Mouthy Marmots of the Olympic Peninsula
Nature news and community goodness from the forests and towns around Olympic National Park. Discover ways to help protect this beautiful area and, of course, join us in having fun!
Olympic Marmots are a threatened species found only here in Olympic National Park. Unique! They emerge from their dens with stories to tell. Just like our Mouthy Marmots podcast crew.
Mouthy Marmots of the Olympic Peninsula
Olympic Coast ocean exploration, very cool birds and Earthrise
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Ocean wonders and birding gems:
- The Feiro Marine Life Center and the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary have teamed up to create an interactive Olympic Coast Exploration Center on the waterfront in Port Angeles.
- Just outside Port Angeles, the North Olympic Land Trust has rewilded the Lyre Conservation Area where really cool birds are always spotted.
- For Earth Day, we celebrate 'Earthrise,' the photo taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders that launched Earth celebrations globally.
Dedicated to the educators and passionate volunteers teaching us about nature and bringing wonder to our worlds.
Have fun and volunteer:
Welcome to the Mouthy Marmots Podcast, a show where nature lovers and neighbors discover untold wildlife and community news, find ways to enjoy and protect this beautiful area, and of course, have fun. I'm Carol from Port Angeles, Washington. Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 13How excited are you?
Speaker 2Super stoked! Yes, excitement is brewing near Port Angeles, a groundbreaking for an ocean exploration center plus really cool birds sighted at a local coastal wonderland. And Earth Day is here. We have a special story about an astronaut 's photo that inspired Earth Day celebrations around the world.
Olympic Coast Ocean Exploration Center
Speaker 2Well, let's start with the big news. For decades, families in Port Angeles have headed to the pier to visit the nonprofit Feiro Marine Life Center. And after many years, a dream is coming true. Faro is teaming up with NOAA's Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary to build an incredible new center. Melissa Williams, the executive director of Feiro, and her h staff tell us more.
Speaker 3So we are in the process of building a new visitor center together with the NOAA Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary. It'll be located just next door to the Field Arts and Events Hall in downtown Port Angeles. And we are really excited about expanding the collection that we have now and expanding the capacity to reach more people through education, science, and conservation.
Speaker 3The new center is the Olympic Coast Exploration Center. We chose that name on purpose because we have expanded our content area. So we're really talking about the mountains to the deep ocean in this center. At Ferio now we talk mainly about the coastal areas and some g mammal activity. So now we're really talking about watersheds in the exhibits, and then also by partnering with NOAA, we get access to a lot of information about the deep ocean that we didn't have before. So it's a it's a really good expansion. We are keeping Mr. Feiro in the new building. The learning center where the classrooms are is the Arthur D. Feiro Learning Center. So we want to honor his legacy and keep his name alive in the new building.
Speaker 2It's just amazing. I mean, the Feiro Marine Life Center has been forever at the end of the pier in the little building. Yes. And it's always so cool to visit. And so this new center is just gonna be how much like triple the space or?
Speaker 3Yeah, so we are going from about 3,200 square feet in the building that we have now to more than 14,000 square feet in the new building. We will have u triple the visitor experiences, we'll have triple the classroom capacity, and we'll even be able to throw a few offices in there.
Speaker 2So I imagine there'll be exhibits about puffins and Tufted puffins, common murres, long-tailed ducks, and harlequin ducks.
Speaker 3Yes. All species that you can find on our coast, some of which are seasonal, right? So tufted puffins are more of a um breeding uh time only here. But a lot of people aren't aware that they live here. If they are aware they've lived here, the story, again, is unfortunate, and that a lot of the islands that they make their nests have been affected by uh predators or invasive species, or just honestly changing ocean conditions that are leading the birds not to actually come back in large numbers. So we want to bring attention to that problem. We want people to understand that there's a big connection between land and water, right? And seabirds is a great way to do that.
Speaker 2And right now with the o our oceans facing so many threats, I can kind of see this new marine life center being one way for people to learn about our conservation needs.
