Seizing a Species: The Story of the Great Salt Lake Brine Shrimp Harvest

by

Samuel Alex Wotipka

B.A. English LiteratureUniversity of Oregon, 2011

Submitted to Comparative Media Studies/Writing in Partialthe Requirements for the Degree of

Fulfillment of

Master of Science in Science Writing

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

September 2014

C 2014 Sam Wotipka. All rights reserved.

The author herby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicallypaper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium

now known or hereafter created.

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Thesis Supervisor

Thomas LevensonProfessor of Science Writing

Director, Graduate Program in Science Writing

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Seizing a Species: The Story of the Great Salt Lake Brine Shrimp Harvest

by

Sam Wotipka

Submitted to Comparative Media Studies/Writing in Partial Fulfillment ofthe Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science Writing

ABSTRACT

In the early 1950s, C.C. "Sparkplug" Sanders began harvesting brine shrimp from Utah's Great SaltLake. Sanders built up a small business selling their eggs, called "cysts, to aquarium stores acrossthe country. During the 80s, cysts were found to be an effective food source for aquaculture and amultimillion-dollar commercial harvesting industry quickly emerged.

As the cysts rose in value, competition between harvesters grew fierce and annual catches soon be-gan to drop. Environmentalists also became concerned, as the shrimp are an important food sourcefor millions of migratory birds. The harvest was almost entirely unregulated during this period.Unlike other fisheries, where industry members have fought government intervention, many of theharvesters called on the state to increase oversight. Scientists hired by Utah's natural resource agen-cy found that no comprehensive studies had ever been conducted on the lake's ecosystem, compli-cating initial efforts to manage the harvest. A twenty-year effort by the state, harvesters and otherstakeholders to develop a science-based management strategy has recently begun to pay off as cystpopulations appear to be stabilizing and the harvesting industry has once again become profitable.

Thesis Advisor: Philip J. HiltsTitle: Professor of Science Writing

Director of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships

2

For Mom and Paul

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In October of 1951 an enthusiastic letter telling ofa discovery in Utah's Great Salt Lake appeared inThe Aquarium, a magazine for fish hobbyists. "Brineshrimp by the billions!" C.C. "Sparkplug" Sanderswrote from Ogden. The shrimp themselves werenothing new-in fact their presence in the lake datesback some 15,000 years-but Sanders had foundthat they made great live feed for the betta fish heraised in an assortment of tanks in his home andsold locally.

Famous for its general deadness and putrid smell,the Great Salt Lake seemed an unlikely place to findnature's bounty. But, as Sanders had discovered, asimple but productive ecosystem of salt-tolerantcreatures, brine shrimp among them, thrives in thelake's harsh, saline waters.

Often accompanied by his son, Sanders would makethe 20 minute drive to the lake's eastern shoreline,turning towards the water down a rough dirt roadthat dead-ended out on the surface of the lake atan abandoned salt works. Though wide, the lake isextremely shallow and also muddy, especially at itsmargins. This point of entry made for less wading.

Carrying long-handled nets, they would step off theroad and trudge out into the water, which becomeswarm during the long, hot days of a Utah summer.When pushed towards the shore by the wind or lakecurrents, the shrimp often school so thickly that thewater appears dark red. With a two-man net theycould gather the schooling shrimp a half gallon at

a time.

In a typical trip, it would take them two hours todrive out to the lake and gather around 40 quarts oflive brine shrimp, which more resemble miniaturesilverfish than the seafood staple that shares theirname. Each adult brine shrimp is roughly the sizeof a Tic Tac.

Back at home, Sanders poured his catch, a thick slur-ry of wriggling shrimp, into metal bread pans andstored them in a freezer. When need arose, he wouldslice off pieces of the frozen shrimp bricks with aband saw and drop them into his aquariums. Thechunks melted in the warm water and the shrimpreanimated before being devoured by tropical fish.

After Sanders' letter was published, requests forthe diminutive crustaceans began pouring in fromacross the country. Realizing an opportunity waspresenting itself, Sanders got together with his friendand occasional business partner, Scott Wangsgard, aSalt Lake City high school teacher who moonlight-ed as an accountant, among various other odd jobs.Together they formulated a plan to profit from thediscovery by selling the shrimp to aquarium supplystores nationwide.

Wangsgard began organizing small crews of workersand sending them out to the salt works in a burnt or-ange GMC pickup. Many of the laborers were fellowteachers looking to earn extra money over the sum-mer. Armed with nets crafted from surplus army

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parachutes, they slopped the shrimp into inflatablechildren's swimming pools that floated at their sides,secured by ropes tied to their waists. Periodically, asthe pools became full they would tow them back toshore and pump their contents into a pair of 500-gal-lon rubber fuel tanks salvaged from B-17 bomb-ers-another Buck's War Surplus find-that sat inthe back of the truck. When the tanks were full, theypacked up and drove back into town.

Back at Sanders' garage, he and Wangsgard impro-vised a more efficient method for processing andpackaging the shrimp. They were first rinsed infreshwater and then dispensed from a soft-serveice-cream machine into containers of varying quan-tities, ranging from one-ounce bags to quarts. Thepackages were stamped with a brand name-Sand-ers Brine Shrimp Company-before being hauled toa cold storage plant and eventually being shipped viarail to aquarium supply stores across America.

For Sanders, this was a business venture. And as heimproved and refined his methods, it became a rel-atively successful one. Within fifteen years, he had asmall, profitable company with a handful of seasonalemployees. The company was eventually passed onto his sons and is still in business.

For the brine shrimp, those first harvests were fun-damentally transformative. As the truck drove off,sagging under the weight of the day's catch, the brineshrimp were no longer a mere cog in the unforgiv-ing ecosystem of the Great Salt Lake, but a naturalresource. The men were about to seize a species formankind.

Civilization has been built on the backs of otherspecies that humans have figured out how to utilizein various ways. Often, this has involved a gradu-al process of selective breeding and domestication.Modern agriculture relies on plants and animalswhose wild ancestors were handpicked centuries agofor traits deemed useful to mankind. A lengthy listof human-crafted species-cows, corn, wheat, hors-es, chickens, and so on-has been generated by thishabit.

Nature is not always easily improved upon, though,

and many species have proven so useful in their wildforms that humans have opted to "manage" ratherthan modify them. Game management, forestry andfisheries are among the subdisciplines of the man-agement branch of humans' species utilization prac-tices.

By now, most of the obvious candidates have beentaken, yet our innate inclination to see opportuni-ty among nature's creations has hardly waned. We'rejust reaching further into the bucket. Algae are beingharnessed as a source of biofuel. Oyster colonies arebeing created in Chesapeake Bay to help filter outwater contaminants.

The Great Salt Lake brine shrimp were mostly ig-nored by several thousand years worth of humansbefore Sanders realized their enormous potential.

Today Artemia franciscana, the particular speciesof brine shrimp that inhabit the Great Salt Lake, arethe basis of an industry that is worth over 30 milliondollars annually, on average, and employs more than350 people. The harvesting process has evolved froma homespun experiment into a precisely orchestrat-ed, high-tech operation involving spotting planes,global positioning systems, and fleets of boats withspecialized equipment.

For the first 30 years, there wasn't much competition."C.C. Sanders has a 1,500 square mile fishing hole tohimself,"' read the first line of a 1961 Associated Pressprofile. Though he wasn't getting rich, Sanders madea decent living supplying pet and aquarium storeswith brine shrimp eggs (which he had found, earlyon, were easier to pack and ship than live shrimp).Midway through the 1980s, though, it was discov-ered that the shrimp were a cheap and effective foodsource for prawns being raised on farms in South-east Asia. The race was on.

