Science Friday - Abortion Medication, Rat Island, Access To Parks, Climate And Seafood. May 13, 2022, Part 2

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

Abortion Pills Are Used For Most U.S. Abortions. What Are They? The draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade means abortion access is once again in jeopardy. Nearly half of U.S. states will immediately ban abortion upon a Roe v. Wade overturn. Medication abortion, or abortion by pill, is currently the most common method of abortion in the United States. In 2020, 54% of abortions in the United States were medication abortions, according to research from the Guttmacher Institute. If the Supreme Court decision is overturned, it’s expected that the ease and convenience of an abortion pill may make medication abortion an even larger share of all abortions nationwide. Ira talks with Ushma Upadhyay, associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at UC San Francisco. Upadhyay explains how medication abortion works, how its regulated, and its role in a possible post Roe v. Wade era.   One Alaskan Island’s Fight For A Rodent-Free Future For millions of years, birds lived nearly predator free in the Aleutian Islands. The volcanic archipelago stretches westward for 1,200 miles from the Alaska Peninsula, dotting a border between the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. Hundreds of bird species thrived here. But then came the rats. When a Japanese boat sank in the Western Aleutians around 1780, stowaway rats jumped ship and made it to one of the islands, wreaking havoc on the ecosystem. The rodents proliferated during World War II, when American Navy ships traveled along the chain, expanding the rats’ domain. “The rats are like an oil spill that keeps on spilling, year after year,” said Steve Delehanty, the refuge manager for the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. “We would never allow an oil spill to go on for decades or centuries, nor should we allow rats to be a forever-presence on these islands.” Read the rest at sciencefriday.com. Campsites At National Parks ‘Harder Than Getting Beyonce Tickets’ Access to the outdoors has long had an equity problem. Whether it’s the expense of equipment or hostility from fellow hikers, marginalized groups have had more barriers to enjoying recreation in nature. Now, new research in the Journal of Park and Recreation Administration has data on one tool that was supposed to improve access for more people: the online system of reserving campgrounds at national parks. Compared to people camping at first-come first-serve campsites in the same parks, the people who successfully use the reservation systems are wealthier, better-educated, and more likely to be white. Ira talks to research co-author Will Rice about the factors that make reservations harder to access, how wealthier people succeed in working the system to their advantage, and how publicly-funded campgrounds like the national parks could more fairly manage rising demand.   How Restaurant Menus Mirror Our Warming Ocean Before the 1980’s, you probably wouldn’t have found Humboldt squid on a restaurant menu in Vancouver. But now, the warm water-loving critter has expanded towards the poles as ocean temperatures rise, and you can see that change on restaurant menus. In a new study in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes, researchers from the University of British Columbia looked at more than 360 menus, dating back to 1880. They found a connection between climate change and which seafood types rose to fame on restaurant menus over the years… and which ones flopped off. Ira speaks with study co-author Dr. William Cheung about how our menus mirror what’s happening to our oceans. Plus, a conversation with Chef Ned Bell about why it’s important that our plates adapt to changes in our local ecosystems.   Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. The draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe versus Wade means abortion access is once again in jeopardy. What you may not know is that medication abortion, and by that I mean abortion by pill, is actually the most common method of abortion in the U.S. While almost half of the states will immediately ban abortion upon a Roe v. Weight overturn, it is expected that the ease and convenience of an abortion pill may make medication abortion abortion, an even larger share of all abortions. Joining me now to help explain how medication abortion works, how it's regulated and its role in a possible post-Rovie Wade world is my guest.

Ushma Apatiyai, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Obstetrics, Kynacology, and Reproductive Sciences at advancing new standards and reproductive health at UC San Francisco. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a huge fan. Oh, thank you very much. All right, let's start with the basics. What is medication abortion? How does it work? Medication abortion is the use of two medications. The first is Mepipristone, and this is a pill that blocks the hormone that allows a pregnancy to grow. And then the second is misoprostol,

and these are tablets that cause the cervix to dilate and for the uterus to contract, and then it expels the pregnancy. Now, many people are familiar with another pill called Plan B, which is an emergency contraceptive. This is not the same thing, is it? That's correct. Plan B, or emergency contraception, is taken within the first 72 hours after unprotected sexual intercourse. So there's a small window to take that. Medication abortion is a set of medications that someone takes to end a pregnancy after they've determined.

that they're already pregnant. And this can be used early on in pregnancy? Yes, it is currently approved by the FDA up to 10 weeks, but science research shows that it is effective up to 12 weeks. And actually, it's even effective beyond that, but more doses of the mesoprostol, the second set of pills, is needed as a person is further along in pregnancy, for it to be most effective.

