A university professor has set her team’s research on the plight of Florida’s declining oyster population to music, aiming to inform a receptive new audience about the “catastrophic” scale of the crisis.
Heather O’Leary, professor of anthropology at St Petersburg’s University of South Florida (USF), partnered with student composers and faculty from its music department to create Oysters Ain’t Safe, a soft jazz alternative to crunching data into a “boring” technical report.
The arrangement, she said, “uses the universal language of music” to express the impact of over-harvesting, habitat loss, the climate crisis and the spread of forever chemicals on Florida’s fragile oyster reefs.
“You wouldn’t probably spend your Saturday morning or Friday night digging through some of these government databases, but you already have the tools in your body as a hearing person, or looking at or creating art as a visual person to perceive some of it,” she said.
“If you’re watching somebody sing, or dance, parts of your brain light up as though you yourself are dancing or singing, and through that, deeper forms of connection are made. These coastal threats are something we all can relate to. This makes it a lot more approachable and fun, and more about creation and less about dwelling in the anxiety.”
O’Leary said there is no intention to make light of the collapse in Florida oyster reefs, which led to fish and wildlife officials suspending oyster harvesting in 2020 for at least a five-year period.
“My response to that is we do need a sense of what’s called radical optimism, because when things get too dark, people are only human – they need to turn away, they need a break,” she said.
The creative process featured marine science graduate students working with their school of music counterparts, guided by music professor Matt McCutchen, to interpret data into a performance-ready piece that will be presented live in January at the next USF concert.
“The music graduates are familiar with global warming, climate change, climate chaos, all of this, but they’ve never actually delved into the science. That’s just not the flavor of intellectual interest they have,” O’Leary said.
“When they’re sitting there talking with the marine scientists, who are going on dives to see and to feel with their fingers what it feels like when you know the tissue is peeling off of the coral, it’s electrifying.”
As well as the upcoming live performance, the project will feature sheet music, student-created artwork and a music video. The oyster composition follows an earlier, similar collaboration about Florida’s red tide and harmful algae blooms, which O’Leary said began as “a joyful side project”, but which she quickly realized could become a powerful medium.
“The students are thinking through scales of time and change, about the clicks and clacks that would be in a piece about coral, the more funky saxophone types of sounds you would think of when you’re thinking about dead fish washing up,” she said.
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“There’s like this fundamental and very experiential somatic kind of knowledge. When you’re staring at the scariest numbers, the black-and-white figures in front of you, that can feel pretty intimidating.
“But if you’re experimenting with ‘what color would that number be?’ or ‘what kind of instrument would pick up how I feel when I see that statistic?’, it’s more creative. That’s what we need, more things that bring people together.”
O’Leary said the music of Florida’s oyster crisis can resonate in the response to the global climate emergency.
“Everywhere in the world, we all have our concerns, about things like having the right amount of healthy, safe water for ourselves and our families and our neighbors,” she said.
“So to do it in a way where it’s ‘I’m not a bossy scientist’ but instead ‘Come play with me,’ that’s how we make progress on these things. It’s inviting more people into the tent of being good listeners.”