………..revealed to Coastwise members what he and colleagues got right, wrong and missed completely when revisiting predictions of future states of rocky shores after 25 years and documenting how well they did.
It’s extremely difficult to make predictions (especially about the future, as a wise man once said), and Prof. Hawkins applied scientific rigour to an exercise in 2000 to predict what might change as regards marine life on rocky shores. The paper (“Rocky intertidal communities: past environmental changes, present status and predictions for the next 25 years”) was originally submitted in 2001 and published in 2002.
The answer to the exercise…..slightly better than the government’s Monetary Policy Committee on economic issues. Stephen and colleagues gave themselves a mark of “6/10 – Not bad but could do better” (he is an academic, after all) as they got some predictions right, some wrong, and totally missed some changes.
The reason for the study on rocky shores was; they are two dimensional enabling non-destructive sampling, organisms compete for easily measured resource-space, mainly short lifespans and manageable sizes of organisms, sessile or sedentary consumers, easy to experimentally manipulate because of the steep environmental gradient: sea to land, few taxonomic/ID problems, experiments are easy (e.g. transplants to other parts of the gradient, exclusions, removals, thinning, all with controls adjacent), and finally rapid response times to experiments.
What was missed completely were; metals and mine run-off (corrected by Castilla from Chilean experience), extreme flood events, ocean acidification (lower alkalinity), light pollution, sound pollution, plastics – especially microplastics, pharmaceuticals and emerging antibiotic-resistance micro-organisms, road run-off (PAHs, tyre-wear derived micro-debris and pollutants).
So, and very interesting and honest self-appraisal of some careful work in the light of subsequent events.