Speaker 3There's several adages around environmental education, ocean education, and it's really that you you only protect what you love. And so if you can care for something, you develop that caring ethic for it, you develop empathy for it. That leads you into stewardship and conservation behaviors. And so if you go do a beach cleanup or you understand how best to structure the exhibit or the habitat that an animal is in and how to give it the best life possible, then you are taking caring actions, you're taking empathetic actions. And that's the kind of message that we try to get across. So we have a lot of people that come into the center now that maybe t haven't interacted with sea life in in a similar way, or they've seen it through a screen, like on television or at an aquarium. I think that's got a little bit of a screen-like quality to it. But when you come to like a touch pool and you say, Oh, it what's a spiky little ball? Like what it looks like an alien. What even is that? And we say that's actually an animal. It has way that it makes its living, it has a home life, it has sensory appendages that it can use to figure out if you're friend or foe. And look, would you like to get a hug from it? And then people are like, Well, I don't know, that seems kind of weird. And then you sort of put your finger in between the spines and it gently grips your finger, and then everyone's like, Oh my gosh, that's amazing. So now you've opened a door to a different kind of conversation about an animal that doesn't have eyes, it doesn't have a brain in the same way that we have brains, it doesn't behave in the way that we behave, but you've bridged that gap between you and a different, honestly, a different world.
Speaker 2It's kind of like what I've started reading about like kelp forest and how kelp forests can literally help save the planet with climate change. But also that a kelp forest takes care of all the all these animals thrive in it, all these sea animals. And now it's like, gosh, I'm wondering what's happening with the kelp forest. Or the same with sea stars, you know, we're all worried not seeing any uh sea stars anywhere. Yeah.
Speaker 3I think what I find most fascinating, and this is true of all ecosystems, is that they're so complicated and have evolved so closely together, all the species in them, that that you take one piece out and you really as a human don't understand what effect you've had. And now unfortunately, we've sort of backed into this idea that kelp forests are pretty important. And luckily we're able to gain more awareness of that to people and talk about that more. And what happens now that we're seeing a decimation of them. So thankfully in Washington, they've just reintroduced or just introduced the kelp and eelgrass recovery plan. So there are places like in Puget Sound where kelp have suffered quite a bit. Luckily in Clallam County, we aren't really seeing that trend. So as long as we can continue to keep our existing kelp beds healthy and not do anything really to disturb them. And hopefully we don't run into any more predator decimations. Fingers crossed, we should be good. Sea star waste and disease hit right around the time that I showed up in Port Angeles. And our current system is an open flow system, which means the water comes in from the harbor, goes into the habitats, and then exits back to the harbor. There's no filtration, there's nothing. What I what you see in our exhibits is what's happening in the harbor. And sea stars just started melting left and right. And every morning we would come in and we would see just decimated animals. And it was the m the saddest time, I think, in my entire career because you couldn't do anything about it. You know, nobody knew what it was, nobody knew how to stop it. So we obviously became a place where people were very interested in sea star wasting. You could see it going on in the coast, and it still periodically comes back. Luckily, we all know more a little more about it now. Uh sea stars are not a commercially viable species, and so the amount of research funding that goes to study things like this is not huge. Except that then certain sea stars, like the sunflower sea star that control all those urchins in those kelp forests disappeared completely. They became extirpated in large sections of Oregon and California. Luckily, while we did see a decline here in Washington, it was not as bad. So now you have all these what are called kelp barrens off the coast of Oregon and California, where the sea urchins have just there's nothing that really stops them from eating. They just eat until they stop living. So now you're like, oh, well, we took the main predator out. What happens now? How do we get those kelp beds back? And the truth of the matter is it's very challenging. So now there's a nationwide network of places that are working on growing out uh baby sunflower sea stars and getting them large enough to outplant them into the wild so that hopefully we can control some of those predators again.
