Professor dedicates himself to learning all he can about Elkhorn Slough.

Rikk Kvitek knows nearly every inch of Elkhorn Slough. For the past 25 years, Kvitek, a CSUMB science and environmental policy professor, has been studying environmental changes in the slough and surrounding wetlands.

“The loss of salt marshes is something we discovered back in the ‘80s,” Kvitek says. So he and his students began bathymetric mapping, measuring the water depth, to create a surface model of the slough.

“We know exactly what the depth of is for every half-meter of the slough,” he says. “We can go back over time and complete that exact same survey, subtract them from each other, then we can see where the bottom has gone down – erosion. We can see where the slough is eroding most rapidly.”

Kvitek and his students also are doing repeat video sampling of the slough, running a boat with a camera up the center channel of the slough, and videoing the deepest part of the seafloor. In some places, Kvitek says, the bottom is eroding so rapidly that sea creatures are losing their habitat.

“Huge clams called Zurphia – the clam itself is larger than your fist – they bury themselves a foot and a half into the sediment. Erosion is happening so rapidly that they are being washed out of their burrows, and you can see them lying on the sea floor.”

Not that this is a huge threat to the clams, Kvitek adds. Young ones can find new places to burrow. But it does show how rapidly the slough is changing.

“We’re seeing a lot of places that used to be soft, fine, loose sediment,” he says. “All that loose sediment is being washed away and eroding into the very stiff clay. This is causing the banks of the slough to cave in. The banks are where the salt marsh is, and in some places, we’re losing a meter a year of the salt marsh.”

Kvitek is very familiar with the underwater landscape, but he’s also well acquainted with the land above water. Until about four years ago, he owned a home in the uplands, on a ridge above Kirby Park. Oak trees and maritime chaparral grew on the three-acre parcel, and Kvitek had a 270-degree view: up to Santa Cruz, around Monterey Bay down to Big Sur, and over to Salinas.

“I’d see coyotes, deer and skunks, raccoons and foxes,” he says. “Great horned owls would sit right behind your head while you sat in the hot tub and quails would take dust baths in the driveway out front. For me, the nicest part of the property was that you were very much in tune with nature’s clock and the seasons and the times of day. Each day, different species of birds would come through at their appointed time. Living there kept you very much in tune with the natural rhythm of the place. It’s still the finest place I ever lived.” Then he got married, had kids, and the family decided to live closer to town. Kvitek moved to Monterey, but he didn’t want to sell his Elkhorn Slough home on the open market. “I didn’t want to see a big mansion up there, and see the landscape change. So he sold the property to the Elkhorn Slough Foundation for a quarter of its market-rate value.

To date, there are some 7,376 acres in conservation or public ownership in the Elkhorn Slough watershed (there are 44,500 total acres in the watershed). Of the 7,376, Elkhorn Slough Foundation owns or manages 3,175 acres.

For the past 20 years, the foundation has been buying up properties (or receiving them as gifts, with a tax write off for the donor) to save the land from development, and to restore the slough and surrounding lands. Most recently, in late November, the foundation bought 25 acres using money from the state Wildlife Conservation Board, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board and private donors, totaling $1,025,000. It was a small farm, and the owners approached the foundation because they wanted to sell. The foundation will manage the property in conjunction with the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve because it drains into a pond that is home to two endangered species.

“It drains into one of the critical amphibian habitats, habitats for two federally endangered species, the red-legged frog and the Santa Cruz long-toed salamander,” says Mark Silberstein, foundation executive director.

Monterey County Supervisor Lou Calcagno, who cofounded the foundation in 1982, remembers its first land acquisition: 17 acres on the Moro Cojo Slough, east of Highway 1, given by the Sandholdt family.

“We were able to pick up those highly erodable grounds,” Calcagno says. “Earlier property owners have basically stripped the oaks and the Manzanitas to plant strawberries. The property was eroding and running into Elkhorn Slough. It was a godsend that whole thing happened.”