Published Results on Invasive Algae in San Diego

Smith Lab members Niko Kaplanis and Jill Harris recently published the results of their San Diego County non-native algae research project conducted between 2012 and 2014. This work documented patterns of establishment, spread, and persistence for two non-native algal species in San Diego county and analyzed this invasion in the larger geographic context of the entire Pacific Coast of North … Read More

SOAR with me underneath the Scripps Pier!

It is another beautiful day in paradise.  This paradise is sunny San Diego, California.  Today we’ll suit up for a dive underneath the pier at Scripps Institution of Oceanography to visit our underwater instruments for a cleaning and calibration water sample.  I have done this dive over 200 times, but thankfully it doesn’t get old.  I have been able to … Read More

From the Pristine to Degraded: Reefs of the Central Pacific

Scripps led research team assesses the impacts of human disturbance on coral reefs.   In one of the most comprehensive assessments of Pacific Ocean coral reef health spanning 10 years, 56 islands, and five archipelagos, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego marine ecologist Jennifer Smith and colleagues examined how coral reef communities at 450 sites are faring with … Read More

Scientists measure the ‘beauty’ of coral reefs

Dr. Smith and co-authors from San Diego State University, the Getty Research Institute, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography recently published a paper in PeerJ entitled: ‘Can we measure beauty? Computational evaluation of coral reef aesthetics.’ “Our results suggest that our perception of aesthetics is well-aligned with healthy, thriving ecosystems,” said Andreas Haas, an SDSU postdoctoral scholar and primary researcher of … Read More

Published Results: Effects of ocean acidification on San Diego seaweeds

A new paper, written by Susan Kram and co-authors, was recently accepted for publication in the ICES Journal of Marine Science themed article set on Ocean Acidification. The paper, “Variable responses of temperate calcified and fleshy macroalgae to elevated pCO2 and warming,” describes the responses of six different locally abundant San Diego seaweeds to future ocean acidification and warming conditions. … Read More

Published Results – new paper focuses on the small things on a coral reef

Jill’s new paper, written with Jen and Levi, came out recently in the Marine Ecology Progress Series. Their paper, Quantifying scales of spatial variability in algal turf assemblages on coral reefs, describes how turf algae on a coral reef are variable over very small scales. Turf algae are a group of small (~ 1 cm tall) algae that grow like a fuzzy … Read More

Adventures in Chagos

By Samantha Clements. This year, during the months of March and April, I conducted coral reef benthic surveys for the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (KSLOF) in Chagos. Chagos is the largest archipelago in the world and lies within the British Indian Ocean Territory. The islands of the archipelago are very far from any continents and have been uninhabited … Read More

New paper focuses on the small things on a coral reef

By Jill Harris Jill’s new paper, written with Jen and Levi, was recently accepted for publication in the Marine Ecology Progress Series. Their paper, Quantifying scales of spatial variability in algal turf assemblages on coral reefs, describes how turf algae on a coral reef are variable over very small scales.  Stay tuned for the official publication of the paper, but in the … Read More

These Three Reefs Are Not Like Each Other

By Maggie Johnson My field work entails a combination of field and laboratory experiments. Field work is utterly exhausting; working in and on the water for all daylight hours and then in the lab for what remains of the day. But one of the things I love the most about being a marine biologist with field based research is the … Read More