Their suitability for aquaculture turned brine shrimpinto a global commodity and the per-pound pricestheir eggs commanded soared. Cysts began sellingfor upwards of $8 a pound, and there were rumorsof harvesters fetching prices over five times thatamount. As word spread, newcomers flocked to thelake, hoping to grab a piece of the growing wealth.New companies sprang up overnight and Sander's

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1,500-square-mile fishing hole began to get a littlecrowded. The harvest became frenzied and tense, ascompanies competed fiercely against one anotherfor what many of them knew was a limited resource.The state wildlife division, which until then hadmostly ignored the shrimpers, in-stead focusing their Great Salt Lake $s woefforts on the mining and mineralextraction companies that oper- flockeate on and around the lake, foundthemselves in over their heads as grab athey struggled to reign in a fisherythey knew almost nothing about. wealthBrine shrimp thrive where littleelse does. They are part of an elite group of organ-isms that biologists have designated as "extremo-philes." That is, species adapted to environmentsthat are particularly inhospitable to life-volcanoes,mountaintops, deep sea vents, geysers, caves, deserts,and the like. Rather than relying on nature's bounty,these organisms, many of them microbes, eke out anexistence from the leftovers by extracting nutritionand energy from places that other species can't.

Salty lakes are where brine shrimp make their liv-ing. There are hundreds of saline lakes worldwide,give or take a few that dry up seasonally and others,like the Aral Sea in central Asia, that have seen theirinflowing waters reduced to the point that they haveceased to be lakes for all practical purposes. Many ofthese water bodies are relatively mild in their salti-ness and support diverse ecosystems that often in-clude brine shrimp among various species of aquaticbirds, mammals, fish, insects and microorganisms.With salinity levels on the order of 2-4%, they re-semble inland oceans (the world's oceans are gener-ally around 3.5%).

It is their ability to subsist in waters with far greatersalt levels that has earned brine shrimp their extrem-ophile status. Hypersaline lakes, like the Great SaltLake and the Dead Sea, where salinity concentra-tions can reach upwards of 30%, or ten times thatof the ocean, have greatly reduced biodiversity, asfew species can cope with concentrations of salt thathigh. For brine shrimp this actually an advantage. Inmilder bodies of water, they are easy prey, especially

for fish. But even saltwater fish species can only han-dle so much salinity.

Excess internal salt causes the cells of most plantsand animals to rapidly become dehydrated. Salin-

rd spread, newcomersI to the lake, hoping topiece of the growing

.

ity-adapted organisms have various strategies formanaging salt. Ocean-dwelling fish, for example,filter it out through their gills. The marine iguana,found exclusively near the Galipagos Islands, sneez-es salt out through a specialized gland in its nose.These types of adaptations are energetically cost-ly, however, and have an upper limit. Past a certainpoint the brine shrimp are left mostly to their owndevices.

Scientists have described brine shrimp as the bestosmoregulators in the animal kingdom. Their exo-skeletons are impermeable to the water surround-ing them, but when they open their mouths to feed,their bodies are flooded with saltwater. Specializedcells that line their stomachs absorb the water whilea pair of internal pumps excrete excess salt throughtheir gills and a gland in their neck. The pumps canspeed or slow depending on the concentration of saltin their environment, which can vary significantlydepending on factors like the amount of freshwaterinflow to a lake at any given point, evaporation rates,and even the extent to which humans are harvestingit (about 2.5 million tons of salt are removed fromthe Great Salt Lake each year for commercial pur-poses)-allowing brine shrimp to maintain relative-ly stable body salt levels.

The true key to the unique survivability of brineshrimp, though, is their evolution of something akinto foresight. Many animals time their reproductivecycles to coordinate with the seasons, the goal beingto give birth when weather is mild and food is abun-dant. For brine shrimp, good timing is rarely a guar-

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Bagged cysts are transferred from a boom boat to a haul boat before being taken ashore for processing.

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antee of favorable conditions. Many of the salty lakeswhere brine shrimp live periodically dry up entirelydue to heat evaporation. Sometimes salt levels canswing wildly due to influxes of water from snowmeltor other sources.

During pregnancy, female brine shrimp have theability to "perceive" trends in environmental con-ditions and give birth to either live offspring, callednauplii or, if conditions appear unfavorable, theyproduce cysts, which are essentially highly fortifiedeggs that can remain in a state of suspended devel-opment indefinitely, a phenomenon called cryptobi-osis. They hatch only when the environment returnsto a survivable state. Cysts can be thought of as ge-netic time capsules. Faced with unlivable conditions,brine shrimp are able to use cysts to store their genesfor safekeeping and ensure the perpetuation of theirspecies. Cysts that manage to stay dry can remainviable for up to five years.

During winter months, temperatures in the GreatSalt Lake frequently drop below zero degrees Celsius(the water rarely solidifies, though, because saltwa-ter has a much lower freezing point than freshwa-ter). Hardy as they are, even brine shrimp can't toler-ate water this cold, and by October most of them dieoff. Left behind, though, are the cysts, which float onthe surface of the lake and sometimes, when they arepushed together by currents or the wind, amass inexpansive streaks that harvesters refer to as "slicks."From above it can appear as though broad red brushstrokes have been made on the surface of the lake.Come spring, the cysts hatch and repopulate thelake.

Before Sanders showed up, most of the attentionthe Great Salt Lake brine shrimp received came frombirds. Though its waters are largely "dead:' in a man-ner of speaking (save for the brine shrimp, of course)avian life abounds at the lake's margins where itsfreshwater inputs-the Bear, Weber and Jordan Riv-ers-have created vast estuaries and wetlands. Overseven million birds spend time at the lake each year;an intensive long-term study conducted by the staterecently identified over 250 individual species.Much of the winged traffic the Great Salt Lake re-ceives is from migratory birds. The lake is a critical

stopover point for resting and refueling during annu-al journeys between the northern United States andCanada, and wintering grounds throughout Mexicoand Central and South America. Ornithologists liketo describe this phenomenon using the analogy of anhourglass, where grains of sand all funnel towards acentral point before dispersing back outwards.

Brine shrimp have eleven pairs of leg-like append-ages that branch out from the center of their body,which in combination with their tail, enable them toswim, in theory at least. But because of their dimin-utive size-adults are about .4 inches long-in theGreat Salt Lake brine shrimp are usually drifters.Pushed shoreward by the movements of the water,they become a source of protein for travel-wearybirds that requires little effort to collect.

Two species in particular make heavy use of theshrimp. Eared grebes-small, duck-like waterbirds-are by and large the most numerous speciesof bird on the lake. Around 2.5 million of them, rep-resenting over half of their North American pop-ulation, come to the lake each fall where they feastalmost exclusively on brine shrimp. A bad year forthe shrimp can cause significant casualties for thegrebes, which have no other dependable food sourcein the area. Wilson's phalaropes also rely heavily onbrine shrimp when they arrive at the lake in latespring, an event that is the greatest annual gatheringof their species worldwide.