You know, many people may not realize, I said at the beginning, how common medication abortions are. We think of abortion as a procedure only done in a clinic. How many abortions are performed via medication? That's right. I do believe that many people don't even know that medication abortion is a thing, that people can have this option. And currently, our latest data available from 2020 finds that 54% of all abortions are medication abortions. More than half. Yeah. Now, due to the pandemic in 2021, the FDA authorized people to get a prescription for abortion pills through telehealth.

How widely is this available? So currently, telehealth is available in 22 states. And this allows people to have a medical consultation with a clinician remotely, and they can receive their medications by mail. Can you go into the clinic? I mean, what happens during an in-person consultation for abortion medication? They often get tests like an ultrasound, and they are assessed for eligibility to ensure that they're within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

And it's also done to ensure that the pregnancy is not ectopic, and that means that it hasn't implanted outside the uterus, which is a very where occurrence, more and more clinics are omitting those additional tests because our latest research shows that those tests are not necessary, that they don't result in increased efficacy or safety rates. So people can sort of assess their pregnancy, possibly when it began and maybe missing a period? Yeah, that's right. There's been a few papers published showing that people are very accurate in determining how far along they are in pregnancy. So people keep track of their menstrual periods now. There are so many apps available. We can trust people to know their bodies, to know how many weeks pregnant they are, and really providers are just ensuring that they're less than about 11 or 12 weeks of pregnancy. Okay. So what does a telehealth appointment to receive medication abortion look like? A patient will go to one of the virtual clinic websites. Some will offer a secure messaging way of

communicating. So a person doesn't even have to have a video or a phone, and the clinician will determine whether the patient is eligible. And if they are, they will be sent a packet of abortion medications by mail. And then at about one week, the provider will follow up with the patient, ensure that all of the symptoms that they were expecting occurred,

that she had the expected amount of bleeding and cramping. And then at about four weeks, the patient will take an over-the-counter pregnancy test to ensure that the abortion was successful. And it takes about four weeks because pregnancy hormone remains in the urine for a few weeks afterwards. And what about if someone lives in a state where a medical abortion prescription is not legal? Can they go to a state where it is legal and do telehealth? Yes. We have a study where we are following patients of these virtual clinics.

it's called the chat study. And we have reports of patients who have traveled to across the border to have their consultation and receive the abortion pills at a post office box or other place where they could receive mail. Patients are starting to get creative about getting these medications. And unfortunately, that's the word. You have to be creative. Yes.

Yes, that's right. Yeah. And you recently convinced. conducted research about the safety of prescribing abortion pills with an in-person exam versus telehealth. And what did you find? What we did is we collected data on almost 4,000 patients across the U.S. from 14 different clinics. And we assess the efficacy and safety of these medication abortions. So about a third receive them through telehealth and the remaining receive them in the clinic, but none of the patients actually ever had an in-person exam or an

ultrasound. In fact, some clinics were even offering medication abortion with curbside pickup. And that would be after a telehealth consultation with a clinician. And we found overall very high safety and efficacy rates similar to our previous studies. 95% were completed without any additional medical intervention. And 99% experienced no. no serious adverse events. Now, I understand that there are other means for people to access medication abortion outside from getting them from doctors in the U.S. Can you tell me about how the site Aid Access works? Aid Access is a telehealth provider of medication abortion that is based in Europe. And they make their services available to places where abortion is limited by law,

And within the last year, they've begun to offer medication, abortion access for people in the United States. So it is a clinician in Europe. It is highly trustworthy. The medications are the same medications that are FDA approved. And it's just that they are coming from another country. So it does take a little bit longer to arrive to the United States. and then also the downside is that it opens a person up to criminalization. There are legal risks to ordering through aid access.

