. So that's the caveat. But in the second column, this is the number of beach advisories that were issued at our study beaches. So in New Hampshire, there were no advisories during our study period, which was made up October of 2015. And in Maine, there was a large range. We had zero at a gunkwit and fortunes rock, and then all the way up to 15 advisories in long sands in York. So there is a significant difference in water quality between New Hampshire and Maine beaches. And that's for a variety of different regions that we can get into afterwards if you guys want to talk about that a little bit more. But I just wanted to illustrate the point. And yes, who has the cleanest beaches of this year? I don't remember. But that report is pretty easy to find. There is one that came out in 2015. If you just Google state of the beaches, you'll be able to find that. I'm sorry I don't have that answer. OK, I'm not going to spend too much time on methods because I don't want to see any eyes glazing over. But I do just want to give you a little bit of understanding about how we answered our questions. So briefly, we did intercept surveys on the beaches, which involved going out to the beaches and asking surfers to participate in a survey. And also in-depth interviews with key stakeholders in the surfing community. So for our interviews, we approached 20 of these key informants. Oh, you're the best. Thank you so much. And we heard from surf shop owners, surf shop employees, regular surfers, a surf blogger, surf coach, and a member of the Surfrider Foundation leadership. And on the screen, you can see some of the types of questions that were asked. To answer these questions, we use two different methods. And again, I'm not going to go into a lot of what these mean. But very broadly, to disseminate, to take information from our interview data, which is basically just all of what everybody said written out, we read them over and over and over and over and over again. And grounded theory and length content analysis through that process, it allows the data really to speak for itself versus me looking at the data and saying, I want to find evidence of water quality and I'm going to go look for that. So the difference is, instead of going and searching for what you want, it emerges from the data. So the data speaks for itself. So it's just a more organic process. For our intercept surveys, again, we visited these 12 beaches in Maine and New Hampshire. The survey was designed to really take as little time as we could. Two to three minutes max. We asked 10 questions with some demographic information because surfers, they want to go surfing. They don't want to stand around to talk to us. But they were thanked for participating with some surf wax. So over the course of the summer, we successfully recruited 291 surfers to take our survey with a response rate of 90.4%. And again, with our survey data, we were able to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. And all that means is number data and word data. And so for the word data, we use the same sort of analysis that we did for our interviews. And for our number data, we use these different statistical tests to test for a relationship between different parameters. So I've given you a little bit of background. I've given you the rationale of why we decided to study surfers and how we approached our research questions. And now to really the interesting stuff. What did we find out? So who surfs in Southern Maine and New Hampshire? So as you can see, it's primarily a male-dominated sport, although we did have 20% women who responded to our survey. And this is supported in academic literature as well. So that wasn't a surprise to us. Also, not surprising because there's evidence of it, surfers in our study area were very highly educated. 67% of them had a bachelor's degree or higher. And this is contrary to some of the kind of popular culture connotations of surfers. So it's just something interesting to note. The average age of surfers was around 34 years old, but I just want to note that there was a large range. And though we didn't capture surfers under the age of 18, I came across many of them. And the surfer with the longest lifespan was almost 70 years old. So there are a lot of people out there participating in this sport. The average year surfing of 11 and a half may seem a little bit high, but again, I just want to note that there was a large range. I talked to everybody who was their very, very first time surfing to surfers who had surfed over half a century. And in the lower right hand corner, it's just where the surfers in Southern Maine and New Hampshire are coming from. So as you can see, they're mostly coming from Northern New England with some Quebecers thrown in there. One interesting thing that I do want to point out is that surfers who we surveyed in Maine, most of them were from Maine. So 60% of surfers we surveyed in Maine were from Maine, and the opposite was true of New Hampshire. So 60% of surfers who we surveyed in New Hampshire were not from New Hampshire. So that's just a little interesting thing that we found. So this is who surfs, what about what they know? So turns out surfers know a lot about the environment in which they surf. They have a lot of this. What do they have? Look at ecological knowledge. So this data is from the question, have you ever noticed anything in the water that would make you question its quality? Of which 40% of surfers said yes they had. And as you can see, surfers have a lot of knowledge about things that impact water quality. You can see runoff, sewage, rain, storm, wastewater treatment plants, all are big. And so the big words represent the amount of times that they were mentioned. So this demonstrates that surfers have a lot of ecological knowledge because they know about the factors that