INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Ocean Research and Conservation Association founder Edie Widder was in the middle of a brilliant scientific career that had made her one of the world’s top experts on bioluminescence, the phenomenon of sea animals producing light, when she had a flash of insight.
As a graduate student and marine biologist, she had spent thousands of hours on ships at sea and deep underwater in small submarines observing and gathering ocean creatures, and she had seen amazing things.
But it suddenly occurred to her that she and other deep sea explorers might be missing much of the show because of the way they operated, in noisy vehicles with bright lights sure to frighten away shy animals.
So in 2004 she created a revolutionary device that consisted of a super-sensitive camera and a type of light invisible to marine animals to capture video of undisturbed daily life in the deep, dark depths.
To attract creatures within range of the camera, she devised an electronic lure that mimicked a bioluminescent jellyfish attractive to predators.
“Eighty-seven seconds after we activated the electronic lure for the first time, a six-foot-long squid came into view that was so unknown it cannot be placed in any scientific family,” says Widder, then a senior research scientist at Harbor Branch. “When I saw that, I shouted so loud they could hear me all the way up on the bridge of the ship.”
Today, as leader of ORCA, Widder is waging an uphill battle to map pollution in the Indian River Lagoon and reverse the decline of one of Florida’s most precious ecosystems.
“Dr. Widder is a very special person who is passionate about protecting the lagoon,” says Nancilee Wydra, an author and Summerplace resident who recently held a fundraiser for ORCA.
“She is tremendous. I have been very impressed with her use of technology to monitor pollution,” says Richard Baker, president of the Pelican Island Audubon Society.
“It is wonderful to have this world-renowned marine biologist working right here on our lagoon,” says Vero Beach Mayor Pilar Turner. “I am a member of ORCA and strong supporter of what Dr. Widder is doing. We cannot afford to continue ignoring water quality. The lagoon is responsible for $800 million a year in revenue for our community and is the centerpiece of our lifestyle.”
Widder’s fascination with the sea, which would earn her a MacArthur Genius Award two years after she discovered the unknown squid, began on a round-the-world trip she took with her parents when she was 11.
“They were both mathematicians on a sabbatical year,” Widder says. “We went to Europe first and when I saw the wonderful art in museums there, I decided I wanted to be an artist. Then we went to Egypt and explored the pyramids and saw King Tut’s tomb, and I wanted to be an archeologist. Then we went to India and when I saw the poverty there, I wanted to be a great humanitarian like Albert Schweitzer. After that, we went to Australia for six months and I got to climb trees to hold Koalas and catch wombats, and decided I wanted to be a biologist.
“Our last stop was Fiji where I got to explore unbelievable coral reefs and decided finally I wanted to be a marine biologist. My family always joked that if we had gone the other way around the world, I would have ended up as an artist.
“I feel like I came alive that year. I woke up. I hated school and had been daydreaming through all of my classes. I didn’t come out of the trip loving school, but I came out of it loving learning. It made a huge impact on my life.”
Widder’s new-found love of knowledge and the natural world carried her forward to a successful undergraduate and graduate career in which she earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at Tufts University and a master’s in biochemistry and Ph.D. in neurobiology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Her research focus dialed in on bioluminescence when as a graduate student, she did her first deep-ocean night dive, descending 2,000 feet below the surface.
“I turned off the lights and was amazed at how much bioluminescence there was,” Widder says. “I had seen it on the surface in the Bahamas and I knew there would be some but I had no idea how much the oceans light up.// “What you see down deep are amazing light shows – great long chains of jellyfish that light up so bright you can see the dials and gauges inside the subs without a flashlight. There are puffs of exploding smoke and blue sparks and pinwheels of light. It is dazzling, absolutely dazzling.
“I was mesmerized by it and I haven’t gotten tired of it to this day.”
Widder, who says she has always been something of an engineer as well as a biologist, found a practical application for bioluminescence research and a steady source of funding working for the U.S. Navy.
The Navy was interested in bioluminescence because it operates in the ocean at night, sometimes in secret, and wanted to have a way of predicting how bright various waters would be.
Widder came up with a device that enables the Navy to accurately predict nighttime visibility of submarines.
“I co-hold the patent on the instrument that is the Navy standard for measuring bioluminescence in the world’s oceans,” Widder says.
She came to Harbor Branch from Santa Barbara in 1989 in the midst of her bioluminescence studies because the oceanographic institute had the best mid-water submersibles in the world, small submarines Widder needed for her research.
