Protecting pristine places

Dr. Alan Friedlander '80 jokes that when he complains about his job, no one really listens.

When the world's most untouched, remote locales are your workplace, and Hawaii has been home base for 25 years, those of us whose workdays are spent parked behind a desk might be prone to tuning him out.  

Truth is, people very likely do listen when Friedlander shares job-related complaints: the walrus that punctured a hole in his boat; the dives into 20-degree waters; the quick escapes from polar bears; the Russian guards with AK-47s, dispatched to protect him from said bears.  

Friedlander is a marine biologist, serving as affiliate faculty at the University of Hawaii's Department of Biology and as director of the university's Fisheries Ecology Research Lab.  

But his primary work, since 2013, has been as chief scientist for National Geographic's Pristine Seas project, a mammoth global effort to help protect the planet's most biodiverse, but vulnerable, marine areas. Launched officially in 2009 by National Geographic and its Explorer-in-Residence, Dr. Enric Sala, the project's five-year goal "is to save the last wild places on the ocean through a combination of science, media and policy," Friedlander says.  

The project's intended long-term impact, according to its website, is this: "to preserve areas that are pristine or near pristine and help restore areas that may have suffered some human impacts but still harbor unique features such as large animals, healthy bottom communities and outstanding biodiversity."  

There are other efforts and campaigns with missions similar to Pristine Seas', but "none of them combine science, media and policy the way we do," Friedlander says. "We use rigorous science, compelling media and make sure those have impact at the policy level. It's why we have been so effective."  

Expeditions have been conducted in 14 pristine seas thus far, with plans for about 20 more sites around the world, all with intact ecosystems but threatened by the impact of humans. The project's team of 20, which includes a former deputy undersecretary at NOAA, the one-time communications director for former Vice President Al Gore and the former head of the British Antarctic Survey, to date have succeeded in inspiring country leaders to create protected reserves in seven areas. Those areas, covering more than 2 million square kilometers of the most pristine places in the ocean, include:

• Gabon, a sovereign state on the west coast of Central Africa;
• the northern Line Islands in the U.S. Central Pacific;
• the southern Line Islands, a province of the Republic of Kiribati;
• the Pitcairn Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean, a possession of the United Kingdom;
• Salas y Gómez and Desventuradas, two small uninhabited Chilean island groups in the South Pacific;
• Cocos Island, off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.

In September, the team headed to Ilhas Selgavens (the Savage Islands), two uninhabited Portuguese islands between Madeira and the Canary Islands, off the coast of North Africa. In December, the team will be in the Galapagos Islands, tagging sharks and exploring the deep seamounts in submersibles.

"I feel fortunate to be able to visit these last wild places," Friedlander says. "They are remote, but pretty inspiring. And the fact that we've been able to transfer this into actionable conversation through science and media is amazing."  

Friedlander entered Roanoke College with biology as his intended major. He also came for lacrosse but played for only one year, finding the transition from high school to college athletics a bit tough. But he stuck with the biology major and was inspired to pursue a career in his chosen field - marine biology - while on a fish biology field course in the Florida Keys during what at the time was referred to as January "interterm" (precursor of today's May Term).  

After graduating from Roanoke, he moved to San Diego, then joined the Peace Corps in Tonga, where he worked as a fisheries extension agent. There, "I learned about the value of the ocean to people - and I learned a lot about myself."  

He then pursued a master's degree in oceanography at Old Dominion University, working on offshore fishing buoys in Puerto Rico and artificial reefs in the Chesapeake Bay. That was followed by work as a fisheries biologist with the U.S. Virgin Islands government, then as a marine ecologist with the Virgin Islands National Park. There, he conducted research on coral reefs throughout the Caribbean.

From there, he went to the University of Hawaii to pursue a doctorate in marine biology. He has been at the university ever since.  

Friedlander had been conducting groundbreaking research to show the dramatic differences between fish populations in the uninhabited remote northwestern Hawaiian Islands and those in the populated main Hawaiian Island. The results of his research showed that the pristine reefs of the remote islands are dominated by large predators such as sharks, and show an inverted biomass pyramid, with more predators than prey. (Biomass is the total mass of all living material in a specific area.)  

This novel idea was not universally accepted, Friedlander says. But Dr. Sala, who was at Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the time, asked Friedlander if he would help lead an expedition to the Northern Line Islands in the central Pacific to test this hypothesis.  

"We found very similar results with an abundance of sharks and other predators at the uninhabited sites compared to the populated islands," Friedlander says. "This was the first Pristine Seas expedition, and we continue to validate these findings whenever we visit remote locations, whether it be coral reefs, temperate kelp forests or the Arctic Ocean."  

What followed for Friedlander was an offer to join the Pristine Seas team as chief scientist.  

"My goal is to conduct research to help understand what the ocean was like before heavy human impacts, to understand what we have lost in other places because of human impacts, and most importantly, to set proper conservation and management goals for our oceans," he says.  

Friedlander, 56 and married with two dogs, has spent more than 10,000 hours underwater—in coral reefs, in the Arctic and in depths of thousands of feet, exploring some of the most remote and challenging regions on Earth.  

He has no plans to scale back his subaquatic adventures anytime soon.  

"I still have another decade of diving left," he says. Reflecting, he adds, "It has been kind of amazing."