Mark Jensen is a renaissance man in the true spir-it of the American West. His resume includes yearsspent as a river guide in the Grand Canyon and Alas-ka, being featured on the November 1974 cover ofSkiing Magazine (clad in a skin-tight black and greenracing suit and bright red ski boots, shoulder-lengthblonde hair streaming behind him), a stint as an or-ganic farmer, and owning a successful brine shrimpharvesting company. More recently, he was the sub-ject of a profile in the Deseret News that praised hiswork as an amateur botanist. "Gardener creates par-adise of hybrid daylilies," read the headline.

At times he seems more like a character from a bookthan a real person. There is, perhaps, some truth tothis. Jensen features prominently in several short

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stories by Edward Abbey, who was a passenger onseveral of his river trips. "Gather at the River" re-calls a ten day voyage Jensen led down the KongakutRiver in the northernmost reaches of Alaska. Abbeywrites admiringly of Jensen, feigning jealousy ofhis athletic prowess and youthful energy, and laudshim for his camp stove coffee, which he describes as"powerful enough to deconstipate a sand-impactedEgyptian."

Jensen remains true to Abbey's version of him. Nowin his 60s, his hair has begun to grey but he has re-tained his lean, powerful build. He has a manner thatis at once affable and gritty, which encapsulates thefrontier years of the brine shrimp harvest. Gregar-ious and excitable, Jensen powers through the daywith a steady drip of caffeine and alcohol.

"It's not too late to have a beer," he's fond of saying atbreakfast.

Jensen was in his 30s when he got a call from a friendwho had become aware of a mini-gold rush that wasoccurring out on the Great Salt Lake. He asked Jen-sen if he could spare $10,000 to help start a companyharvesting brine shrimp cysts. Jensen didn't have themoney, but needing something to occupy his timewhen it wasn't river-running season, he joined Bon-neville Artemia International as a captain that win-ter.

Jensen found that harvesting brine shrimp suitedhim well. The hours were long, the conditions werewretched, and the work was backbreaking, but itwas also rewarding-both spiritually and financially.And, as a bonus, there were ample opportunities forthe same sorts of good-natured debauchery that heenjoyed during his summers as a river guide.

He soured on BAI after a few years when he discov-ered that his girlfriend and the owner were, in hiswords, "doing the hokey pokey." But Jensen recog-nized that there was good money to be made in cystharvesting and started up his own company, whichhe named Great Lake Artemia.

Each day of the harvest season begins with a sig-nal from the sky. Hired pilots in single engine planes

begin making broad sweeps across the lake early inthe morning. If they spot a sizable accumulation ofcysts-ideally a "gagger' as the biggest streaks arecalled colloquially-they call out the GSP coordi-nates over a radio system to a "chase boat" standingby near the shore. The chase boat races out into thelake to stake their claim to the streak by droppinga large buoy next to it, while they wait for larger,equipment carrying boats to arrive.

Sparkplug Sanders was the first to make use ofspotting planes when he began venturing from theshorelines out into to the lake to harvest cysts. Thesouthern arm is 28 miles wide in some places, andsearching for slicks from the surface was simply tootime-consuming.

Once a slick has been claimed, a "boom boat" showsup with what is essentially oil spill containmentequipment. A small dinghy is dropped into the wa-ter and begins dragging the boom-a long, snake-like floating barrier-around the perimeter of theslick. When the boom has been brought all the wayaround and back to the boat, it is cinched and thentightened, forcing the enclosed floating cysts inwardinto a round "cake" By this point, the "haul boat" hasusually arrived. From a platform that hangs from theboat, crew members rake the cysts into a small work-ing area where they are vacuumed into 2,000-poundbags that sit on the deck. The whole process usuallytakes several hours, and if it's a gagger it can occu-py the better part of a day. The bags are eventuallybrought back to shore and driven to warehouses inOgden and Salt Lake City where the cysts are dried,processed and stored before being shipped acrossthe globe.

Known to outsiders as the clean-cut hub of theMormon Church, Salt Lake City is not without itsown gritty underbelly. Just south of the town's spot-less urban core, nestled between a motorcycle deal-ership and a used car lot, Duffy's Tavern is a divey,oasis of vice.

It's not a big building and it's easy to miss. Salt LakeCity's famously wide streets-about 132 feet across,typically-have the effect of making any buildingsmaller than the Salt Lake Temple look minuscule by

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comparison. The official story is that Brigham Youngwanted them to be wide enough for a team of oxenpulling a covered wagon to be able to turn around in.

Duffy's is the sort of place where you get a sidewayslook for asking what micros are on tap. Bud andMiller aren't good enough for you? The interior fea-tures the standard pub decor: red vinyl booths and

"More like primitive equand hillbillies," says Stenbarstools, a mosaic of sports memorabilia coveringthe walls (go Utes), and a complete absence of natu-ral light. A bumper sticker on a mini-fridge behindthe bar reads, "Fuck yeah, I'm a Mormon."

After long stints out on the lake, or any other peri-od of unoccupied time, really, Jensen and his crewwould roll in, exhausted and reeking of sweat andbrine. Taking up every stool at the bar, they woulddrink until closing time (1 a.m., per Utah's liquorlaws), heading home to catch a few hours of sleepbefore going back out on the water in the morning."You had to stay hydrated' says Jensen.

Their revelry is memorialized at the top of Duffy'smenu in the form of a monstrous ten dollar sand-wich called the GLA, named for Jensen's harvestingcompany. It features "relish, piles of Mozzarella, pep-peroni, ham, pastrami, and tomato with Duffy's bal-samic sauce on artisan Ciabatta bread." Served hot.

"We owned this place," Jensen remarked earlier thisyear, sipping his Budweiser from one of the over-sized cast-metal mugs reserved for the bar's mostdedicated patrons. It seems like they still do.

To his right sits Marty Stenerson, formerly a captainon one of Jensen's boats. Now he makes his living asa tailor, oddly enough. Tim Begue, who ran his owncompany, Prime Artemia, is perched on the nextstool over.

When you talk to the scientists and state workersthat were around during the nascent years of the

harvesting industry, the phrase "wild west" tendsto get thrown in a lot. There are tales of boats beingused as battering rams, physical confrontations anddrawn guns.

Jensen and his comrades smirk and roll their eyes atthe suggestions. "More like primitive equipment andhillbillies"' says Stenerson.

. As a twenty-two-year-old, Sten-ipment erson relocated to Utah from

Elkhart, a small town in north-erson. ern Indiana known for being the

RV manufacturing capital of theworld. He got his start in the brine shrimp indus-try in 1989 at BAL, where Jensen had recently beenhired as a captain. Stenerson spent his first season inthe company's warehouse rinsing batches of cysts inpotassium permanganate, a disinfectant, then dry-ing and packaging them. The next season, he joinedthe harvest crews out on the lake. After a few years,he jumped ship for Jensen's newly formed companywhere he eventually became a captain himself, oper-ating a 34-foot Kvichak skiff that was used as a haulboat.

The crews out on the boats are a hardy bunch. A lotof them work the commercial salmon and king crabfisheries in Alaska during the summer, migratingsouth in the winter to make a little extra cash har-vesting brine shrimp. Jensen staffed his boats withfellow river guides. "When shit hits the fan, they'renot afraid" he said.

Even for seasoned fishermen and river runners, be-ing out on the Great Salt Lake in January and Feb-ruary can be trying. Utah winters are cold and thelake waters are often subfreezing. Snow and wind arecommonplace, as are stomach-turning waves, whichroll across the surface of the lake and can reach sev-eral feet in height. Owing to the water's elevated den-sity (a product of its saltiness), the waves can pack asubstantial punch.

