In total, about $550,000 was awarded to the year-long projects, including traineeships for 13 graduate student researchers.
"We are excited to see some new faces in the Sea Grant fold and some new research approaches," says Shauna Oh, California Sea Grant assistant director.
Some of the new names — people who have never before received California Sea Grant research funds — include Diana Steller, a marine biologist at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, who will be studying red coralline algae nodules around the Channel Islands. Not your typical slimy algal goo, these algae (called rhodoliths) tricked even the first scientists into thinking they were corals because they build an intricate, calcium-based outer covering and can transform sandy areas into a complex, three-dimensional reef habitat.
"It's so cool," says Steller, an avid diver and head of Moss Landing's research diving program. "It's like we found a whole new habitat to explore right out our door."
Another new addition to the Sea Grant portfolio is Jesse Dillon, a professor in microbiology at Cal State Long Beach. Dillon's area of expertise is extremophiles: microbes that thrive in unlikely corners of the planet — polar ice, deep-sea vents and hyper-saline marshes.
"The Sea Grant award gives us seed money to demonstrate the efficacy of stable isotope probing in characterizing microbial food webs in salt marshes," Dillon says. Translation: The method will tell scientists who is eating whom, at the microbial level. The mud-loving, salt-tolerant microbes are important to society at large because of their potentially huge role in removing carbon from the air and putting it in the ground.
"Our grant was written in the context of rising sea levels and whether wetland loss might measurably affect global carbon cycling," Dillon says. "That is the big picture."
Wei-Chun Chin, an assistant engineering professor at UC Merced, is yet another Sea Grant first-timer, funded to study the physiology of toxin-producing marine algae, in particular the intracellular chemical signaling processes that trigger toxin release.
"In animal cells, calcium ions trigger the release of hormones," Chin explains. "I want to verify if the same signaling mechanism occurs in harmful algae."
Xiaochun Wang, a computer modeler with the Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering at UCLA, is yet another newcomer, funded to develop the ability to forecast upwelling intensities along the California coast 48 hours in advance. High-frequency radar data, 2D surface current observations, as well as single-point temperature and salinity measurements, will be used to truth-check the forecasts.
Alison Purcell, an assistant professor in environmental sciences at Humboldt State University, is also receiving her first Sea Grant award. She will be investigating the pros and cons of eradicating the invasive cordgrass Spartina densiflora in tidal marshes of Humboldt Bay. In particular, she hopes to establish whether cordgrass removal increases or decreases total net primary productivity in the marshes.
Other grant recipients and their projects are:
- Lihini Aluwihare, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, analyzing mussel populations for levels of brominated compounds;
- Alexandria Boehm, Stanford University, characterizing fecal bacteria and their sources in beach sand;
- Laurence Breaker, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, exploring links between warming and species assemblages in coastal Central California waters;
- David Ebert, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, surveying gopher rockfish densities inside and outside of marine protected areas;
- William Gerwick, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, investigating the pharmaceutical potential of marine cyanobacteria;
- Scott Hamilton, Marine Science Institute, UC Santa Barbara, comparing sheephead reproductive behaviors inside and outside marine reserves;
- Kevin Hovel, San Diego State University, studying trophic interactions on Southern California's rocky reefs;
- Raphael Kudela, UC Santa Cruz, detecting cyanobacteria blooms using solid phase adsorption techniques;
- Hunter Lenihan, Marine Science Institute, UC Santa Barbara, developing fishery management models for the spiny lobster;
- Lisa Levin, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, creating proxies for evaluating invertebrates' exposure to pH and oxygen;
- Bernie May, UC Davis, analyzing parentage of farmed white sturgeon (raised for meat and caviar);
- Chris Vulpe, UC Berkeley, monitoring water quality through gene expression in small fish.
NOAA's California Sea Grant College Program is a statewide, multi-university program of marine research, extension services and education activities administered by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego. It is the largest of 32 Sea Grant programs and is part of the National Sea Grant College Program in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Department of Commerce.