influence water quality. This is also clear in the interview data. Now this is a very, very busy slide, and I don't expect you to read any, all of it. But all it is are quotes that support this theme of local ecological knowledge in the surfing population and the interview data. So I just want to point out a couple of broader themes that contributed to surf for local ecological knowledge, which is stewardship. So because surfers are in the water all the time, they want to know about or they want to protect this environment. There's also a lot of evidence that surfers experience really drives this knowledge. And last, there's a lot of knowledge around the factors that impact water quality. And so for this particular question, we were interested in, because surfers are so highly educated, maybe they just have this knowledge because they're so educated. But when we ran a statistical analysis on that, there was no positive correlation. So this knowledge of factors impacting water quality is not coming from their formal education. Okay, so because we found this theme of surfers with local ecological knowledge, we wanted to test for it. So we as researchers thought that this was such a great valuable resource. Surfers have all of this knowledge. How do we tap into it? Well, surfers don't all have the same amount of local ecological knowledge. So we wanted to find out what surfers are more likely to have local ecological knowledge. So that's what this tiny little box is with our statistical analysis. But all I want you to take away from this is that surfers with more experience are more likely to have local ecological knowledge. Surfers who said that they were a member of an environmental or surf group were also more likely. So these are just some of the environmental surf rooms that were mentioned. Also, surfers who surf during storms or during advisories or who have said that they became sick because of surfing also are more likely to have local ecological knowledge. And this makes sense. If surfers are surfing in an advisory or after rains or are in a condition where the water might make them sick or they think they have made them sick, they're more likely to pick up on what's going on in the environment. So that's the local ecological side of things. Now I'm going to shift to what we were really searching for in our research questions, which was risk and decision making around water quality issues. Okay, so we found that although when we asked surfers to rank their top three top risks, water quality came up twice because we would hear things like sharks or getting hit with my board or collisions. Water quality came up twice, but when asked directly, do you think water quality is a risk? The majority of surfers say that, yes, water quality is a risk. As to whether or not this is going to impact their decision to enter the water, it's pretty split between about half saying that, yes, it would impact and half saying, no, it definitely wouldn't. I'm going to go out there no matter what. We also found for high participation in these risky surf behaviors, I mean, it's Maine. You're going to surf when there are waves and waves come with storms. Almost 80% of surfers say that they had surfed during or after a storm event. In terms of surfing during a posted water quality advisory, 36% said that they had knowingly surfed in a water quality advisory. Now I want to share an interesting anecdote with you. I was at one of our surf beaches this or not this summer now, two summers ago during our study period, and at that time there was an active water quality advisory. So there were posted signs about water quality advisory. At this particular beach, it's a very long beach with many points of entry and because of discrepancies with the town, the water quality advisory is only posted near the bath house. So on that particular day of all of the surfers who I surveyed when asked the question, have you ever surfed in a posted water quality advisory? All of them said no, they hadn't, despite just emerging from one. So although 36% say yes, they have surfed in advisory, the actual number of surfers surfing in advisory is probably much higher. And then lastly, we asked a question about surfers becoming sick because of surfing. Again, this is not an epidemiological study at all. This is just surfers' perceptions of, do they think they might have become sick because of surfing? And we find that in this region about 30% of them say that yes, they have attributed surfing to becoming ill. So a big takeaway from this is that despite all of those other parameters and answers, an overwhelming amount of surfers want to know about water quality at their local surf spot. 97% of surfers said yes, I want to know about water quality at my local surf spot. And they also shared how they want this information disseminated to them. So the majority of them say online through these surf forecasting websites like Swell Info and Magic Seaweed. And then there's also the second category. I don't think you guys can see very well with the color, but. So this right here is online. Number 18 is posted directly at the beach. And then social media text at the local surf shop is the third. Sorry, the color is not very sure, so yeah, very well done. All right, so moving on. So that's what we learned from surfers in our study. But where does that leave us? What does that mean? Excuse me. Well, we find that given what we learned, surfers should be considered an important beach stakeholder. And decisions surrounding beach management really should include surfers in that decision making population. Because we know from scientific literature and studies that surfers are really a vulnerable population. We also know that surfing is becoming more popular across the globe, across the country. And I can only say anecdotally in our state. I spoke with someone who approached me after a conference who said that at his local surf spot, which was Higgins, that he'd been surfing there for 30 years. 