Before most of the industry coalesced into a singlecooperative, companies competed intensely againstone another, and the harvest ran nearly 24/7. Often,instead of towing their boats back into town whennight came or conditions on the lake became un-

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bearable, crews would rest in makeshift camps set upalong the shorelines for a few hours and then headback out, spending days or weeks harvesting beforereturning home.

"We used humor to get through it all," Stenersonsaid. Booze and pot helped too.

Most of the conflicts out on the lake arose from dis-agreements over who had the right to a particularcyst streak, Begue explains. A good-sized gagger canbe over a mile long, and might be worth over $10,000depending on the going rate on cysts at any giventime. To lay claim to a streak, harvesters simply placea buoy next to it. Before the state became involved,it was basically an honor system, and with the fast-paced, high-stakes nature of the harvest, honor wassometimes in short supply.

Per the scant regulations that were in place at thetime, companies were allowed a buffer zone of 300yards around their buoy. The spirit of the law wasmeant to give the first boat on the scene the rightto harvest all of the cysts in a slick. But late-arriv-ing companies would frequently show up and startharvesting at the opposite end of a slick, technical-ly beyond the 300-yard limit, a maneuver known as"corkscrewing."

Curses and middle fingers might be exchanged, butthe confrontations rarely escalated beyond that.Jensen sometimes tried to ease tense situations byoffering cans of beer to his adversaries, a strategythat usually worked well, except when he was deal-ing with the companies that staffed their boats withMormons.

On July 2nd, 1992, John Crosbie, the CanadianFisheries Minister, announced a complete moratori-um on the nation's northern cod fishery. "I'm mak-ing a decision based on the desire to ensure that thenorthern cod survives as a species,"' he said at thetime as a group of protesting fishermen attemptedto break into the press conference through a barri-caded door. The announcement was dubbed "thebiggest layoff in Canadian history." Over 35,000 jobswere eliminated overnight.

Not that there was any other option at that point.After a decades-long decline, the northern cod pop-ulation was one one hundredth of its historic highduring the 60s. The signs had been there for years,but under pressure from fishermen and processingplants, the government mostly ignored the projec-tions of their own scientists until it was too late tosimply reduce the size of the harvest. The populationwas not simply on the verge of collapse-it had col-lapsed. All that could be done was to try to save thefishery from total extinction.

Even now, the species has still not fully recovered(the northern cod population of eastern Canada isnow at about 15% of what scientists consider to behealthy) and the moratorium remains in place. Itwas originally supposed to last two years.

Similar situations, though mostly not quite so se-vere, continue to play out across the United Statesand the rest of the world as they have for much ofthe past century. Allowable catch limits in New En-gland's northern cod fishery have been reduced to afraction of what they were previously, as managersscramble to prevent a crisis like the one in easternCanada. The Pacific bluefin tuna, highly sought af-ter as an ingredient in high-end sushi, has dropped96% from its levels prior to commercial harvesting.This year's pink shrimp harvest in the Gulf of Mainewas recently canceled when scientists discoveredthat stocks were at lower levels than had ever beenrecorded. Overfishing, combined with rising oceantemperatures that appear to be a consequence ofglobal warming, were identified as the main culprits.

The shutdown of the northern cod harvest drewsignificant international press, and it did not go un-noticed in the close-knit brine shrimp community.There were plenty of parallels to be drawn betweenthe failed fishery in eastern Canada and their ownindustry, which was just starting to come into itsown.

The reasons for the cod's collapse, and the declineof fisheries world-wide are various. Poor science, laxor non-existent regulations, pollution, overfishing,and an insatiable human demand for seafood haveall contributed. But it was the rapid technological

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Above: a single-engine Cessna passes across the lake in search of cyst streaks. Below: a 'gagger."

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advances in harvesting methods, which followedthe end of the Second World War, that enabled theexploitation of the world's fisheries to proceed at anunprecedented pace. The use of global positioningsystems and radar took the guesswork out of lo-cating stocks, new techniques like gill-netting andmid-water trawling made it possible to harvest ingreater volumes than ever before, and bigger, morepowerful vessels gave fishermen the means to har-vest faster and further from shore.

Great Salt Lake brine shrimp were not even identifiedas a potential natural resource until the mid-1950s,and the influence of technology on the industry wastherefore delayed compared with other fisheries.Few people other than Sanders and his collaboratorsmade any large-scale attempts at collecting the cystsprior to the 1980s. But when the shrimp's utility inaquaculture was recognized, and subsequently theirvalue as a commodity, a technological arms racequickly unfolded between new harvesting compa-nies.

An investor in Jensen's company suggested equip-ping their spotters with night-vision goggles. Jensenwas initially skeptical of the plan, but eventually re-lented, and they purchased several sets through anarmy surplus store. They turned out to be extreme-ly effective, and Jensen's pilots began flying over thelake before the sun rose each day, giving his harvest-ers a considerable head-start each morning.

"The race was fucked," Jensen readily admits now.Still, aware of his advantage, Jensen pushed thestate to allow a 24-hour harvest, a request that waseventually granted, and the harvest became a round-the-clock affair that ceased only in the most severeweather.

It was around this time that the northern cod col-lapsed. "That was a warning to us" said Don Leon-ard, now the director of the Great Salt Lake Artemiacooperative. "And we heeded the warning."

Jensen and some of the harvesters began talkingamong themselves. The unwritten rules of the lake,they realized, were no longer enough, and they de-cided that if they were going to avoid a tragedy of thecommons situation, something needed to be done.

They brought in Leonard, at that point a local lawyer,to head a consortium of harvesting companies in-terested in coming up with solutions. After consid-erable discussion, they decided to do something al-most unheard of in the commercial fisheries world:they asked the government to intervene.

Gary Belovsky was on an elk hunting trip in the fallof 1997 when he got a call from the Utah Division ofWildlife Resources. They wanted a number. Specifi-cally, they wanted to know how many cysts neededto be left behind in the lake at the end of winter, af-ter commercial harvesting had ended, for a healthypopulation of brine shrimp to be able to regeneratein spring. They wanted to open the harvest season ina couple of days.

Belovsky climbed inside of his pickup and madesome rough calculations on a scrap piece of paper.Twenty-three cysts per liter of Great Salt Lake wateris what he came up with. It wasn't much better thana guess, he readily admits today.

Two years earlier, the state had hired Belovsky toinitiate and lead a comprehensive study of the GreatSalt Lake ecosystem, with a goal of developingguidelines for a sustainable annual harvest of brineshrimp eggs. The move was part of their response togrowing calls from harvesters to monitor and regu-late the rapidly expanding industry.

Then a young biology professor at Utah State Uni-versity, Belovsky was excited for the opportunity andquickly set out to find and examine all of the previ-ous research that had been done on the lake. A liter-ature search yielded almost nothing relevant beyonda few short-term, cursory studies.

Though the Great Salt Lake and its surroundingshave long been of interest to geologists and hydrol-ogists-the lake sits in the footprint of the massiveprehistoric Lake Bonneville, which covered an arearoughly a quarter of the size of Utah-it never at-tracted much attention from biologists. It's difficultto say why, exactly, but perhaps being known as"America's Dead Sea" served as a deterrent.

The United States has a proud tradition of preserv-

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ing our most unique and outlandish landscapes,usually in the form of national parks or monuments:Yellowstone, Crater Lake, and the Grand Canyonare prominent examples. Somehow Utah's GreatSalt Lake, one of the largest saline lakes in the worldand a total aberration in the American terrain, gotpassed over for such honors.

