Conservation

Millions of Eggs Bring Program 1 Step Closer to Saving Species

The Bodega Marine Laboratory’s white abalone program has millions of new additions following its most successful spawning ever at the University of California, Davis, facility. Three out of nine recently collected wild white abalone spawned last week, as did seven of 12 captive-bred white abalone. One wild female was particularly generous, producing 20.5 million eggs herself.

The SeaDoc Society invites viewers to explore the magnificent wildlife of the Pacific Northwest in a new adventure series called Salish Sea Wild, debuting Jan. 10. Salish Sea Wild is hosted by SeaDoc Science Director Joe Gaydos and will feature a new species or topic each month, starting with Steller sea lions in January.

For the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences: A UC Davis alumna, Kristin Aquilino directs the Bodega Marine Laboratory's white abalone captive breeding program. In 2001, the marine snail was officially listed as endangered. Using captive breeding, Aquilino and colleagues hope to bring the species back from the brink of extinction.

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When climate change helped trigger a 60-fold explosion of purple urchins off Northern California’s coast, the urchins went on a feeding frenzy and kelp forests were devoured.

Read more in the New York Times

New ‘Spider’ Technique Found to Help Coral Reefs

Even after being severely damaged by blast fishing and coral mining, coral reefs can be rehabilitated over large scales using a relatively inexpensive technique, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis, in partnership with Mars Symbioscience.

Seagrass meadows could play a limited, localized role in alleviating ocean acidification in coastal ecosystems, according to new work led by Carnegie’s David Koweek and including Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira and published in Ecological Applications.

Marissa Baskett is a UC Davis Associate Professor and co-Master in the Department of Environmental Science and Management as well as the advisor for the Marine Ecology area of emphasis in the Graduate Ecology Group. In her lab, she utilizes mathematical models to study the interface between theoretical population biology and conservation biology.

The giant sea snails, which eat seaweed and kelp, have been left with little to eat after the North Coast's kelp forests collapsed during the past three years. Now, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of abalone are dead or starving. 

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UC Davis' very own Kristin Aquilino, a project scientist at Bodega Marine Laboratory,  is in charge of the largest population of endangered white abalone that exists in the world. Her work focuses on a long-term goal is to build the population in captivity, then outplant them into the wild and hope to increase a stable population. However, is there even a chance for them to survive back in the wild with dramatic changes in ocean chemistry due to climate change? 

A study led led by the University of California, Davis, shows that there is a new technology that can help to transform how imperiled species are considered and managed for conservation protection. These technologies can be applied to a wide range of species around the world — from mushrooms to walruses — but the study focuses on two iconic species of Pacific salmon: steelhead and chinook.