This grant has provided fellowships of 1 to 5 years duration for 13 graduate students in the general area of coastal ocean processes. Marine Ph.D. students in the departments of Geography, Geology, Marine Science, and Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology have been supported for thesis topics spanning many marine disciplines including paleooceanography, biological oceanography and coastal marine physics. Specific topics have included coastal optics and phytoplankton, riverine transport to the ocean, larval transport, silica cycling, biology of zooplankton, abrupt climate change, and microbial decompositon. Students are greatly encouraged to develop interdisciplinary thesis topics.

Students in this program have benefited greatly by increased interactions across the subdisciplines of marine science. Faculty and students attend a marine science seminar each quarter where new developments in marine science are discussed and students have an opportunity to become conversent in the ideas and language of many marine subdisciplines. Research interactions have been facilitated among both faculty and students. Interactions arising from this grant helped establish the new Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Marine Science begun in 1997. Student support provided by this grant has proved to be a valuable recruitment tool in attracting top notch students to UCSB.