And, you know, the legal risks are much greater than any type of safety concern. These methods are very safe and effective. Speaking of legal risks, I know that states like Connecticut have already passed a law protecting doctors who prescribe medication abortions. What's in the law? How will it and other regulations? like that regulation affect access to abortion, especially in states where abortion may be banned or severely limited? I was very excited to see that Connecticut law passed. It protects abortion

patients' records from discovery by other states who are trying to prosecute people seeking abortion. And then, as you said, it protects providers who are caring for patients in other states from criminal and civil liability. And it protects. those providers from being extradited to other states for prosecution. And so that is so important. And I would really love to see other states that care about protecting abortion access, implementing similar laws. And if they could also add the additional protection for telehealth, specifically protecting doctors from offering the same telehealth services that they can offer within their state to patients in other states. And then the only issue is that patients are opened up to

legal risks. And my concern is that people of color will be targeted because of, you know, the system. And if anyone goes to a clinic or an emergency department, just because they need care, they have questions. They could be singled out and prosecuted. But one thing I'll note is that if someone goes to an emergency department, there is no test that they can do to determine whether she took these medications. And so they don't have to reveal that they took them if they feel that it will open them up to legal risk. So if Roe v. Wade is overturned, how would that impact access to medication abortion? Well, we see the science really supports more expanded models of care for medication abortion. So I think that now that we know that special equipment isn't needed, special tests are not needed,

any primary care provider could offer medication abortion to their patients. So as this method evolves, patients will no longer have to drive to an isolated abortion clinic. So there's really a lot of progress that we can make in making abortion pills more accessible and more common place and hopefully less stigmatized in the long run. Thank you very much for filling us in. Thank you so much for having me. Vishma Apatiae is Associate Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at Advancing New Standards and Reproductive Health at UC San Francisco. We're going to be looking closely into reproductive health in the coming weeks, and we'd like to know if you

have questions about the science behind reproductive health or abortion. Please send us your questions, put them on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or you can email us. The address is SciFri at ScienceFrauday.com. Or record your question and send it via the SciFri Voxpop app wherever you get your apps. We have to take a short break, and when we come back, we're taking a trip to Alaska to a place formerly known as Rat Island. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNL. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. Alaska is known for its incredible wildlife, moose, wolves, caribou bear, but on one island, the most notorious creature just may be the rat. Yeah.

These invasive rodents were so prolific on one of the Aleutian islands that it used to be known as Rat Island. I know what you think about rats, but scientists faced a dilemma. How do you get rid of the rats without getting rid of everything else? The good news? The island is considered a success story

for bringing an ecosystem back to its natural state. Here to tell us more about this unique story is Theo Greenlee, reporter for the public radio station KUCB in Unalaska, Alaska. Welcome to Science Friday. Yeah, hi, thanks for having me. Theo, can you set this scene for us?

We can gather from its old name that it had a lot of rats, but what is the ecosystem like there? Right. So first, you know, let me just place this island within the larger geography. So this island is part of the illusion chain. So this is, you know, hundreds of islands, dozens of volcanoes that stretch from Alaska all the way across to Russia and kind of make a boundary between the North Pacific Ocean and the burying. sea, what was formerly known as Rad Island, is way out in the Western allusions. It's this vibrant, green, kind of richly biodiverse, tundra environment and ecosystem. So how did the rats get on

the island in the first place? Well, in the 1780s, there was a shipwreck, a Japanese shipwreck, and there were no survivors. I should say there were no human survivors, but you can tell where this is going, there were some survivors that swam to shore, and those, of course, were rats, the Norway brown rat, to be specific. And why were the rats so bad? Did they just become fruitful and multiplied all over the place? Well, yeah, they certainly did. They got to this island. The traditional name is Hawadah Island, and they just found thousands and thousands of seabirds and songbirds, and they basically just met this buffet of birds. For millions of years, there were no land predators. There were no

mammals on this island. So these seabirds that, you know, live out at sea really only go to land to nest. And so they find these remote islands where they can lay their eggs and not have to worry about predators until, of course, the rats come. So here's Steve Delahanty. He's the manager for the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. He manages all of the federal land that is preserved under this refuge. The rats are like an oil spill that keeps on spilling year after year after year. And we would never allow an oil spill to just go on for decades or centuries. And I don't think we should allow rats to be a forever presence on these islands either.

So walk us through some of the strategies for getting rid of all those rats. Well, you know, Ira, you're in New York. you, I'm sure, are no stranger to the rat. No, I know they use rat poison and all kinds of stuff here. Yeah, so I mean, anybody who's ever, you know, run into a problem with a rat knows that there are basically two things you can do. You can trap it or you can kill it. And trapping a rat in a larger area is very, very impractical.