Instead, it has been largely given over to extractiveindustries that harvest minerals from the lake by di-verting water into shallow evaporation ponds alongits shorelines. In addition to salt, magnesium andsulfate of potassium (a common ingredient in com-mercial fertilizers) are both gathered on an indus-trial scale by a handful of companies and processednearby.

A railroad causeway built across the lake from east towest during World War II is another environmentalindignity. Initially, it was a wooden trestle design, butthe salty water proved more corrosive than had beenanticipated and the structure was filled in with rocksin 1959, before environmental impact statementsbecame standard fare for large-scale constructionprojects. Ever since, the lake has effectively been splitin two. The northern arm of the lake (roughly onethird of its total area) receives virtually no freshwaterinflow and has consequently become saturated withsalt. With salinity levels that typically stay within therange of 26% to 28%, the water is usually too salty forbrine shrimp or much of anything else. Two speciesof bacteria persist, though, occurring so densely thatthey give the water a distinct purplish hue.

Sanders sued Southern Pacific over the filling in ofthe causeway shortly after it was completed. Thecourt agreed that the project had had a significantand negative impact on Sanders' still-exclusive fish-ery, but ultimately sided with the railroad anyway.

The water to the south of the causeway more closelyresembles the lake's original state, although it is un-doubtedly less saline than it would be if the cause-way were removed. Depending on several factors in-cluding rainfall, evaporation rates, and the amountof inflowing waters, the southern arm is generallybetween 8% and 16% saline, although it has beenmeasured both above and below that range in out-lying years since the causeway was filled. It supports

a simple but productive ecosystem that includes mi-crobes, algae, bacteria, brine flies and brine shrimpalong with the birds that eat them.

The paucity of basic ecological research on the lakecame as a surprise to Belovsky. "We had the fourthlargest hypersaline lake in the world,' he said, "andwe knew virtually nothing about how it worked"

Undeterred, he set to work, hoping, at the very least,to be able to answer what he saw as some very basicbiological questions: How many brine shrimp werethere in the lake? How many brine shrimp could thelake support? How many of the cysts overwinteringin the lake actually hatched and became adults?

Without this information, it would be impossible toproject the effects of the commercial cyst harvest ordetermine how it should be managed.

Belovsky developed a sampling regiment, makinguse of large fishing nets with extra-fine meshing andlong handles, not unlike the ones that Sanders andWangsgard had improvised several decades earlier.With a team of students and technicians, he begancollecting data from carefully selected locationsacross the south arm of the lake and collaboratingwith other researchers employed by the state andthe USGS to try to get a sense of how the broaderecosystem functioned. Did yearly fluctuations in thelake's salinity have any effects on the shrimp? Wasthe harvest negatively impacting water birds by lim-iting their food supply?

Population dynamics is a branch of ecological sci-ence that seeks to understand the complex relation-ships between the species in an ecosystem and theirenvironment. It is an essential component of allfisheries and wildlife management efforts. While thebasic question is simple-what causes the popula-tions of a particular species to grow or shrink?-thenumber of factors that can be considered is almostinfinite.

For scientists, situations in which things can be sim-plified are a distinct advantage. This is why biolo-gists have long sought out isolated islands to study,as they tend to have fewer species and are smaller in

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scale than continental ecosystems. Like real-worldlabs, islands allow biologists to test their theories ina more controlled setting. Some of the most influ-ential ecological science has come from places likethe Galapagos Islands, which famously providedDarwin with evidence for his theory of evolution,and Isle Royale in the northwestern corner of LakeSuperior, a National Park that has been the setting ofone of the longest running and most-cited popula-tion dynamics studies ever, a detailed survey of therelationship between moose and wolves that beganin 1958. Incidentally, Belovsky is among the manyecologists that have made use of Isle Royale, havingdone research there as a graduate student in the 70s.

The early years of over-sight were marked bytension and mistrust.Hypersaline lakes create similarly favorable condi-tions for ecological studies because a limited num-ber of species are able to inhabit them. Piecing to-gether a basic food web of the Great Salt Lake provedrelatively simple for Belovsky. At the bottom are anassortment of microorganisms-mostly species ofalgae and cyanobacteria that subsist on various nu-trients from the lake's waters-which in turn providea source of food for brine shrimp as well as brineflies, which lay their eggs in the lake. The shrimpand flies are both eaten in large quantities by resi-dent and migratory bird species, although many gounconsumed and eventually wash ashore and decay,contributing to the lake's famously putrid smell.

More difficult, though, would be determining thepower of the relationships between species-for ex-ample, would a bad year for cyanobacteria result infewer adult brine shrimp?-and the magnitude ofeffects from a litany of environmental influences likewater temperature, inflow, precipitation, evapora-tion, pollution and nutrient availability.

Belovsky hadn't expected to be asked to give a ver-dict so soon. When the state called in 1997, he hadonly two years of research to draw from, plus whathe had cobbled together from previous studies. And

while he felt confident about the work he had doneso far, he knew he would need many more years toeven begin to understand the Great Salt Lakes bio-logical intricacies.

The basic structure of the State of Utah's brineshrimp fishery regulatory scheme has remained thesame since the first harvest limits were put in placein 1997. The Division of Wildlife Resources sellspermits, each of which allows the holder the right toharvest brine shrimp cysts in one place at a time ei-ther on the surface of the lake or from the surround-ing shorelines. Companies may hold multiple per-mits, which then allow them to harvest in multiplelocations at once. The price of a permit was recentlyraised from $10,000 per year to $15,000. Addition-ally, the state receives a royalty of three-and-three-quarters cents per pound of biomass drawn from thelake.

Unlike most other regulated commercial fisheries,the state doesn't rely on catch quotas to preventover-harvesting. Instead, they set a minimum num-ber of cysts per liter of lake water that they say mustbe left behind in order to regenerate a full popula-tion in spring. Once the season opens on October1st, the harvest proceeds until the population is de-pleted to that number or the end of January, which-ever comes first. The logic behind this setup is that itbetter ensures a healthy and consistent population ofbrine shrimp by guaranteeing that a set amount willalways remain in the lake. The contained and simplenature of the lake makes it possible to estimate howmany adult shrimp or cysts are present with a muchhigher level of confidence than is possible for mostother fisheries.

Despite the fact that it was largely pressure fromthe harvesters themselves that brought about strict-er regulation from the state, the early years of over-sight were marked by tension and mistrust. Mem-bers of the industry clearly deserve credit for beingforward-thinking, and their actions may well havepreempted a decline or collapse of the Great SaltLake brine shrimp fishery, but there was also an ele-ment of self-interest in their push for the state to taketighter control.

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In the years leading up to the implementation ofthe new management structure, the harvest was nolonger a well-kept secret. It became clear the era inwhich there was enough to go around was over andcompetition for cyst slicks among the companies outon the lake was starting to cut into profits.

There was also increasing pressure from foreigncompetitors. Although the Great Salt Lake was andremains the source for a majority of the global brineshrimp cyst supply, companies operating on lakes ineastern Europe and Asia have been steadily gaininga larger market share, and they are able to offer cystsat reduced prices due to lower labor costs.

As much as the harvesters were worried about de-pleting a resource, they had equal reason to be wor-ried about their own potential obsolescence evenif the brine shrimp population in Utah remainedhealthy.

One component of the regulations that the industryfought hard for was a limit on the number of annualharvesting permits issued. The state obliged and in1997 they capped the permits at 79, effectively clos-ing the market to outsiders. The limit remainsin place today.