10 years ago, middle of winter, there'd be three guys in the water. Now, 30 people, January, February. So it's a huge explosion. And there are way more people in the water than there ever were before. And at times where nobody else is in the water. So you have to think about when a lot of people surf in the winter in Maine, think about changes in wastewater treatment plant effluent, things like that. So as we move into the future, there are more things to think about than just recreational beaches in the summer months in vulnerable populations, but also to think about how we manage our beaches on a year-round basis. Again, our research shows that surfers overwhelmingly care and want to know about water quality. And we believe that they should have the ability to make informed decisions about entering water. Surfers may see a sign. It says, don't go in the water. You might get sick. They're going to go in no matter what. But at least being able to have the opportunity to make an informed decision. And here, I'll take a moment to just give you another anecdote. So at a particular beach in my study area, you're allowed to surf before 11 or after 5. And it was kind of a cloudy overcast day. I went down there. There were like 60, maybe 70 people on the water accounted. Everybody's out there having a blast. Come 11, everybody starts slowing, getting out of the water. Sun starts to come out, starts turning into a beautiful day. And it was only then that one of the volunteers from Main Healthy Beaches came to put up the posted advisory for water quality. And I asked her. I said, so I have to ask, why are you putting up this advisory right now? Oh, well, you know, it's turning out to be a beautiful day. I think people are actually going to come to the beach. Well, everybody's getting out of the water. Everybody's in the, oh, surfers don't care. They're going to go in the water no matter what. And yes, that very well may be the case. But they should at least be afforded the opportunity to make a more informed decision. So this research, I think, shows that it makes a case for having equal access to water quality information for all beach stakeholders. And then there are also some implications for risk communication. So as we know, young children and older populations are more vulnerable. We know that surfers are a more vulnerable population as well. So maybe they should be afforded a little more attention. And then surfer LEK. And this one is more of a broader conclusion and discussion point. We find that surfers know a lot about their environment. And what does this mean? Who cares? So us as research see them as a really interesting population to study. And we thought that maybe we would be the first to identify surfers as holding LEK. We missed it by a little bit. So right before I defended my thesis, a paper came out specifically saying that surfers have local ecological knowledge. So we're not crazy. Other people are noticing it well. And so this gentleman's paper, instead of focusing on water quality, was looking at wave knowledge, which makes a lot of sense. Surfers are going to know a lot about the ocean bottom and where the currents are and how waves form. So they're all sorts of different local ecological knowledge forms that surfers can have. But because surfers occupy this zone in the ocean, that really is only used by other wave riders. It makes them a really interesting population. People who are just at the beach recreationally only go out so far. Fishermen only come in so far. So they're in this kind of exclusive zone that's also not very well studied. So we can also, with this knowledge that they have local ecological knowledge, we can think of surfers as kind of the canary in the coal mine for our coastal systems. So they're a good population to keep in our mind. And again, this is just thinking when we're trying to find those surfers who have local ecological knowledge, keep in mind we want to look for surfers who have a lot of experience, those that may be members of environmental groups, those that participate in these quote-unquote risky surf behaviors, and those that have attributed getting sick to surfing. So very broadly, surf research helps us to understand an important social ecological components of our coastal systems. Our findings are currently being used to inform water quality testing and communication protocols in our state. We think that it'd be great if websites such as Magic Seaweed and Swell Info, where surfers get their information, could include a section on water quality. And then it's really important to post information about water quality when surfers are in the water. And very broadly, just bring surfers into the beach management decision-making process. And then, so that's what we found. I thought you guys were going to think I was over. I was going to trick you, but so I'm not over. So remember how I was talking in the beginning about scientists and how science is. So here we are. The National Science Foundation funded this research and brought it to these scientists who are at the New England Sustainability Consortium. We were actually good. And we did bring some stakeholders into this process of developing this sustainability science project. So we did it and got some input. OK, then we brought it back to scientists, other scientists, to review. And we gave them presentations and we published papers. But our project, we are actually fortunate to not only conclude and bring our results back to scientists and academic people, but we also include the stakeholders in this group. So I had the very fortunate opportunity to make this little sheet, which I have and can share with all of you, anyone who's