Wavy Lines

Sitting in the Pacific Forum at the top floor of the MBARI headquarters in Moss Landing, Meg Caldwell is a portrait in burnt orange. Her blouse, earrings and hair match the fiery metaphors she uses to describe her vision for Ocean Solutions: a place for scientists, policy makers, lawyers, economists, historians – anyone working on anything related to the sea – to gather and collaborate, “so that our synergies can explode.”

While Caldwell’s language sparks, her composure is cool. She scrolls through a PowerPoint presentation on Ocean Solutions with a lawyer’s even tone, her words metered by the crash of waves on the shoreline below. The center will bring knowledge and power together in an attempt to create more than the sum of the parts, she explains. As is, she says, dozens of government agencies devise micro-policies governing pieces of the sea, and a wealth of marine institutes produce scattered piles of revealing data. But the long-term vision is out of focus. While various entities tackle the sea’s symptoms one by one, none has designed a comprehensive recovery plan for a gravely ill ocean.

“There’s a difference between leadership and regulatory authority,” Caldwell says. “From a policy-level point of view, we have very little leadership – very rarely confronting the full set of effects.”

If anyone knows the scope of California’s sea-governance, it’s Caldwell. As a senior lecturer at the Woods Institute and director of Stanford’s environmental law program, she’s also chaired the California Coastal Commission, served on the board of the California Coastal Conservancy, and works on the task force planning California’s marine reserve network.

Now she slips into the role of Ocean Solutions’ interim director, coordinating the partnership among Stanford’s main campus, Hopkins Marine Station, Monterey Bay Aquarium and MBARI. The hope is that more organizations will join as the center gains momentum. The Woods Institute will serve as the center’s manager – soliciting grants, hiring the permanent director and handling administrative responsibilities.

“Democracy is doomed if people keep making stupid decisions because they’re ignorant about environmental policy.”

Strategic planning is still underway, but Caldwell imagines the center will focus on marine ecosystems, the fishing industry, land-ocean interactions and the effects of climate change on the sea. It’ll connect disparate fields like ocean health and public health, host an annual “state of the ocean” forum, and offer interdisciplinary short courses and early career fellowships. Participating institutions will not only brainstorm strategies, but also commit to carrying them out together.

In essence, Ocean Solutions manifests a quiet revolution happening in academia, a shift from isolated disciplines to collaborations on complex problems that run together like water.