Because you can't just get rid of some of the rats or most of the rats. you have to get rid of all of the rats because if there's two left to mate or one pregnant female, you're going to be right back where you started from pretty quickly. So in 2008, Fish and Wildlife Service and some conservancy groups and different organizations, they went out to Rat Island and they took the poison route and they dropped rodenticide. They dropped rat poison all over the island from helicopters. and it worked. They killed all of the rats. But unfortunately, that's not all they killed. They also wound up killing a bunch of birds, which was the very thing that they wanted to save in the first place.

Oh, my goodness. Unintended consequences. Yeah, sort of collateral damage, if you will. Yeah. So have the seabirds come back at all? Have they recovered? Depending on who you ask, the answer is either yes or, oh my gosh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. So this 2021 study, they went back to see how the island had rebounded, and they were blown away because not only did the seabirds and the songbirds rebound, tufted puffins were found in the area, and that's the first time that that had happened. But also the whole ecosystem had returned because the rat, it doesn't just end with eating

the birds. It goes through the food chain down to the, you know, to the owl. G, and everything just gets out of whack. So when they went back and studied how the island rebounded, they found that the island now is very similar to similar islands that never had rats introduced in the first place. And so scientists will continue their research over the summer? Tell us what they're doing, what they will be doing. Well, these scientists sort of have a puzzle that they need to solve, which is to replicate the success of Hawadakh Island, but minimize. the collateral damage. So what they're doing this summer is they're going out to this other

island in the area, Great Sitkan Island, and they're taking grain pellets that do not have any poison in them. They're the same kind of pellets they used with rat poison, but these are just benign grain pellets. And instead of dumping them out of helicopters, what they're going to do is place some very strategically in different locations. And with cameras, they're going to monitor how these pellets interact with the system. Where does it break down in water? Where does that go? Does a rat eat it here?

Would a bird eat it there? And they're going to basically create a feasibility study that will see if this is something that is replicable so that they can continue eradicating rats from different islands. A little case study to see how it works. Thank you, Theo, for an interesting story. Yeah, thank you, Ira. Theo Greenlee, reporter for public radio station KUCB in Unalaska, Alaska.

And if you want to read Theo's full story about what used to be known as Red Island, you can head over to our website, sciencefriday.com slash state of science. Memorial Day is coming up. Camping season is kicking off. Maybe you're planning to head to your nearest national park. Well, if you're lucky, you might already have a reservation for a campsite in one of your favorite spots. Could be Yellowstone, Shenandoah? You might have made that reservation online at the website recreation.gov. But getting lucky may be getting harder, especially if you're lower income, less well-educated, or a person of color. Here with me now is a researcher who has studied the issue. Is reserving a campsite

online equally accessible to everyone? And his conclusion? Not so much. Dr. Will Rice, is an assistant professor of outdoor recreation and wildland management at the University of Montana in Missoula. Welcome, Will. Thanks, Ira. I'm really happy to be here. Nice to have you. Okay, so how hard is it to get a National Park camping reservation? It's pretty difficult. I tell my students that it's, I don't have the data to back this don't necessarily, but it's probably far easier to get Beyonce tickets. Really? It's that difficult. It is. Yeah, so recreation.gov released a statistic. last year reporting that on a given day in a popular campground, a federally managed campground, they can see up to 19,000 people vying for 57 campsites. And that's just whenever as soon as the reservation opens.

So for those folks who are at their computer at 8 or 10 a.m., waiting for that reservation to open six, three months in advance, two weeks in advance whenever it opens, you have a 0.3% chance of getting that campsite. That's just if you have the free time to be at your computer. to try to get that reservation. So it's quite a difficult. So that's important. And that's what you talked about in your study. You looked at cell phone data to assess who is using what kind of camping reservation system at national parks, either online reservations or first come first serve. Tell us what you learned about that. Yeah. So we looked at folks camping in the same

campgrounds, same national park campgrounds at the same time. And the only difference between these campers, as you mentioned, is how they got into that campsite, whether they showed up and got a first-come-first-served spot or a reservation-only spot. And we found that those folks camping in campsites that require reservations were coming from home locales with significantly higher median household incomes than those camping the first-come-first-served campsites. And in the one urban proximate location, we studied just outside Washington, D.C., those camping and campsites that required reservations were coming from home locales that were significant. significantly whiter on average than those camping in the same campground but in the in the first

