CMBC 2024 Annual Report
Director's NOte
In this annual report, we are pleased to share updates and information about the happenings from across our CMBC community. We had an active year of programming, ranging from our expanded efforts in sustainable seafood to our deep dives to discuss the deep sea. The faculty, students, and staff of CMBC continue to find new ways of engaging both within and beyond our center, helping to open access to our understanding of our oceans’ biodiversity and our efforts to faithfully manage and conserve these resources.
But as we fulfill these programming efforts for the year, we had the additional opportunity to review our activities over the last seven years. Meeting our institutional obligation of reporting, CMBC went through a review of our activities and impact as an official center at UC San Diego. While such reviews require a non-trivial amount of organization and preparation, the outputs turned out to be quite rewarding. The review committee offered high praise for CMBC, citing the notable impact across the campus community and beyond. The services that CMBC offers to our student community were highlighted, along with the campus value of our public-facing programming. I would like to personally thank all members of our CMBC community for helping us to prepare this report, and even more, for leaning into the programming that has made such an impact.
Our work is not complete, as the species and ecosystems of our oceans continue to face sustained and novel challenges. Through our institutional review, we received some valuable feedback on ways that CMBC can evolve and grow. In the year ahead we will be updating some elements of our center structure, helping to assure that we have the capacity to face tomorrow with creativity, efficiency, and sustained impact.
With the community and camaraderie that exists within CMBC, I am sure that the years ahead will see more vibrancy and success.
Stuart Sandin
CMBC Director
Professor, Oliver Chair in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation Science at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego
Research & DESIGN
CMBC Goal 1: Increase scientific understanding of the structure, function and diversity of marine and coupled human socio-economic systems.
CMBC Goal 5: Design technically sophisticated, regionally appropriate strategies for marine conservation. Understand the obstacles we face in driving behavioral change in environmental decision-making and how to overcome them.
Monitoring ocean-island Linkages In the Galapagos
The Island-Ocean Connection Challenge (IOCC) aims to better understand the linkages between islands and near-shore marine environments, and to break down domain and habitat-specific silos in environmental management. Standardized monitoring methods are critical to illuminate the environmental connections, as well as to measure the impact of restoration across habitats. The branch of IOCC working through CMBC and the Sandin Lab has been focusing on scientific data collection for marine impact assessment across IOCC project sites in the tropical and subtropical Pacific.
The past year has been an exciting and rewarding time for IOCC at CMBC, with the project transitioning from pre-restoration data collection to data processing, management, curation, and analysis. The July 2023 expedition to the Galapagos was a first for the Sandin Lab. For the trip we partnered with collaborators from the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) in Ecuador. In the Galapagos we: conducted a 2-day training with CDF on the technique of underwater large-area image (LAI) collection; and, together, gathered data in the field at two of the islands, Floreana and Espanola.
IOCC interacts with both the educational and research aspects of the academic enterprise through being co-housed at CMBC at UC San Diego. Master of Science student, Emma Flattery, has been learning about and performing important ecological data extraction for the IOCC Floreana project. The project also benefits greatly from UC San Diego Library’s Digital Collections, where it stores all the data collected by the project.
Outreach for this project has taken us to new and exciting places. Notably, Stuart Sandin gave the keynote presentation at The Art of the Possible: How Island Restoration Can Save the Ocean at Art Basel in Miami, Florida, USA. Read more on the latest CMBC IOCC work “Marine Monitoring: Expect the Unexpected and Other Experiences from Islands Lost in Time” by Scripps staff researcher Nathaniel Hanna Holloway (MAS MBC '15).
CMBC and the Sandin Lab are grateful for funding from OceanKind and philanthropic support that makes this work possible.
Productive Year for Translating Deep Ocean Science to Policy
CMBC’s involvement in the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI) focused on bringing deep-sea science to international policy in the areas of: deep-seabed mining, climate change, biodiversity, and fisheries. Lisa Levin reports out on the extensive global activities:
DOSI engagement on deep-seabed mining included participation at three International Seabed Authority (ISA) meetings in Kingston, Jamaica this past year. At meetings in July, November, and March, DOSI representatives intervened on environmental regulations, impact assessment, compliance, closure plans and more. To reach international delegates and other ISA participants, the DOSI team prepared multiple policy briefs and co-sponsored a side event with PEW Charitable Trusts (What Deep Data can tell us about the Biodiversity in the CCZ?). Adding important perspective to the conversations at hand, DOSI provided a critique of China’s environmental impact assessment, and contributed to development of a regional environmental management plan for the northwest Pacific Ocean.