Speaker 2I really love some of the stuff the center has currently been doing. You have great curriculum online, as well as like the public events for adults, like the crocheting little octopuses. Yeah.
Speaker 3Thankfully, we have a fantastic team. We have we are just now up to 11 staff members, which is because of this transition. And then we have a massive crew of volunteers, and they do such good work. We have about 60 volunteers working with us now, and they are the reason we can accomplish so many things. The online series with the curriculum that was uh filmed during COVID. We had had a grant from NOAA Bay Watershed Education Training, which was to run field studies that we do with fourth graders. Um, we take them down Peabody Creek. So they all go up to the Olympic National Park Visitor Center, they learn about the mountains of the Olympic Mountains, and then they walk down the creek and do water samples and take biochemistry characteristics and assess whether the Peabody Creek could help salmon thrive. There are a lot of things about Peabody Creek that do not help salmon thrive. So uh that's kind of an easy answer once they do the experience. But you get to see that creek in multiple areas in a protected area, in some less protected areas. And as it runs through the city and through a culvert, the water quality when it comes out into our harbor is just not very good. And so we were able to repurpose that grant funding to make this online series in partnership with the Dungeness River Nature Center. So now you've got a fourth grade experience on Peabody Creek and a fifth grade experience on the Dungeness. So now, thankfully, that video series has held up really well. And we're able to offer that to anybody in any part of the world that would like to learn more about life on the North Olympic Peninsula and our watersheds and a little bit about our salmon challenges.
Speaker 2I just hope when the new Ocean Exploration Center is open, that there's wills be the crochet class to crochet the little octopus.
Speaker 3Yes, there definitely will. We're doing a lot of experimenting right now. What classes are people most interested in? What do people show up for? And thankfully we'll be right next door to the field arts and events hall. But that is such a big piece of what I think folks who live here are looking at. So they love crocheting octopuses. We had a a class um crocheting Nudibrancs which is a little more difficult. So we're running that one again, and that has really gone over well. We've in the past worked with a lot with Cabled Fiber, and they have helped us with felted wool classes and all kinds of other cool things that really give you a hands-on experience. Plus, you learn a little thing on the side.
Speaker 2So this is this is amazing. It's gonna really change the waterfront in Port Angeles. I mean, we we'll have the performing arts center, and then right next to it will be this marine life center.
Speaker 3I'm hoping that people really see this as a must-do stop. Not only do we want to be here for residents and but for people that come here to the Olympic Peninsula, of which we have something like 3.5 or 3.8 million people traveling here every year. Why is this place so special and how can they learn more about that? And we hope that we'll be a stop on that experience, and that will help them get oriented to some of our more challenging in-person environments like tide pools. Everyone has understood that low tide is the best tide, but very few people know when is low tide, how to find what low tide is, which low tide is the best, which beach has which low tide is the best. And then just unfortunately, by the nature of tide pools, they're not often physically accessible. So if you are in a situation where you can't get to a tide pool, we want to be the place where you can come and still see the cool stuff that we have here.
Speaker 2Somebody always has to have a vision for these grand things to happen. And it's your team, you, your team, and people in the community, and this huge thing is gonna happen in Port Angeles. It's really exciting.
Speaker 3It truly is a team effort, and it's been such an honor, honestly, to carry on Mr. Ferio's legacy and to expand it in this way. And it's been uh truly wonderful to work with so many people that are dedicated to making that happen.
Speaker 6My name is Deesa Wilson, and I am the guest services specialist here at Feiro Marine Learning Center, and I run the front desk and I greet everybody that comes into Feiro. My favorite animal that I get as show visitors is a leather sea star. They're a really cool sea star that kind of lives a little bit deeper down in the um tight pools that you might not get to see too often. They're very smooth and kind of feel like a wet shoe.