cover service sites. And so what do you show this disparity to be from? It's free time, right? Like if you have a job that allows you to have more free time or you have a larger network of friends and within that network of friends, folks have the free time to be on recreation.gov as soon as those reservations become available, that's a possibility. Internet speed. Again, if you have a 0.3% chance of getting one of these campsites, having faster internet, certainly going to give you an advantage. Or simply institutional knowledge, so knowing that you have to make these really far in advance, which is becoming a pretty recent phenomenon. So there's lots of anecdotes when you're traveling around the parks, people saying, oh, in 2015, you know, I just showed up and got a campsite.

Now I didn't know I had to book it this far in advance. And especially as we enter, you know, an era of outdoor recreation where more and more people are interested in outdoor recreation, in some ways inspired by the pandemic, they may not have, especially if they haven't been doing out the recreation in their entire lives, they may not have that institutional knowledge to know that I actually need to go and get a reservation six months in advance, or I have to have a job that allows me to plan six months in advance. That's extremely difficult as well. And a lot of folks don't have jobs that give them that security to say, I will be able to get off six months in advance. I know you're in Missoula, which is a popular city for outdoorsy folks.

Have you seen yourself how wealthier people are using their existing advantage to secure those valuable reservations? Yeah, and this is something that's pretty broadly known. I mean, this is the problem that the National Parks Service recognizes and is trying to amend. But one of the behaviors is, let's say you are able to get on directly when the reservations open. And let's say you don't want to be crowded in your campsite. People are booking the campsites on either side of the campsite. stay in in order to give themselves a little buffer room or if they want freedom to say, I think I want to go out whenever the weather's just right or I'm on a road trip and I don't

know exactly when I'll get there. They'll book it for two weeks and just stay there one night during those two weeks. And then for those other 13 nights, the campsite sits vacant. And folks who would want to use that campsite cannot. So they're booking twice as or three times as many spots as they need and they're booking for time. They're not going to use it. Wow. And our national Park stewing anything about this? Well, they're trying. It's hard to say, oh, you don't need those three campsites, you know, when someone's making a reservation. So this is a really tricky tools from like a web development standpoint with rec.gov trying to come up with creative solutions coming up with.

In some ways, the demand for camping is outpacing camping policy, which is actually an emerging topic of conversation nationally. Right now we're just dealing with this wicked problem that's affecting a lot of people. Two-thirds of North American residents camp. And so this affects the majority of U.S. residents. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. You know, as the saying goes, there's always an app for that. So there must be an app for booking campsites, right? I mean, would that make it easier or does that exacerbate the problem?

Well, in some ways it exacerbates it. So we have rec.gov, which is a relatively user-friendly app. It's a really well-developed website. But then there's also additional websites. There are campsite cancellation notification services. So if let's say you want to camp in a campsite in Yosemite National Park over this weekend, but there's no current availability, they will notify you as soon as a cancellation is made or as soon as reservations become available for the dates you want to camp. But for many of those services, they're charging a premium of a subscriber fee. Some people can't pay for those.

So these notification services, for instance, might charge $10 a month in order to. to notify you whenever our campsite becomes available. And just knowing that those are out there and some folks have that advantage could be, like, based on the outdoor recreation literature we know more broadly, that could be just having that knowledge that you don't have that advantage could be pushing some people to say, well, I don't even have a shot. Like, first of all, I had a 0.3% chance of getting one of these campsites. And now there's people who have this advantage they're able to pay additional money for.

Like, why would I even try? You know, we've talked on this show about the overall inequities and access to the outdoors, where national parks are already more likely to be patronized by richer, wider folk. Is it just the online reservation system? Well, first come for serve allocation strategies are not, you know, this panacea answer either. Our study just showed that they tended to have more equitable distribution than online reservation systems. But there's no perfect solution here. For instance, like in our study, we conclude that potentially the park service should continue

exploring and piloting different types of creative lotteries to allocate campsites because we tend to find those to be more equitable in terms of distribution. But they aren't perfect either. So that's really why I allude to this as a wicked problem. This isn't climate change. This isn't the drought war experience in the West. But this is a serious problem that's affecting a lot of people. And it's one from a social science perspective that's really difficult to crack because we just, we haven't discovered that perfect solution.