DOSI activities on climate change addressed the climate-biodiversity nexus, marine carbon dioxide removal as it relates to the deep sea, and global deep-ocean observing needs. Activities involved observer participation in international policy meetings, including: the UNFCCC COP28 (Dubai, UAE; December 2023) and numerous COP28 side events; the 2024 Ocean Dialogue (Bonn, Germany; June 2024). Networking and communicating broadly on these topics, DOSI members participated in multiple webinars and podcasts, published many policy briefs, and attended conferences (including the UN Decade Conference in Barcelona, Spain). DOSI’s climate change working group wrapped up the ‘23-24 fiscal year by hosting a workshop on Scripps Institution of Oceanography campus to discuss potential costs and benefits of marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR).
DOSI joined the Deep Ocean Observing Strategy (DOOS) in two major activities this year: (a) hosting a Decade for Ocean Science workshop at Scripps Oceanography in October 2023 (Deepening the Decade); and (b) conducting an assessment of deep-ocean climate science gaps through a review of six documents within the IPCC AR6.
DOSI’s biodiversity-related activities included participation in the Convention on Biological Diversity negotiations, input to US Biodiversity and mCDR strategies, and participation in various workshops and webinars on the new Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdictions (BBNJ) Treaty - with a focus on marine genetic resources and climate interface with biodiversity. In the fisheries realm, DOSI worked with DOOS to conduct a survey of regional fisheries management organizations' use of ocean data (synthesis in progress) and published an assessment of how to designate “vulnerable marine ecosystems” from imagery (Baco et al. 2024).
Through Dr. Levin, DOSI mentored Morgan Berger (MAS MBC ‘24) capstone project - a film entitled Clarity: A call for transparency in marine diamond mining. You can watch Morgan's capstone presentation and short film here.
Seafood Retailers: Where Catch Meets Consumers
In Spring 2024 our Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SSI) wrapped up the latest stage in our capacity building program for PriceSmart Inc. The past three years we’ve provided PriceSmart’s seafood purchasing teams (~60 people) with scientific knowledge about sustainable practices in fisheries and aquaculture production. This year, SSI conducted two workshops virtually covering: governance and regulations in wild capture fisheries, and socioeconomic dimensions of sustainable seafood. We also hosted an in-person workshop in Barranquilla, Colombia (May 2024) for 23 participants. In Colombia, our SSI team led participants through a variety of interactive activities to review concepts covered over the past three years, including sustainability considerations for aquaculture products. Field visits to an in-pond raceway aquaculture farm and seafood processing plant in northern Colombia put knowledge to practice.
As our final deliverable for this stage, SSI is completing the Sustainable Seafood Procurement Guidelines document. This will provide concise checklists covering the most straightforward ways for seafood buyers to evaluate environmental sustainability of a seafood product. The document incorporates information covered in all nine capacity-building workshops and includes key criteria for sustainability as well as suggested questions buyers can ask vendors.
The work with PriceSmart has provided a model for corporate environmental and social responsibility as it relates to sustainable seafood procurement that can be scaled to other seafood purchasing groups. This collaboration supported the SSI’s aim to strengthen access to information needed to improve sustainability in fisheries and seafood supply chains by building trust, access, and exchange among key stakeholders and establishing relationships that advance solutions.
Learn more about our Colombia visit in this bilingual photo essay written by Mar Mancha-Cisneros (outgoing CMBC SSI Project Manager), and Natalie Zembsch (continuing BS/MS student).
Hello (Blue) World: Harnessing AI and Data Visualization for Marine Ecology
Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellow, Jessica Kendall-Bar organized a 5-day international workshop this Spring with 35 experts in AI, visualization, and ecology. The event was hosted by San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and CMBC at UC San Diego. During the workshop, SDSC Chief Data Science Officer Ilkay Altintas and CMBC Director Stuart Sandin helped lead discussions about AI for conservation and ecology.
