News

As the data roll in, University of California scientists are more optimistic that eelgrass, like the kind that grows around Newport Beach, can lessen ocean acidity and make the water more hospitable to ecologically valuable organisms.

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Aquaponic facilities can grow fresh food year-round.  To listen to The Washington Post video, featuring Jackson Gross, UC Davis aquaculture specialist, click here.

Read the story here.

Dr. Susan Williams obituary was published in the Press Democrat, read it here.

A modeling study from UC Davis researchers in the Department of Wildlife Fish and Conservation Biology addresses the impacts of more frequent El Niño events on seabirds and some fish species. The model was specifically chosen for its sensitivity to environmental changes. Scientists noticed unanticipated changes in the Brandt’s cormorant population with increasing and decreasing the frequency of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. 

An embedded reporter describes research at Bodega Marine Laboratory during a time when the stakes are high for marine life in an era of climate change, and where scientists are weighing the impacts as warming oceans acidify.

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Faculty, staff and students gathered at UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory today not for their weekly seminar, but to remember their colleague Susan L. Williams who died in a car accident Tuesday (April 24) while en route to the Davis campus to teach.

As the first anniversary of the March for Science approaches, researchers continue to reflect on the relationship between science and society. A recent survey of 2017 marchers indicated that nearly all were also actively participating in other types of science advocacy. In the past year, inspired by the call to stand up for science, scientists have written editorials, contacted members of Congress, attended public protests, initiated runs for political office, and organized new groups to support diversity, inclusion and justice.

Usually, the first weekend of April is when abalone divers pack up their wetsuits and fins and head off to campsites along the Sonoma and Mendocino coast. However, this year’s recreational abalone season is closed due to a population on the brink of collapse, so the diving community has rechanneled its efforts in a seemingly mad scheme to save the abalone, involving underwater vacuums, hookahs and purple sea urchins.

Coral reefs feed millions of people worldwide, provide coastal protection and generate billions of dollars annually in tourism revenue.  The underlying architecture of a reef is a biogenic carbonate structure that accretes over many years of active biomineralization by calcifying organisms, including corals and algae.  Ocean acidification poses a chronic threat to coral reefs by reducing the saturation state of the aragonite mineral of which coral skeletons are primarily composed, and lowering the concentration of carbonate ions required to maintain the carbonate reef.

UC Davis researchers are part of the first long-term monitoring of ocean acidity and carbon dioxide in the San Francisco Bay. How is this possible? The researchers are collecting data from the newly deployed Bay Ocean Buoy (BOB) and a mooring for Marine Acidification Research Inquiry (MARI).