Well, you know, this is, these are the national parks. All of our tax money, right, pays for this. That's correct. This should be something that would be equally available to everybody. Is there a strategy? You know, this is not like big business trying to rip you off for as much as they can for a Beyonce ticket. Shouldn't there be a way that we can all make, have an equal access to this? Yeah.

I mean, that's the goal, right? And so in my field of like leisure studies, there's folks through study hospitality and tourism management. And those folks are, they're like, why don't we just raise the price? Well, this is a public good, right? We're supposed to be provisioning these, as you mentioned. The mandate is for all Americans. And so, yeah, it makes it really difficult. And we don't have that perfect solution right now.

And that's why we're, you know, we're really. for in our paper a really strong effort from the Park Service and other federal land management agencies to invest in the research that's going to be required to help overcome this problem. But let's talk about that. How much research is there actually on camping? I understand there's hardly anything in the literature, right? Yeah, that's what's so wild. So camping has just fallen through the cracks in terms of research. This is maybe the fourth paper I've written on camping. and each time we go to write the literature review for these papers, and it's like the literature is so sparse.

And I think part of that's because it falls between the cracks of these different disciplines. But for as big of an industry as it is, for as many people that do participate in this activity, it's incredibly under-researched. And for instance, just in campsite allocation that this study examined, we were only able to find one general technical report from 1976, the Forest Service produced, that looked in inequities in campsite allocations.

This is the second study that's even examined this. And the findings, I don't think, are shocking to people. I think people knew this was going on. But now we're able to provide the data to really show that this is an inequitable system. Well, we wish you great luck. May the campsites be with you in your research. Thank you so much, Ira. Really appreciate it.

Dr. Will Rice, assistant professor of outdoor recreation and wildland management at the University of Montana in Missoula. After the break, is climate change changing the menu at seafood restaurants? We'll take a look. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. For the rest of the hour, we're diving into seafood, squid, salmon, tuna,

because the seafood options on restaurant menus are not the same as they were 30 years ago. And what we love now may not stay on menus. Thanks to, you guessed it, climate change. Warming waters means changes to fish stocks, and that means a different catch is getting to your plate. Researchers from the University of British Columbia looked at more than 360 menus, dating back as far as 1880, and they found a connection between climate change and which seafood types rose to fame on restaurant menus over the years, and which ones flopped off. Get it? On our menu is Dr. William Chung of the University of British Columbia's Changing Ocean Research Unit based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you for having me. You know, looking at menus is a very clever way to track the impact of climate change. How did you come up with that idea? Yes. So for me and my team, we have been studying climate change effects on the oceans and fish stocks and fisheries for the last decade. We find connections between the changes. ocean conditions, particularly ocean warming with the fish dogs and the fish that our fisheries

are catching. And we want to then know how that affects people who may be less connected to the oceans. I mean, people who live in a city that do not go out fishing or do not even visit the coast very often. And one thing that I think they can connect to the ocean, to the ocean is through the food that they eat. So we think about, okay, let's start with restaurant. Yeah, so she looked at more than 360 menus going back to the 1880s. How do you do that? I mean, how do you even find menus that go back to the 1880s?

Yes. So one thing that we thought of is to know what the restaurant over, this menu, is a very good starting point. And one of the reason is that there is a physical or digital record of manual and that we can also easily assess these record as well. So for present-day menu, many of the restaurants, particularly in big city like Vancouver, the menu online, especially during the pandemic time. And there are also records, particularly for the older manual. that are kept in museum. We also find archives of restaurant menu or banquet menu in the city of Vancouver archives.

And these menus told you a story, didn't they? Exactly. So we were really surprised that our analysis actually shows what we were expecting, that the climatic conditions affects the kind of seafood that the restaurant would serve in these different cities. But we originally thought that there were so many factors that would be affecting what a restaurant would serve in their menu. Demand from their customers, the price of the seafood, or just kind of the trend of food culture at that time. But even with all these factors, we find that there are. there's a relationship between the kind of seafood at the restaurant surf and the environmental