Public meetings were scheduled for the state 7to present their progress on developing regula-tions and researching the lake. Belovsky's workmet a chilly reception. His calculations meant Hthat many companies would not be able to har-vest as extensively as they were expecting, and theharvesters, many of whom had been on the lake formore than a decade by this point, homed in on theweaknesses of Belovsky's science. Two years, theysaid, wasn't enough to know anything.

"It was bullshit' said Jensen. "It didnt match whatwe saw on the lake."

Being a newcomer and an academic in a tight com-munity of hardscrabble fishermen didnt help Be-lovsky's cause either. In his mind, he was simply stat-ing what his science showed. It was up to the statewhat was done with the results.

"I didnt make any decisions,' he said. "I still don't

make any decisions for the state, I just present thedata. I analyze the data for the state and I interpretit."

But Belovsky was a convenient scapegoat for theanxieties harvesters had about the rapid changes totheir industry and what some of them felt was anaffront to their livelihood. Many of the early publicmeetings devolved into heated shouting matches.

The state began bringing in armed game wardens tohelp keep order and escort Belovsky to his car after-wards. Some of the companies hired their own sci-entists to refute what they said was flawed research.When cyst numbers dropped below Belovsky's pre-scribed levels and the season had to be closed early,a DWR employee called and advised him to considerleaving town for a few days.

One of the pitfalls of natural resource managementis that it is rarely able to proceed purely as a science.Managers do not operate in isolation in labs or ac-ademia, but in the messy, complicated world of na-ture. At stake are not only natural systems, but also

It was bullshit," saidensen. "It didn't matchhat we saw on the lake."the fates of individuals, businesses and entire indus-tries, not to mention secondary consequences suchas effects to food supplies or tax revenues, which aresometimes tied to specific and completely unrelatedgovernment functions. In Oregon and Washington,for instance, royalties from logging on state-ownedlands are used to help fund public schools. If forestmanagers decide to decrease the number of harvest-able acres, they are, in effect, taking money awayfrom education.

Most resource managers and many of the special-ized scientists they collaborate with are civil servantswho work for federal, state or municipal agencies.Though they are non-political, in theory, their bud-gets, priorities and enforcement powers are all sub-

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Above: a "cake" of cysts enclosed by a cinched boom. Below: riding on the back end of a boom boat.

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ject to the approval of elected officials and partisanlegislative bodies. In the case of Utah's brine shrimpharvest, any changes to the rules and regulationsmust be voted on by the Utah State Legislature.

Resource managers may come into their jobs witha great deal of scientific expertise and experiencein their respective fields, but they are not always aswell-versed in the more subjective business of navi-gating politics and special interest groups.

Knowing what to do when a managed species is hav-ing a bad year because their food supply has declinedis one thing; knowing how to respond to opposingpressures coming from industry groups, environ-mental lobbies and politicians is quite another. To bea resource manager is, quite often, to be perpetuallystuck in the middle.

John Luft has been at the center of the Great SaltLake brine shrimp harvest for the past ten years. Asa college student, he thought that his degree in natu-ral resource management might one day land him aposition dealing with big game species like cougarsor black bears. Becoming the man in charge of regu-lating one of the world's most unusual fisheries isn'tsomething he ever planned on.

"To be honest with you, I don't think anybody stud-ies brine shrimp when they're going to school;' hesaid.

Luft has careful measuredness about him. He speaksslowly and deliberately, as if briefly weighing eachword before it leaves his lips. Tall and athletic withclosely cropped blond hair and intense blue eyes, hedoesn't quite fit the image of a paper-pushing gov-ernment bureaucrat.

After graduating from Kansas State University, Luftjoined the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources as adepredation technician, an entry-level position thatLuft described as "the dead deer picker-upper."

"You could tell the guys that knew what they weredoing, especially during the summer," Luft recalled."They always grabbed the back end of the deer be-cause everything comes out the deer's mouth. ...

With a lot of the guys it would be a joke to make sureyou got the right end, otherwise you'd have a shirt orpants stained with blood and guts and stuff"

During this period, Luft also became well-acquaint-ed with the sorts of conflicts that modern wildlifemanagement tends to entail, responding to callsfrom citizens about elk grazing in backyard gardensand moose ambling down suburban streets.

After nine years, he managed to transfer to the GreatSalt Lake Ecosystem Project (GSLEP), the DWRmanagement unit that oversees the brine shrimpharvest and monitors the lake's waterfowl popula-tions. He spent two years as the program's avian biol-ogist before being promoted to the director position.

Outsiders tend to know two things about the GreatSalt Lake: it's lifeless, and it stinks. These were Luft'sgeneral first impressions as well. "I wasn't overly en-couraged when I started out;' he said. With no rec-reational hunting or fishing to speak of and none ofthe human-animal issues he was used to handling,Luft felt like the lake wouldn't require much actualmanagement.

"How do you do anything out there?" he thought."Really probably polices itself."' It didn't take too longfor him to realize that this wasn't the case.

When Luft came onboard, the harvest limits hadbeen in place for five years. The public meetings hadgrown somewhat less heated by this point, but theharvesters remained mistrustful of the state's ap-proach and reports of dangerous behavior out onthe lake continued to pile up on his desk. Makingmatters worse was a series of uncharacteristicallylow-yielding years.

During the winter of 2002-2003, over 25 millionpounds of biomass was harvested from the lake be-fore the season closed. The following year, the har-vesters managed only 5 million pounds before thestate shut the season down early. The harvest re-bounded only slightly the next two seasons, drawing6.8 million and then 9.7 million pounds.

It is important to note that a pound of biomass does

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not equal a pound of sellable product. Along withthe cysts, a good amount of empty shells, brine flycasings, bird feathers, plant matter and other ma-terials get sucked up in the harvesting process. Bythe time everything has been filtered and sorted,brine shrimp cysts represent about 10-15% of thetotal weight. The quality of the cysts-determinedprimarily by the percentage of them that are able tohatch when the dried eggs are put into warm water-also varies considerably from year to year.

It is difficult to know precisely how bad this stretchof years was because none of the harvesting compa-nies are willing to divulge their final cyst yields orhatch rates. Secrecy is part of the culture on the lake.Jensen likes to joke that if you were to ask a brineshrimper what time it is they would cover up theirwatch.

Simultaneously, environmental groups like theFriends of Great Salt Lake and the Utah chapter ofthe Audubon Society were starting to publicly voicetheir concerns about the state's management of theindustry. Brine shrimp are often spoken about as acommodity in these circles as well. The difference isthat the "end users" of interest toconservationists have feathers.

Until the mid-90s, the shrimpseemed so plentiful that no oneworried that the commercial har-vest might be taking food out themouths of the lake's resident andmigratory birds. But when the

about the effects the brine shrimp harvest might behaving on bird populations, recalled Lynn de Freitas,who became the group's President in its third year ofoperation. There wasn't a lot of concrete informationto be had, but rumors about heated confrontationsbetween competing companies on the lake seemedto lend credence to the idea that the shrimp might bein danger of running out. The stretch of low yieldingyears that began early in the 2000s seemed to con-firm their fears.

Resource harvesting industries and environmentalgroups are often vehemently at odds with one an-other. Finding common ground is usually left to thegovernment resource managers. As a whole, though,the prevailing attitude among those on all sides ofthe cyst harvesting issue has primarily been one ofpragmatism. The shrimp themselves may be partial-ly responsible.

