Marine biologists at UC Santa Barbara investigated the effect of elevated temperatures on Kellet’s whelk larvae, a common Southern California sea snail and the target of an emerging local fishery.

“The Blob,” an extreme marine heatwave that rolled through the Pacific Ocean several years ago, continues to affect the nearshore rocky reefs of the Santa Barbara Channel, especially sessile invertebrates.

Members of the Moeller lab carried out a three-year experiment to see how two strains of mixotrophs would adapt to changes in temperature and light level.

By ranking foods on factors such as greenhouse gas emissions or water pollution, scientists have made useful headway on assessments of the environmental impacts of food by pound or kilogram.

Researchers and scholars from around the world met at UC Santa Barbara to discuss innovative approaches to researching and addressing environmental injustices.

What if there was a way to avoid the problem of plastic pollution while still reaping the benefits of a networked ocean?

A casual conversation with a trio of people strolling on the sand would result in a generous gift to the LTER and related kelp forest research.

Along a dirty river, an ingenious garbage-swallowing machine and an inspired community are offering hope to a world overrun by plastic.

Marc and Lynne Benioff have made a gift of $60 million to UC Santa Barbara. The gift builds on the Benioffs’ legacy of support to the campus to address ocean problems and advance science-based solutions and establishes the new Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory.

The Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, along with a consortium of research and conservation institutions, have banded together to launch Whale Safe in the San Francisco Bay, a whale monitoring project that puts eyes and ears on the majestic creatures as they cruise up and down the northern California coast.

Streams hide an underwater world of tiny insects in a fantastically varied web of life. Why species are found where within streams, however, remains rather mysterious. 

“Distinguishing climate change effects arising from an increase in the frequency of abrupt events and gradual directional changes requires a long-term perspective,” said Dan Reed, a research biologist at UC Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute and one of the founders of the SBC LTER.

"How big of a problem is deep-water ocean dumping … along not just the California coast, but nationwide?"

Because of the high biodiversity of the Santa Barbara coast, due to the rich and productive mosaic of nearshore marine habitats, even in a small area of the coast, the impacts of debris disposal could potentially affect multiple marine habitats and their biodiversity.

Purple sea urchins are munching their way through California’s kelp forests at a speed and scale that have stunned scientists, fishermen and divers alike.

Santa Barbara Coastal Long-Term Ecological Research (SBC LTER) program researchers and students work together to unravel the ocean’s mysteries within the Santa Barbara Channel and along the coasts that line it.

Using DNA from large herbivore dung, scientists uncovered an entire network of gastrointestinal parasite sharing among 17 wild and domestic herbivore species.

UC Santa Barbara doctoral student Emily Lau and her co-advisor, Professor Todd Oakley, recently discovered that bioluminescence evolved independently at least 94 times across the tree of life. This makes it an excellent trait for investigating longstanding questions in evolution.

In a paper published in the journal Nature, an international collaboration of researchers takes a thorough look at the potential of a warming ocean to satisfy the growing global appetite.

UC Santa Barbara geochemist and geobiologist Morgan Raven is set to explore a lesser-known mechanism of ocean carbon sequestration — one that might become more conspicuous as the oceans warm.

Peter Alagona’s book “The Accidental Ecosystem” tells the story of how American cities filled with wildlife. It catalyzes a conversation about how to reimagine our cities as shared, multispecies habitats.

Some island foxes living along the coast have a taste for beach food, specifically the small cryptic animals that live around the piles of drift kelp on beaches, safely above the wave wash.

UC Santa Barbara professor Scott Hodges, doctoral student Zachary Cabin and their colleagues just have identified a case of a sudden evolutionary change.

Mae Rennick, a graduate student researcher in the Halley Froehlich Lab at UC Santa Barbara, has been selected to receive the 2022 Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award from the Ecological Society of America (ESA).