conditions of the ocean adjacent to the city where many of these seafood are sourced. And I know one standout species from your paper was the Humboldt Squid. What did you learn about that? At Humboldt Squid is a really good example to illustrate why we are seeing that the seafood menu is actually getting warmer in a sense that it is containing now more warmer water species compared to the past in Vancouver. Humboldt squid is a species that preferred warm water. And we know that in recent years as the oceans warms up, and particularly in the years where the oceans of British Columbia was particularly warm. The Humboldt squid distribution expanded to our coast and often

in large numbers. And we find that Humboldt squid before those time period, actually we couldn't find that in the seafood manual that we look at. But then it only occurred in recent years, and it's actually actually getting more common. And so one of the reason that we suggest is that because of the expansions of the Humboldt squid as the oceans warms up, it actually increased the availability of Humboldt squid to the restaurant, and thus the chef is more likely to select the species in the menu. Wow. So when did the Humble Squid just start showing up on the menu?

About what year? It's in the last decade. Really? Yes. Wow. And you found them on many menus. Yes, we did. And the contrast is that before that, before that, we couldn't find that in any menu that we look at.

That is amazing. And on the flip side, are there any fish that aren't as popular on menus anymore? One of the big contrast is Pacific Sardin. Pacific Sardin was very common in seafood menu in Vancouver. before the 1950s. And because at that time, British Columbia had a big sardine fisheries, but then the sardine fisheries collapsed. It was because of various reasons, overfishing, because of environmental change.

So since then, sardin become rare in the seafood menu. But one thing is that, based on our previous research, as well as some research from other colleagues, We know that Pacific sardine is a warm water preferred species. And when we use computer simulation models to make projections of future change in sardine populations and fisheries, we project that. British chrylombare will have more sardine that may likely stimulate more fisheries catches of sardine as well. So we expect that in the near future, sardine will become more common in seafood menu.

And what fish would the sardines be replacing? You know, could it be salmon? I'm thinking of salmon as a cold water fish and it's a staple on the West Coast, right? Are salmon disappearing? That's what we are wearing too, particularly socca salmon. We know that sulkai salmon have not been doing really well in the wild populations in British Columbia in the last decade. And even with really strong conservation effort, the salmon populations are still not in a good situation. And part of the reason is because of the changing climate and that, as you said,

socoy salmon is a people who call the waters. And so the warmer waters actually becomes a threat to them. We project actually the sockeye salmon, the population will decline further if our climate continue to change with the mitigation. So what it means is that it's likely that the local seafood menu will become less likely to serve salmon, soccer salmon. It is likely to become more expensive and less accessible to consumer as well. Yeah, you know, there are lots of factors, I think, to consider here, like people's taste changing and other problems in the ocean that affect seafood. How do you know these changes are from climate change and not just a fad that, you know,

we're no longer eating this kind of fish or we are eating this kind of fish? That's a good point. And we admit that many of those other factors besides climate, affecting the restaurant choice of seafood in their menu, and that it is very difficult for us to just isolate the food. the climate effects are when we analyze the seafood manual. We did some analysis to try to reduce the inference. So for example, we know that the recent years, there are more aquaculture or farm-based

seafood that are available to local West John. We identify those species that are not native to British Colombian waters. So we assume those species to be either imported or are farmed by fish farm. A good example is Atlantic salmon. Naturally, Atlantic salmon does not occur in British Columbia. So we exclude those from our analysis. This helps us to focus on species that are caught from local waters. So that would help us to build a stronger link between the changing ocean environments in the water

outside of British Columbia and the changing seafood menu. My last question to you, I need you to look into your crystal ball. So I walk into a seafood restaurant 20 years from now. What seafood am I going to find on the menu and what's going to be gone? In this case, we will be seeing much more squid in our menu. It was humble squid, as well as others. squid species. And so we will be having a menu that is full of squid as well as sardine as well. In contrast, our signature species like Sokai salmon is likely to become rarer and less common.

Any chance we get some anchovies in there with, you know, the sardines. Antchobes are warm water, are they not? Actually, in this case, the sardine will be a more likely species. to see the angels. Thinking of my Caesar salad. I like angelfit, yes. Well, that's about it. It's fascinating.