She was working there when she created the light and camera device that opened up a new window on the world beneath the waves.
Others had placed cameras on the ocean floor to see what they could see, but they used bright white lights frightening to undersea creatures and dead fish for bait.
Widder came up with a spectrum of light that would illuminate the scene but be invisible to sea animals along with the electronic lure to attract active predators.
“A lot of these animals are not going to eat dead food,” Widder says. “Captured dolphins have to be trained to eat dead fish. They don’t know what to do with them because they are used to eating live fish.”
Widder had previously discovered jellyfish use their bioluminescent ability as a type of burglar alarm if they are caught in the clutches of a small predator trying to make a meal of them.
“It is a scream for help,” Widder says.
In the intricate mystery of evolution, larger predators have been programmed to recognize jellyfish light displays as an opportunity to feed on smaller predators and the smaller predators somehow know that. When the jellyfish lights up, they may release it and flee.
“I wanted something that would bring in active visual predators, so I developed the optical lure that imitates a jellyfish’s bioluminescent display,” Widder says. “It worked beyond my wildest dreams.”
Widder left Harbor Branch to found ORCA, which is headquartered at the historic Coast Guard Station in Fort Pierce, after two major reports sounded an alarm about the health of the world’s oceans.
“In 2003 the PEW Oceans Commission Report came out,” she says. “It was followed in 2004 by the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy Report. Both represented huge scientific consensuses and both came to exactly the same conclusion: The oceans are in trouble and we need to do something right away.
“Both reports emphasized the need for better monitoring, because stuff is taking place out of sight, out of mind. The oceans are the life support system for our planet and nobody is paying attention to what is going on.”
Since founding ORCA in 2005 Widder has come up with a way to use bioluminescent bacteria to quickly measure a broad spectrum of pollution in seawater and a device called Kilroy that monitors the sources and movement of pollution in real time, sending data back to computers via satellite.
She says both the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA have expressed tremendous excitement and interest in Kilroy, but that neither has the money to put the device into widespread use.
On the state level, Governor Rick Scott has slashed $700 million from the budgets of agencies responsible for stopping pollution that might have used the Kilroy device just as more vigorous action is needed to protect Florida’s waterways.
According to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s list of impaired waters, about 1,918 miles of rivers and streams in Florida are currently polluted by excess nutrients that cause deadly algae blooms, up from approximately 1000 miles in 2008.
Algae blooms, which have become more severe on the Indian River Lagoon, can kill sea grass and fish and poison not just the water but the air around the water, making it unsafe for humans to breath.
“Governor Scott just cut the budget of the South Florida Water Management District by 51 percent, which led to firing most of the scientists,” Widder says. “When I started ORCA, I had a three-legged stool of funding from private, state and federal. Since then the state has stopped providing money and the federal money has been drying up for everybody. So we are down almost entirely to private support.”
In 2008, ORCA received 47 percent of its budget from government sources, which seems appropriate since government has statutory responsibility for ensuring clean, safe water for drinking, swimming and fishing.
By 2010, the government’s contribution to ORCA’s work protecting Florida’s most important natural resource shrank to 20 percent.
“Scott’s cuts to water quality protection dwarf all of the cuts made over the past 20 years,” says Jim Egan, executive director of the Marine Resources Council.
Baker, president of the Pelican Island Audubon Society, calls the cuts “insane.”
Part of the private support that has sustained ORCA came from Widder herself, who says she put every penny of her $500,000 MacArthur Genius Award money into the non-profit organization.
She is now seeking what she calls 300 Spartans to help fund ORCA’s efforts and take up the slack created by government’s failure to protect the common welfare.
Widder took the name of her group from the story of the 300 Spartans who held the pass at Thermopylae against Xerxes’ massive Persian army.
“The government of Sparta wasn’t doing what needed to be done,” Widder says. “It didn’t believe or understand the threat. So the 300 went on their own to hold the pass.
“We want 300 modern Spartans to hold the pass today, donating $5,000 apiece. With those funds, we can protect the Indian River Lagoon.”
Widder says the lagoon is at an environmental tipping point.
“Right now, it can still heal itself, but time is running out.”
She and others point out a degraded, algae-infested lagoon would destroy the sport fishing industry, decimate tourism and crush property values.
“This is our economy and way of life we are talking about.”