Speaker 9My name is Tamara Galvan, and I am the Associate Director of Operations at Feiro Marine Life Center. I think my favorite thing is Nudibrancs because I mean they're starting to become a little bit more popular now and getting a bit mainstream, but for so many people, they have no idea that these cool sea slugs exist. And so when they get to see them, and especially in the spring and summer, when our open flow system just sort of brings them in, the volunteers get excited trying to ID them. They're, you know, making sure that all the visitors get to see them. Um, they're just a really neat animal that's not always thought of when it comes to the ocean.
Speaker 8Hi, my name is Corbin. I am a naturalist here at the center. We have two specific distinct types of tanks in our test tanks. We have our sandy bottom and our rocky bottoms. Our rocky bottoms, we have a lot of our sea larger sea stars, urchins, we have gunnels, clingfish. You can see all the allergen stuff that's in here. The uh sea cucumbers, which are pretty large. In our sandy bottom, we have our hermit crabs, sandalies, tube worms, growing sea cucumbers, clams, a whole bunch of different things that we have.
SpeakerMy name's Colby Waite, and I've from Port Angeles, lived most of my life here. I remember coming here as a kid, and I'm taking now my fourth child here to the facility, and it's a wonderful asset to the community, and I'm so excited for the new building that's upcoming on the rise of our. Oh, it it beats the heck out of sitting in front of a TV screen.
Speaker 9I really enjoy getting to see sort of like family making memories, and all of that sort of taking place in an atmosphere that helps inspire sort of a community with the ocean and getting to see the ocean critters that are just below the surface.
Speaker 8Well, the ocean is very important to us. It produces more than half the oxygen on the planet. So having people come experience what these animals are and understand what's going on in the ocean can get people more connected with it and uh might care about it a little more.
Speaker 2A t Feiro, you get to learn about very cool sea creatures, and you also meet volunteers and staff passionate about ocean conservation. It's really fun to visit.
Lyre River - North Olympic Land Trust
Speaker 2Not far from Port Angeles, the Lyre conservation area has a similar story. It's being successfully rewilded by the North Olympic Land Trust and its many volunteers. Here's a report from Iris, the Mouthy Marmot's very own birding expert. She recently led a bring your own binocular birding tour at Lyre. It was a rainy day, but people still showed up.
Speaker 7Oh, we were looking at a marbled murrelet really close to shore. He's up and down, feeding a lot, so we're just trying to get him in the scope so people can get a good view. Normally they're way out. You never get to see them, so this is a great opportunity.
Speaker 13How excited are you?
Speaker 7Super stoked. Super stoked. So it was an interesting outing here with Lyre Conservation Area with the North Olympic Land Trust. We had, I don't know, what maybe a dozen or so people, 15, great group. A lot of rainy weather, so it was pretty quiet up in the meadow. But down here on the water we had, oh my gosh, super excited about these red cross bills that have been lingering in plain sight right on the shoreline. And then we had fantastic views of this marbled murrelet. I would say those two are the birds of the day. But this is an interesting spot for birding because you've got the river coming out, the Lyre River meeting the Strait of Juan de Fuca. And whenever you have these rivers coming into saltwater, especially right now during migration, you just have like lots of interesting activity. So we've got everything from short-billed gulls and different, the two different Merganzers, uh, common and red-breasted. I'm so excited about all these birds. But you'll have just a lot of activity. I mean, I'm looking out at it right now, and as the water ripples, we've got gulls along the shoreline, and then we've got gulls in the water sort of feeding and bathing. There are some crows out here picking the scraps and the rocks, black turnstones flipping over shells and rocks looking for worms and all kinds of yummy stuff. And then lots of scoters and harlequin ducks and greaves out in the just off the shore. So lots of activity. This is a real treasure to lighter conservation area. And I'm I come out here a lot, not just to bird, but to hang out and just think it's a nice quiet time in nature. And I'm so grateful to the North Olympic Land Trust for conserving this and making the space really available to us, you know, as residents of a place that gets really hectic in the summer. This is always a place you can come to and find peace and quiet and just really enjoy what this place has to offer.