interested, that we brought around to all the surf jobs who are in our study area. So it was really important to us to inform the people who made this research possible. So my advisor and I, Shannon, she's down here, went up and down the coast and handed these out. I also was really fortunate to have an opportunity to talk at a local surf shop to a group of how many people were there, Morgan? Like what? I want to say 60, or there were a lot of people. And I have to say it was the most nerve-wracking presentation that I've ever given. I've talked about this stuff to scientists and blah, blah, blah, where I'm the expert. I know what I'm talking about. But to get up there in front of a group of surfers and talk about their expertise was really, really scary. But I did it and got lots of really positive feedback. So that was one way that we were able to sort of close the loop with this research. And now on to what's next? What are we doing next? So this is very, very nascent or new. But we are really interested because surfers occupy the zone where no one else is. We think they'd be a great population to actually collect data. So they're actually doing this out in California. They're way ahead of us. They have this thing called the surf fin, which is actually a surf fin that can collect a variety of different parameters. We, in our tiny little research group, were able to build a prototype of a surf sensor that collected temperature. Ideally, we'd want temperature and conductivity. Conductivity would give us an idea of how much fresh water was in the system, which is related to, can be related to water quality. And we had our nice surfer, anything Scott could actually try to out and said there wasn't that big of an impact having this kind of big thing on the back of his board. But what Shannon and I are really interested, in addition to having them collect this kind of qualitative data with temperature and salinity and pH, we want to kind of pair that with qualitative data. So we want to have the number data and the word data together. So we would love to develop an app that when surfers go out and surf and collect all of this number data, at the same time they can record their observations. So that's sort of on hold right now, but that's where we want to move this research in the future. So with that, I want to say thank you to everybody who made this research possible. I have to recognize Columbus State, where I got my master's, EPSCORE, and the National Science Foundation, as well as the New England Sustainability Consortium. Of course, surfers, all the people who helped me with this research. And up there, it's Shannon and I. So thank you. The notation of the day is like what position the tide is and what position the moon is in. Is it sunny? Is it sunny? Things that you're certain that the water, data of the water is not going to give you. Relatively data of the water is not going to give you. So I can actually, I think I pulled up our sample questions. We were asking things like, did you notice anything in the water? Were there any dogs on the beach? I'll let me see if I can find it. Actually, I might have put it in one of my bonus slides. But no, to answer your question, we didn't talk about the tide or anything like that. We were hoping to also have in that some data about the weather. So did it rain in the past couple of days? Things like that. Let me just see if it's in my bonus slides. I thought that I pulled it, but. Let's just ask because the water just gives so much data unto itself. Right, I mean, so what we think is really interesting is to have, so that the data is going to tell us all of these things. But at the same time if we can have the surfers with their observations and really show that they have a little bit of ecological knowledge. So what they're saying is what's happening is what we're interested in, yeah. I like that. Can you talk a little bit more about communicating scientific data, whatever form, to groups like surfers, so finding an interesting group who are really benefit from information and sharing for them in an understanding? Yeah, so I mean that's, I mean it's super challenging because what happens with this, I mean this project is over. This project was funded and now it's over. So people don't really have a lot of incentive to present to these populations. And I think really if we want to be able to do that, it really comes down to funding and having, like being forced to show these broader impacts. So there is sort of a movement to have those included in these grants. So to not only encourage it, but have incentives so that, I mean people are busy. People don't always have time to take out of the schedules to do this. So I think that's one part of it. The other part of it is being able to stay engaged with this population over the course of the research. So sustainability science has a lot to do with engaging stakeholders at every step. So define the project, define the problem with them. Don't comment and say, okay, this is the problem in your community, I'm going to do it. Make it a collaborative effort with everybody who's involved and then when you're doing the research, have them involved and have kind of this method of getting feedback from them at every step of the process. And in that way, when it comes time to disseminate information to these impacted groups, it just makes it a lot easier when you have this engaged population over the course of research. I think that's another good way. Also, I'm just excited about this. So me, I was also out of grad school, didn't have a job yet, and so, and it's something I'm interested in. So my dad's a surfer. I did some, Morgan has a couple of boards and I was like, I have to do it at least while I'm doing it. And I thought it was a blast. My dad's a- Where'd you go out? We went to Scarborough