Meet a Scientist: Jonathan Young (Patreon)

Hey Deep Peeps,

It takes a lot of time and effort to produce each episode of Deep Look, but we couldn’t do it without the help of scientists and other valuable collaborators who have closely worked with us over the years. We’re introducing several of these wonderful partners to you in a series of short profiles so you can get a deeper look at their expertise.

Meet Jonathan Young, a wildlife ecologist with the Presidio Trust in the Presidio of San Francisco. This is a national park site within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Beloved by both local residents and tourists due to its natural beauty, it’s also home to 19 distinct ecosystems and over 2,000 plant and animal species.

Aerial view of San Francisco’s Presidio. Photo courtesy the Presidio Trust.

“My job is to manage and maintain the wildlife of the Presidio of San Francisco, a former military base turned national park,” Young said. “Monitoring the various species allows us to determine how they are doing and if/when a species is declining, develop methods to stop/reverse declines.”

“I'm also regularly digging through old museum records to see what types of animals used to occur in this area. This information allows me to assess if reintroductions are possible. I'm always asking, ‘If a species is gone, why? What caused its local extinction and can that be reversed?’ These questions help guide the general habitat restoration that has been ongoing in the park since its inception in the mid-1990s.

“Another major component of my position is human-wildlife conflict management. Whether perceived or real, human activities can sometimes impact wildlife and vice versa. So it is my job to understand these dynamics and develop mitigation strategies to find that balance between urban realities and wildlife conservation. In short, my role is to sustain and increase healthy diverse wildlife communities in the Presidio, which in turn supports healthy ecosystems and healthy humans.”

Young generously worked with Deep Look for two previous episodes: “These Crazy Cute Baby Turtles Want Their Lake Back” and “California Floater Mussels Take Fish for an Epic Joyride.” The first video featured the western pond turtle reintroduction project at Mountain Lake in the Presidio. Working with the San Francisco Zoo, they reared big healthy baby turtles to release at the lake they’ve been restoring.

A baby western pond turtle gets ready to pounce on a cricket at the San Francisco Zoo. Photo credit: Josh Cassidy/KQED

The second video told the story of “one of my favorite underdogs: California floater mussel,” Young said. “This seemingly simple organism has a spectacularly fascinating life cycle, and everyone should know about these heroes of water quality –– they clean water and remove E coli –– because they are rapidly declining throughout the state.”

The California floater mussel (Anodonta californiensis) plays a key role in maintaining water quality for all the life that depends on it. A brooding mussel can contain hundreds of thousands of mussel larvae, called glochidia. Photo credit: Josh Cassidy/KQED

In addition to filming on location in the Presidio, Deep Look producer Mike Seely and lead producer/cinematographer Josh Cassidy re-created the mussels’ underwater habitats with fish tanks.

“Setting up the underwater dioramas for the mussel episode was fun,” said Young. “Feng shui is key for making it look real and enticing mussel moms to release their babies. I didn't want to tell the crew, but I was certain they were not going to get the shots of the mussels releasing their larvae. I was shocked to see that we lucked out and had great opportunities to capture this phenomenon! And on top of that, seeing the close-ups in real time with the crew's fancy cameras was too good to be true! Very gratifying.”

Glochidia, the larvae from a freshwater California floater mussel. Photo credit: Josh Cassidy/KQED

Working onsite at the lake with the baby turtles required a lot of patience and careful movements. “When we were filming the baby turtles in the lake, we were up to our chests in waders and were trying to film the turtles up close without spooking them. This was tedious as we had to creep up ever so slightly and stop, film for several minutes, slowly move a step closer, stop, film, and repeat. Each time getting just a little closer, until the turtles finally jumped off the logs. No big deal, until both of us realized our waders had leaks, which made the incremental stop/starts seem extra long as the cold water trickled down and filled in.”

Despite some of the challenges involved with filming, “It's always very gratifying to get the interesting stories of these critters, especially the obscure ones, out into the public's awareness,” Young said. “Conservation isn't possible without public support, but people don't care to save what they don't know. Turtles are charismatic, so that's easy to get people excited about, but mussels ... well, I think they're cute and charismatic, but most people don't even know they exist, so why should they care about them? But once people see their bizarre parasitic life cycle –– especially in high-definition –– and learn that they are important in cleaning water, people might be more supportive of their conservation and also maybe develop a deeper appreciation for the obscure –– which is Deep Look's niche.”