On her first day of graduate school, Karolina Zabinski rose at 4:00am. She spent the day on the muddy shores of Tomales Bay, collecting eelgrass for a survey of aquatic plant diseases. These ribbon-like seagrasses are common along the California coast and form knee-high meadows that undulate in the water.
While they cover less than 1% of the ocean’s surface, the world’s four major upwelling zones are biological powerhouses. Located along the coasts of California, Chile, Portugal, and South Africa, these Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems (EBUS) drive cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface, supporting massive populations of fish, birds, and mammals.
Why are there so many species of coral reef fish? According to a new study, it’s because about 50 million years ago, some fish figured out how to bite food from hard surfaces.
Conducting environmental science in a time of rapid climate change can be like a game of Whac-a-Mole. Just as you get close, the focus moves, burns, melts or disappears.
Mikaila Hishaw, a fourth-year marine and coastal science major from Tucson, Arizona, arrived at UC Davis with plans to become a veterinarian. She soon discovered that research offered not just a new way to work with animals but also an avenue to explore her curiosity beyond the classroom.
Rarotonga, the largest island in the archipelago of the Cook Islands, is protected by a coral reef that forms a barricade around the kidney-shaped dollop of terra firma moored in the middle of the South Pacific. If that reef were to die off or disappear—as reefs are, globally, at a disheartening rate—it would spell catastrophe for Rarotonga’s more than 10,000 inhabitants. That partly explains how Anya Brown came to be a regular at a hardware store on the island.