Beach. Portion drop. Oh, I had Portion drop, yeah. You're not gonna go out this time. My dad does, though the farthest off, my dad goes to Stippsburg. So when he goes, he goes down east and offshore. So. Where are the rocks? Well, in kind of response to people are I surfer on the left coast and also the islands. There's weekly newspapers like in Portland, like Phoenix and the West End News and they all publish all a surfer report on tides and water quality at normal. Because it's just a lot of what it needs is to go through because you can raise it everywhere. But on the most popular, so that if you're going down with your kids and they're like, I'm not gonna teach the kids how to surf in DM on a day to day, damn. And on the West End. Great surfer, that nation's great. Yeah. So in the working to have a more active presence in surfer, that nation, in the regions that you study. I just meant more like, so I think the science background you totally, those are the perfectly science on the scientists and you'll have a piece of science and literature that's literally agreed to someone who doesn't speak whatever and so. Yeah. This is the idea of not necessarily just surfers, but to any local group of people who isn't actively engaged in the scientific community for good reasons, being able to have access to that and be useful, why not intervene in this complex document, but like the key interesting and useful concept. It's a huge problem. I mean, I was saying earlier that I went to all, the scientists don't know how to communicate and it's a big problem, even to other scientists. You go to these big conferences and it's just like talking gibberish and there really needs to be a concerted effort in the scientific community to be able to share it in a way that's understandable. And there are some groups that are doing a good job with that, like the Alan Alda Foundation and Stony Brooks online along my life. They use science communication workshops for scientists. I went to a great science communication conference in Nebraska. So it's starting to be recognized in a more formal and monetary way. So, yeah, it's a big problem. How is it the people that are going to develop? How sick? How sick? How are they going to do that kind of thing? I mean, mostly what we're worried about here is just gastrointestinal stuff. I heard a lot of like head stuff, which I don't think has to do with bacteria in the water. I did have one respondent who said that he was convinced that he got viral meningitis from surfing in the Gunquit River mouth. But again, this is not an epidemiological study. Uh-oh, so it's just really their perceptions of getting sick. But mostly in terms of what we find in our region, it's going to be gastrointestinal stuff from these bacteria. On the West Coast, you get things about giardia and staff and really nasty things. So, and in regions where, I mean, we're lucky, despite what you saw, their numbers, we have pretty good water quality here compared to other regions where it's not used much. Well, I don't know water quality. Yeah, yeah, certainly. So, in terms of carrying information forward, is it an organization like Surf Driver or some other sort of based organization that might be able to support that? And I say this without a knowledge of the... I think that's a good... I think that's the best bet, especially given the insecurity around funding these days. I don't think that, and this is just pure speculation, but I think that I'd be challenging to get funding for just a product like that from kind of a larger NSFRA app score. Has the study been shared with the Chiricrider Foundation or some other global product? We did, we did send, we sent this little, so I can share this to anybody else. So, we did send this, we have an executive summary, which is not my thesis, but just a more condensed version of it that we sent out to stakeholders. So, Chiricrider Foundation is one of them. And it's also, all of our data is also publicly available through the Data Discovery Portal, which is through New Hampshire. So, it's all there, and that's where you go to find not only this document, but our executive summary and when we publish our papers. Is that a New Hampshire government site? No, it's through the university, I think. Oh, through the university? No, I don't. But, if you give me your information, I can get it to you. If you can't discover anything that New Hampshire's doing differently than Maine, as far as... Something to add, well, maybe Maine is just sampling more often, but they pretty much have, they pretty much sampled the same number of days as we did. But again, it depends where they're sampling. I mean, in Maine, helping teachers does a great job of sampling where the water is likely to be polluted. So that they know. I mean, if you are at a beach where there's fresh water coming in over here and you go sample way down at the other end, I mean, you're going to have different results. Also, well, New Hampshire, the New Hampshire program is funded and not the Maine Healthy Beaches is not, we also have a much larger coastline and the majority of the Maine Healthy Beaches, people who go to the beaches are volunteers. So it's a really volunteer-based sampling and monitoring program in Maine. I mean, we have over 5,000 miles of coastline in New Hampshire as 18, so that may have to do with the tip for me. Were you sampled in Southern Maine? How far away were you from Rivermouth or out of town? You mean... Where you collected the samples? You didn't take any water samples. We talked to surfers, so we surveyed surfers. So we didn't take any water samples. But I mean, if you're curious about the actual, the data, Maine Healthy Beaches has a great website where you can actually see the points where they sample. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. Awesome. Thank you.