Speaker 12It was a perfect Pacific Northwest day, slightly rainy and but well worth coming out. We've been bird watching and bird listening, and we just saw a marbled murrelet, which is a really unusual spotting right by flood of water. And I'm gonna do this again and again and again and drag all my friends out here and hope you do too.
Speaker 10Birding makes me feel free. I'm happy that we have these opportunities and these spaces here in the nature to get to enjoy them.
Speaker 1Between the second growth forest, low point with a great surfing break, and just super rare flowers. This is a place that you can come all year round and not and avoid the crowds.
Speaker 2And as forests disappear, they do too. Astronauts, including the Artemis II crew, always talk about uh this fragility or you know, when the earth is seen from space. And in fact, the very first Earth Day celebrations were inspired by a photo of the Earth taken in 1968 by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders. In this 2023 NASA recording, astronaut Anders talked about taking that picture. He's being interviewed by NASA's chief scientist and senior climate advisor, Dr. Katherine Calvin. Sadly, our government last year fired the entire division of NASA climate scientists, Dr. Calvin included, but her work lives on. I thought it'd be worthwhile to take a listen.
Speaker 11I am Kate Calvin, NASA's chief scientist and senior climate advisor, and I'm sitting down with Bill Anders, who took the famous Earthrise photo.
Speaker 5Oh my god, look at that picture over there. Wow, that's pretty.
Earthrise
Speaker 4But I uh thought that it uh it was really kind of a, it was at Christmas time, and it was uh like a fragile Christmas tree ornament. And I thought to myself, you know, it's too bad we don't treat it more like a Christmas tree ornament. And then when I was lucky enough to take the iconic Earthrise picture, which basically kicked off the Earth Day and that kind of thing. It's really too bad, you know, we're shooting missiles and rockets and whatnot at each other on this tiny little place we call home. It's the only home in the universe for us humans. And uh, you know, it's too bad we don't treat it a little better.
Speaker 11And as you said, Earthrise has had a tremendous impact on people and the environmental movement. What do you think the biggest impacts were, both then and now, of the Earthrise photo?
Speaker 4Well, it it people realize that the planet was uh fragile, uh delicate. Clearly, mankind has not been kind to the planet.
Speaker 11But could you tell the story of taking Earthrise?
Speaker 4So we were in lunar orbit, uh upside down and going backwards, so uh for the first several uh revolutions, and we didn't see the Earth. And uh didn't really think about that. And then we righted ourselves, you know, heads up, and twisted the spacecraft so it was going forward. And while Frank Borman was in the process of doing that, suddenly I saw out of the corner of my eye this color. It was shocking.
Speaker 5Oh my god, look at that picture over there.
Speaker 4So I managed to get Lovell to get me a color magazine. Put the long lens on it on and started snapping away.
Speaker 5Oh, I got it right. Oh, that's a beautiful shot.
Speaker 4I said, Well, you know, we we went to the moon to explore the moon, and what we discovered was the earth.
Speaker 2You can find that Earthrise photo online. It's in the public domain. That means it's free to download. So, what can we do to protect our fragile home? I'm inspired by Melissa Williams and the staff at Feiro, the North Olympic Land Trust, and Iris, our birding expert. They are sharing with us their love for wild things. I know that the more I learn, the more I care. Remember what Melissa Williams said: how you protect what you love. And when you learn about all these bits of nature, your empathy grows and stewardship happens. Well, it turns out there are a lot of local volunteer opportunities. We have coastal cleanups at our national parks. You can become a coast volunteer, you can get involved in the Elwha River watershed protection. We will post volunteer opportunities on our website, mouthymarmots.buzzsprout.com. So enjoy your day, head down to Feiro check out the Marine Life Center, go have some fun, sit out in nature, hug a tree. The Mouthy Marmots Collective acknowledges that the lands we broadcast from are the appropriated homelands of six tribal nations who continue to care for this region today, including the Hoh, Jamestown S'klallam, Lower Elwha Klallam, Makah, Quilute, Quinault tribes.