Brine shrimp are not cute or majestic. They don'telicit empathy the way that more charismatic specieslike elk or polar bears do, nor do they inspire thesame feelings of awe and wonder as a stand of tower-ing old-growth redwoods.

The Great Salt Lake has neverinspired the same level ofconservationist fervor as mostother major American lakes.

harvesters themselves began toadvocate for regulations to protect the long-termviability of their industry, members of the environ-mental community began to realize the severity ofthe situation.

The Great Salt Lake has never inspired the same levelof conservationist fervor as most other major Amer-ican lakes. Still, it has its supporters and they are adedicated bunch.

The Friends of Great Salt Lake was formed in 1994 asan all-encompassing environmental advocacy orga-nization for the lake and its adjacent wetlands. Manyof their first meetings were consumed with anxieties

The lake suffers from a similar lack of grandeur.While the West is rife with landscapes that seemto be proof of some sort of divine natural beauty,the Great Salt Lake seems like more of an accident.Tourists come to gawk, but are often more dumb-founded than reverent. That such a massive bodyof water could be so caustic and inhospitable to hu-mans and other life forms begs the question: Whatthe hell happened here?

Brine shrimp and their environment are unlikely towin any contests for natural beauty, and this fact hasprobably helped diffuse some of the passion that hascharacterized so many other battles over the use of

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natural resources.

To their credit, the position that Friends and othergroups took was simple and practical: If cysts werebeing harvested at a level that was negatively af-fecting the birds that rely on brine shrimp as a foodsource, then the state needed to restrict the harvestto the point where this was no longer the case. If thescience showed that the harvest wasn't harming thebirds or the broader ecosystem, they saw no reasonto oppose it.

"Unless we're willing to be honest and sincere aboutthe way that we look at our natural resources andthe environment...then we're only speaking half-truths'" de Freitas said.

In 2002, the 79 harvesting permits were spread outbetween 32 separate companies. The permits them-selves cannot be bought and sold privately. To gainthe right to harvest in more locations simultaneous-ly, companies must buy up other permit-holdingcompanies along with all of their boats and equip-ment. During the down years, the industry consol-idated significantly as larger operators bought outsmaller companies, attempting to grab a larger shareof the shrunken pie.

In 2006, the consortium of companies that Jensenhad helped to organize formed an official cooper-ative, Great Salt Lake Artemia (GSLA). Faced withweak harvests, rising fuel prices and growing com-petition from foreign sources, the members felt theywould be better off sharing expensive resources likemaintenance facilities and canning factories. Jensenopted to remain independent until he sold his com-pany two years later, but many of the remaining har-vesters joined immediately.

Within a few years, almost all of the companies hadeither joined the cooperative or sold out to its mem-bers. Today there are seventeen harvesting compa-nies. Only one of them is not part of GSLA.

Leonard was made the organization's director andpushed its members to take a more cooperative ap-proach with the state. The attitude, he said, should be"let science decide"

Even as the brine shrimp population seemed tobe failing, the state faithfully stood by Belovsky'sresearch. When the number of eggs in the lakedropped below his prescribed minimum number ofcysts per liter they immediately ended the season inspite of protests from harvesters who said their live-lihoods were being taken from them. At the time,Belovsky lacked the long-term data necessary tounderstand what was causing the decline. He wascertain, though, that the population could not be al-lowed be reduced any further, as painful as it was forthe industry.

Outside of the lab, science is rarely a fast process.Even in a simplified system like a hypersaline lake,determining what might be causing a particular spe-cies to thrive or struggle with any meaningful de-gree of certainty takes years or decades. In the GreatSalt Lake, brine shrimp follow a pronounced annualcycle. To find out why the lake was flush with cystsin some years and barren in others, Belovsky hadno choice but to wait it out and watch to see if anytrends emerged.

As the years slowly added up, he tracked the numbersclosely, comparing the monthly brine shrimp censuscounts with the physical conditions of the lake andother environmental variables, and cross-referenc-ing his findings with the scant data that was scatteredbetween a handful of previous studies of the lake.

Given that brine shrimp thrive amid exceptionallysalty water, scientists and harvesters alike long sus-pected that salinity levels were the driving factor af-fecting cyst numbers and the overall health of brineshrimp populations. But when he looked at the data,Belovsky found that this wasn't the case. There wereclearly lower and upper limits at which the shrimphad a hard time surviving, but their comfort rangewas large and even though lake salinity levels variedsignificantly from year to year, it didn't seem to behaving much of an effect on them.

Interestingly, the harvest didn't seem to be a factor incausing bad years either. In some of the years sinceBelovsky had begun studying the lake, over 90% ofthe overwintering cysts in the lake had been collect-ed without making a noticeable effect on the amountof adults that were present in the spring. Even after

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winters in which a tremendous amount of cysts hadbeen taken from the lake, a healthy adult populationoften emerged. Belovsky took this as evidence thatminimum cyst levels that he had come up with forthe state were doing their job. Something else mustbe causing the low years.

The harvest began to rebound midway through the2000s and has generally increased over the past de-cade. Record amounts of biomass have been harvest-ed from the lake in the past two seasons. The mostrecent harvest ended on January 31. Over the courseof four months, companies pulled in over 27 millionpounds.

Weight is only part of the story for the harvesters,though. The "hatch-rate" of the cysts is an equallyimportant number. A low hatch rate leads to lowmarket prices for their product. Leonard was quickto point this out when asked about the seeming-ly successful season that ended in January. Fearfulof foreign competition, the co-op does not releasenumbers describing the quality of their catch. "We'regoing to have a decent year," is all Leonard will offeron the matter.

"I always say it's theleast glamorous thing."Still, the annual numbers released by the GSLEPmake it clear that both the brine shrimp populationand the industry are, at the least, healthy.

Belovsky is now a tenured professor at Notre DameUniversity, but he has continued his research on thelake, relying on the state's technicians to regularlytake samples and collect data. Now in its twentiethyear, his study has begun to unravel some of thelake's mysteries. Time has made all the difference.

"We know a lot more today" he said recently.

It turns out that Belovsky's hunting trip estimatesweren't too far off. Based on the two decades of data,the minimum cysts per liter number has been re-vised downward only slightly to 21. Belovsky readily

admits that this was, to a certain degree, a stroke ofluck, but he takes pride in it nonetheless.

By incorporating data that other researchers havebeen collecting into his models, Belovsky has alsobegun to develop a better picture of what causes an-nual fluctuations in brine shrimp levels. Rather thansalinity, the availability of food seems to play the big-gest role. As the amount of phytoplankton in the lakerose and fell, so did brine shrimp populations. Phy-toplankton levels, in turn, correspond to the amountof nitrogen in the water, which varies from year-to-year for reasons that scientists don't fully understandyet.

Another important and somewhat counterintuitivefinding was that, to a certain point, the harvest ac-tually benefits the brine shrimp. When he ran thenumbers, Belovsky discovered that leaving too manycysts behind could cause the shrimp population toexperience significant crashes. With an overabun-dance of cysts hatching in the spring, the shrimpwould quickly exhaust their supply of food, causingthe entire population to plummet. The harvest is away of culling the herd, helping to eliminate boom-bust cycles, which is also a boon to the eared grebesand other birds that rely on the shrimp.

The harvesters, Belovsky says, have begun to warmto the state's handling of the industry, and are appre-ciative of the science-based approach. "They came

to realize that by collecting the data we weren't try-ing to get them or do anything to them, and in factwe were trying to manage the system for their long-term benefit:' he said.