Using menus to figure out what our food is going to be like in the future. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. You're welcome. Thank you very much. Dr. William Chung of the University of British Columbia's Changing Ocean Research Unit based in Vancouver. You're listening to Science Friday from WNYC, Okay, so seafood selections on restaurant menus are changing along with our climate. But before a fish

turns into a dish, it has to go through a chef. Here to tell us how chefs are adjusting to a changing basket of ingredients is chef Ned Bell, the owner and chef at the Naramata Inn in Naramata, British Columbia. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much. Thrill to be here. Nice to have you. Now, I understand that you've been a chef. for what, 30 years? Yes. Does the menu, has the menu look different from when you started versus now? When I started cooking, dinner looked like beef tenderloin, overcooked asparagus and mashed potatoes. And, you know, that was sort of the, you know, maybe the European influence of

meat and potatoes, you know, nutrient dense, plant-based ingredients are becoming more and more and more important and relevant to a healthy diet. And the way I like to describe my food is I food is I garnish with sustainability. So high quality protein, often from the ocean, ingredients that are harvested, grown, or caught ethically in the most sustainable manner possible. And of course, maybe a slightly smaller portion size. Chef, we just heard that Humbold Squid are a fairly new addition to Vancouver's menus. Years ago, you wouldn't have found them anywhere. What do you make of that?

Do you use Humboldt squid? Well, absolutely. I have. Humbolded squid became more and more relevant and prevalent on our menus because fissures would offer them to us because the ocean was warming and species were moving. And, you know, for me, I really want to eat and cook with the ecosystem. system. So as a new fish and seafood appear on the scene, this is not a terrifying fact. This is a nice challenge for you to cook up new dishes. Oh, gosh, yeah. I mean, it's, it forces us to be creative,

of course, but at the end of the day, I'm, I'm a chef. I'm, I live every day in creativity. I'm not a consumer, although of course I am, but, you know, seafood can be daunting. It can be confusing. It can be scary. It's hard to cook. It's smelly. It could look funny. It could have heads and tails and fish and skins and eyes and all the things. We like square chunks of flavorless protein in the middle of our plate. We have always liked that in North America. We're not very adventurous. And so I really want people to, as I said before, eat with the ecosystem and, you know, maybe just be willing to be a little flexible, adapt, a touch to what. your fisher or your fishmonger may suggest you should be cooking that day.

That brings me to this question just right in that wheelhouse. I mean, is there any seafood that you'd love to put on your menu, but you're worried people won't eat it? You know, right now, I mean, it's hard to answer that question because it would change every season. It would change every month. You know, right now is the BC spot prong season. It's about a seven to nine week season here up where I live. And as a bycatch of that fish. is octopus, a giant Pacific octopus. Well, there's no targeted fishery for giant Pacific octopus. So all of that is what we call a bycatch of the spot prawn fishery. And so what I would love is if we maybe were a little bit more adventurous when we went out to restaurants and said, you know what, I'm going to

order that octopus feature that the chef put on his or her menu tonight. Speaking of the ocean and the fish and the seafood that are in it, and we can see that that is changing as climate change heats up the ocean. If I were to walk, hopefully, into your restaurant in 20 years, what seafood do you think I find on your menu? Shellfish for sure. Mother nature's real fast food. If we are lucky to still have healthy oceans, and that is a big if depending on climate change and acidification and warming oceans and all of that. shellfish. A, it's delicious. B, it's available year-round. C, it's relatively inexpensive in comparison to some higher-priced, you know, proteins. I would say smaller fish, you know, not big fin fish, but, you know, as we were talking about earlier, anchovies and sardines and, you know,

some of these fisheries that if the ocean is thriving, these fisheries thrive. Might we see more seaweed salad on your restaurant in the future from? kelp or whatever other kind of algae is growing there. Oh, gosh, yeah. I mean, seaweed, superfood, high in vitamins and nutrient density and all the delicious things. It adds umami and briny, salty tastiness to all kinds of different recipes. And it really, uh, I hope, you know, finds its way onto our dinner tables, not only in restaurants, but maybe also into our homes. Chef, that's about all the time we have. I want to thank you for taking time to be with us today. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks very much for having us.

Chef Ned Bell, the owner and chef of the Naramatta Inn in Naramata, British Columbia. If you're interested in some other ways our menus might be changing, next week we'll sample some other foods that might become more popular on a warming planet. Kassava, anybody? And that's about all the time we have for this week. If you missed any part of this program, or you'd like to hear it again. Subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. Oh, yeah, you could say hello to us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,

or email us the old-fashioned way, SciFri at Science Friday.com. Send us feedback we'd love to hear from you. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.