Creating a dynamic webpage to convey the cascading impacts of climate change on the U.S. West Coast Dungeness crab fishery. A capstone in fulfillment of the UW PCC Graduate Certificate in Climate Science.

Written by: Katy Bland, M.M.A. 2021 (SMEA)

On the U.S. west coast, harmful algal blooms (HABs) have become frequent over the last two decades. To the average person on the west coast, a bloom may mean that razor clams or Dungeness crabs are missing from the grocery, but to fishers, seafood processors, and coastal communities, HABs may mean that fisheries are delayed and livelihoods are affected. Fishers may be put out of work for months, communities may lose tourist income, and families may fear the loss of their cultural connection to the ocean. While these socioeconomic consequences are real and tangible, the root cause of these disruptions may be quite opaque to anyone besides climate scientists.

For my GCeCS capstone project, I wanted to demystify the link between climate change, HABs, and fishery disasters and outline some potential industry-wide adaptive strategies. Since the majority of my master’s degree lectures and meetings were Zoom calls, I felt fatigued by the thought of yet another zoom lecture. To address this fatigue and make something that people could interact with on their own time, I decided to create an interactive webpage. Through this interactive webpage, my goals were to:

1. outline the fundamentals of how climate change impacts marine HABs,
2. detail how Pseudo-nitzschia (an alga of that can be harmful) impacts the Dungeness crab fishery,
3. visualize HAB induced- Dungeness crab fishery closures across the U.S. west coast, and
4. compile and share an array of existing resources that the audience can use to further dive into specific pieces of this scientific communication.

WHAT DID I DO?

And what is scrollytelling? If you’ve ever read an online article that reacted to your mouse or trackpad scroll, you’re familiar with it. Scrollytelling, a portmanteau of scrolling and storytelling, is a way to display longform essays with audio, photos, videos, or data visualizations triggered at certain points to show the written story.  Responsive articles like this and this are great examples, and served as inspiration for my capstone project.

Because I didn’t have any web development experience, I decided to take advantage of the only coding language I know, R, and bring my scrollytelling vision to life using Shiny by RStudio. This process wasn’t straightforward, however, since Shiny Apps are usually used for interactive data exploration on a static interface. For example, see this App. Therefore, in addition to teaching myself how to use the Shiny format (which consists of a user interface and a server), I had an added challenge of integrating dynamic features (i.e., the scrolling triggers).

HOW DID IT GO?

Although the scrollytelling piece isn’t as flashy or interactive as my inspirational pieces linked above, I am excited by how it turned out! Most importantly, it worked in accomplishing my capstone project goals. While the intended audience is the crab processing industry and related communities, the intermediary audience was the greater PCC community. The PCC community served as participants in a capstone pilot study, engaging with the capstone and providing feedback; this feedback is being incorporated into a modified version of the webpage.

To evaluate the efficacy of my communications product in this pilot study, I created a Qualtrics survey that participants took before and after engaging with the scrollytelling piece. The survey was simple, with four likert-style questions that were either self-reported knowledge or observed knowledge. Additionally, the post-engagement survey asked the following open response questions to elicit feedback:

• Do you have any specific comments about the content of the capstone?
• Do you have any specific comments about the aesthetics or structure of the capstone?
• How do you think the webpage could be improved?
• Do you have comments on anything else?

Overall, the survey results from 22 participants indicate that users learned from the content and appreciated the format. They generally liked the content and aesthetics and gave very positive feedback! Their ideas for improvement are very helpful and are being integrated into the final webpage for the target audience. Most respondents were either students or academic staff or faculty. I was pleased to see that there were three respondents outside of academia: a retired shipwright, a consumer, and a person in the construction industry. I am paying especially close attention to their open responses, since they are closer in demographics to the final target audience. For further detail on the likert knowledge improvement and the feedback received, feel free to reach out to Miriam Bertram (PCC Assistant Director) or myself for the capstone report.

REFLECTIONS

After thinking about harmful algal blooms and the Dungeness crab fishery through various capacities during my master’s degree, I was thrilled to tie together the themes of multiple projects in such a digestible format. Conversations with Sunny Jardine (my capstone advisor) and Miriam were critical in providing strategic direction, and I’m grateful to have had their guidance in this project!

Although my Graduate Certificate in Climate Science is complete, I’m excited to continue the project to publish the final updated Shiny App and reach the crab industry. While I continue to incorporate edits, view the unmodified capstone project here! The code used to bring the project to life can be found on my Github (also linked at the bottom of the capstone project).

Katy Bland is a recent Master of Marine Affairs graduate from the UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (SMEA) and completed this capstone project for the Graduate Certificate in Climate Science. Over the course of her degree, she spent time studying the Dungeness crab fishery, either through her Research Assistantship on Adaptive Strategies for the seafood industry, her master’s thesis focused on the role of fishing portfolio diversification and adaptive strategy during a fishery disaster on revenue impacts, or this capstone project.  You can reach Katy by email.