Another year, another Maui trip!

Aloha! Our lab just got back from our annual field work trip to Maui, and we have a lot to report! We’ve been visiting Maui for over a decade to monitor coral reefs along the island’s leeward (sheltered from the wind) coast. We return to the same sites year after year and take thousands of pictures of each reef. When … Read More

SOAR Spring 2020 Report: Red Tide Edition

If you’re a resident of Southern California (and maybe even if you’re not) you likely heard about the recent red tide bloom (and subsequent smelly fish and invertebrate die-offs) that saturated the coastline of Southern California. Here at Scripps Oceanography, it was the main topic of conversation to break the monotony of COVID-19 information and pandemic updates. For those of us … Read More

100IC team featured in bioGraphic while on expedition in the Cook Islands

Researchers from the 100 Island Challenge team were interviewed for a piece in bioGraphic in January on an expedition to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. The article, “Picture of Health,” published online last week, details the daily life of researchers in the field and shares the team’s optimistic view of coral reef health in areas where local managers are making waves to … Read More

Collaboration in the news: Smith Lab assists US Fish and Wildlife Service with water quality monitoring at Palmyra Atoll

On a recent trip to Palmyra Atoll, members of the Smith Lab assisted US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) with the deployment of a nearshore water quality sensor. The sensor, a Sea-Bird Electronics 16plus V2 SeaCAT Recorder with integrated WET Labs ECO-FLNTUS (say that 10 times fast!), is part of the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System’s (PacIOOS) Water Quality Sensor … Read More

Herbivore management may be the key to balancing the energetic budget on coral reefs

A new paper published by Emily Kelly and colleagues explains how we can balance the energetic budget on Hawaiian coral reefs through herbivore management and protection. Herbivores on coral reefs play an important role in controlling algal growth, but in systems where density of herbivores is low, algae can grow at a faster rate than they are consumed, resulting in a … Read More

Citizen-supported science in the Gulf of Maine

Dr. Walter Adey has dedicated his career to studying the importance of seaweeds in the marine ecosystems of the Northwest Atlantic. Walter first surveyed the benthic communities of the Gulf of Maine fifty years ago. In the wake of the collapse of the famed New England cod fishery and half a century of climate change, the Gulf of Maine is … Read More