These days, Luft cheerfully embraces his role as theman at the helm of the Great Salt Lake brine shrimpfishery. "I always say it's the least glamorous thing"he remarks with a note of pride in his voice. Whilehis colleagues in other departments are busy re-sponding to complaints and playing peacemaker,Luft spends his time overseeing a growing scientif-ic enterprise. In addition to Belovsky, who remainstheir lead contracted biologist, the GSLEP now em-ploys a small team of technicians and scientists tomonitor and study the lake's ecosystem. Last seasonsharvest brought in over two million dollars in per-mit fees and royalties, more than enough to cover

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the GSLEP's operating costs. The leftovers help thestate pay for the management of non-game specieslike bald eagles.

The relative calm that the brine shrimp fishery nowenjoys is a source of excitement for Luft.

"What I found here is you actually get do to whatyou went to school for, which is biology, not justputting out fires" he said. "It's more complicated andinteresting than I ever thought it would be."

Resource management has few natural endpoints.The perpetual goal is balance, but achieving this isusually difficult and always temporary. In Utah, aftera struggle that has lasted almost two decades, Luftand the Division of Wildlife Resources seem to havefinally reached this rare point. How long they willremain there is anyone's guess.

There is a common misconception that in the ab-sence of human interference, nature remains in apeaceful state of equilibrium. In fact, nothing couldbe further from the truth. Conditions change, spe-cies rise and fall. It's a battle out there. Like every

other species, brine shrimp have good years and badyears.

Whole industries are built around trying to avoidthis reality. We plant rows of corn, throw our netsinto the ocean, and trudge out into the forest car-rying chainsaws with the expectation that each yearwill be as good as or better than the last. The sci-ence of resource management has developed as anattempt to moderate the chaos of nature. Sometimesit is successful and other times it isn't.

At present, the brine shrimp harvest is working out.True, the Great Salt Lake offers certain advantagesover more typical ecosystems, where nature's com-plexity can prove overwhelming for scientists andmanagers. But the harvest is also an example of ex-ceptionally rational thinking in a field where passionand politics often win out.

The brine shrimp, of course, have never had a sayin any of this. Fifty years ago they were just anotherspecies trying to survive long enough to pass theirgenes on to the next generation. Thanks to an indus-trious pair of friends, they have been swept up into astruggle that is a distinctly human creation.

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Sourcing

Interviews

Chris Wangsgard, acquaintance of C.C. Sanders, phone and email, February through March 2014.

David Naftz, United States Geological Survey, phone and email, January 2014.

Don Leonard, Director of Great Lake Artemia, phone and email, January through March 2014.

Ella Sorensen, Gilmore Audubon Sanctuary, phone, February 2014.

Gary Belovsky, Professor of Biology, Notre Dame University, phone and email November 2013through February 2014.

Jaimi Butler, Great Salt Lake Institute, Westminster College; phone, email and in-person, Novem-ber 2013 through February 2014.

John Luft, Director of Great Salt Lake Ecosystem Project, Utah Division of Natural Resources;email, phone and in-person October 2013 through March 2014.

John Neil, avian biologist, Great Salt Lake Ecosystem Project, phone, February 2014.

Lynn,DeFreitas, President of Friends of Great Salt Lake, phone and email January 2014.

Mark Jensen, retired brine shrimper, in-person, January 2014.

Marty Stenerson, retired brine shrimp harvester, in-person, January 2014.

Tim Begue, retired brine shrimper, in-person, January 2014.

Wayne Martinson, Utah Important Bird Area Coordinator, Audubon Society, phone and email,February 2014.

Print

Brubaker, Elizabeth. "Unnatural Disaster: How Politics Destroyed Canada's Atlantic Groundfish-eries." In Political Environmentalism: Going behind the green curtain. Ed. Terry L. Anderson.Stanford, CA. 2000.

Wallace, Gwynn J. (ed.) Great Salt Lake: a Scientific, Historical and Economic Overview. UtahDepartment of Natural Resources. 1980.

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News Articles

Abel, David. "In Canada, cod remain scarce despite ban." The Boston Globe. March 4, 2012.

Berkes, Howard. "Desert Shrimp." The Desert News. December 5, 1996.

Costanzo, Joe. "Tiny Shrimp Big Business." The Desert News. November 12, 1989.

Hoey, Dennis. "Canceling of Gulf of Maine shrimp season a heavy blow." Portland Press Herald.December 3, 2013.

Kuhn, Tom. "Has Fishing Hole All To Himself." The Day. April 10, 1967.

Pew Charitable Trusts. "New Scientific Report Shows Pacific Bluefin Tuna Population Down96.4%." Global Tuna Conservation. January 9, 2013.

Sagers, Larry. "Gardener creates paradise of hybrid daylilies." The Deseret News. July 27, 2009.

Sanders, C.C. "Sparkplug." "Brine Shrimp by the Billions." The Aquarium. Volume 20, October,1951.

Seelye, Katherine and Jess Bidgood. "Officials Back Deep Cuts in Atlantic Cod Harvest to SaveIndustry." The New York Times. January 30, 2013.

Wangsgard, Chris. "I Was a Teenage Brine Shrimper: Birth of the brine shrimp industry."Friendsof Great Salt Lake Newsletter. Summer 2011.

Scholarly Articles

Belovsky, Gary E., et al. "The Great Salt Lake Ecosystem (Utah, USA): long term data and a struc-tural equation approach." Ecosphere 2.3. 2011.

Bioeconomics Inc. "Economic significance of the Great Salt Lake to the State of Utah." Great SaltLake Advisory Council, Salt Lake City, Utah. 2012.

Caddy, J. F., and K. L. Cochrane. "A review of fisheries management past and present and somefuture perspectives for the third millennium." Ocean & Coastal Management 44.9, 653-682. 2001.

Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canada. "Stock Assessment of Northern (2J3KL) Cod in2013." Science Advisory Report. 2013.

Gajardo GM and Beardmore JA. "The brine shrimp Artemia: adapted to critical life conditions."Physio. 3:185, 2012.

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Roberts, Anthony J., and Michael R. Conover. "Eared Grebe Diet On Great Salt Lake, Utah, AndCompetition With The Commercial Harvest Of Brine Shrimp Cysts." Journal Of Wildlife Man-agement 77.7, 1380-1385. 2013.

Web

"Great Salt Lake Ecosystem Program." State of Utah, Division of Natural Resources.http://wildlife.utah.gov/gsl/

"Great Salt Lake History." Utah.com. Utah Travel Industry Website. 2014.http://www.utah.com/cities/slc-history.htm

"Great Salt Lake, Utah." Utah Water Science Center. United States Geological Survey.http://ut.water.usgs.gov/greatsaltlake/

"Waves of the Great Salt Lake." Great Salt Lake Marina. 2012.http://www.gslmarina.com/WavesonGreatSaltLake/tabid/1 16/Default.aspx

Video

MacCharles, Tonda. "Cod moratorium: The biggest layoff in Canadian history." Canadian Broad-casting Corporation. July 2, 1992.

Legal Proceedings

SANDERS BRINE SHRIMP CO. v. BONNEVILLE ARTEMIA INTERN., INC., 970 F.Supp. 892(1997), United States District Court, D. Utah, Central Division., July 7, 1997.

Images

All images taken by and used with permission of Jaimi Butler.

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