The workshop’s primary deliverables will include a perspective paper that details the need for tools for visualization and AI in ecology, five reproducible use-cases of AI in ecology, as well as a “model zoo” to catalog open-source AI tools for ecology. Among workshop attendees were guest speakers Tanya Berger-Wolf, the Director of the Translational Data Analytics Institute and a Professor of Computer Science Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, as well as Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at the Ohio State University.
Watch this synthesis video to hear first hand about what our participants are working on, and how the workshop leverages tools to process and access data to facilitate new academic and management insights.
The EcoViz & AI workshop was made possible by generous support from Schmidt Sciences.
In BrieF: Visiting Scholars
Lyall Bellquist
Primary Affiliation: The Nature Conservancy (California, U.S.A.)
at CMBC August 2018 to present
My work is at the nexus of fisheries science and management. Through my visiting scholar appointment with CMBC, I collaborate closely with colleagues at Scripps including Brice Semmens.
This fiscal year, we completed a jointly-funded project between The Nature Conservancy, Scripps Oceanography, and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) - led by postdoctoral researcher Brendan Talwar, who was co-advised by Dr. Semmens and myself. This unique collaboration developed: (1) an elasmobranch Science Advisory Group; and (2) the largest synthesis to date of silky shark (Carcharinus falciformis) life history, genetics, movement, and both large- and small-scale fishery data in the eastern Pacific ocean. Silky shark species as the second-most common elasmobranch caught as fisheries bycatch worldwide. Our research synthesis results suggest a previously undocumented stock structure in the eastern Pacific ocean for the sharks. Knowing this is critical for species management and the IATTC has since recommended the replication of this work for other elasmobranch species also caught as bycatch (publication near submission).
We also published two manuscripts with graduate students in the Semmens Lab - Erica Mason (PhD '24) and Connor Coscino (MS '23) - highlighting the critical need for new management regulations in the California recreational fishery for Barred Sand Bass (Paralabrax nebulifer). Management recommendations for this fishery will be presented by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to the Marine Resources Committee in July 2024.
Lastly, as co-Principal Investigators for the California Collaborative Fisheries Research Program, Dr. Semmens and I were co-authors on two manuscripts documenting the performance of California’s statewide network of marine protected areas (MPAs) by working with the volunteer recreational angling community to monitor fishery-independent metrics both inside and outside of the MPAs.
Susanna Lidström
Primary Affiliation: KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden)
at CMBC September 2023 to present
My main research focus this past year has been the relationship between ocean data and ocean governance. This has included case studies of:
- the Scripps Argo program for international ocean observing and monitoring and how its aims and practices interact with the UN Sustainable Development Goal for the ocean;
- how deep-sea data are managed and inform the developing governance of the deep seabed at the International Seabed Authority; and,
- how ocean data are an increasingly important global common
My interactions at Scripps Oceanography with Dr. Lisa Levin's lab and others have been essential to the development of these case studies, informing my scientific understanding as well as the broader implications of the science for marine policy and protection.
In addition to conducting research, I gave a presentation in February to UC San Diego’s Science Studies Colloquium (Co-Environing the Ocean and Climate: The Argo program), and mentored '24 MAS MBC student Valentina Manriquez for her 299 graduate research and professional development course. I also served as Vale's culminating capstone project committee chair. Most recently I coordinated DOSI’s workshop on mCDR and the deep ocean in June 2024.
Education
CMBC Goal 3: Train the next generation of marine scholars, policy makers and citizens conversant in the disciplines at the intersection of physical science and biological sciences with social science/humanities.
PIER PhD Specialization
The Program in Interdisciplinary Environmental Research PhD Specialization - also known as, "PIER" - graduated two students and welcomed three more this year.
Scripps Oceanography students Jordan DiNardo and Erica Ferrer successfully completed their degrees this year. Jordan joined CMBC staff in spring 2023 for our Costa Rica trip with PriceSmart Inc.'s seafood buyers, and one of the interdisciplinary chapters of her final PhD dissertation used social science techniques to survey people across the U.S. on their understanding and perception of seafood certifications and ecolabels. Erica expanded her PhD work through a policy framework, taking courses with UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy.
In summer 2023 we welcomed Visual Arts PhD student Clarissa Chevalier to PIER, and in June 2024 we were joined by Sarah Rose (also with UC San Diego's Visual Arts department), and Zi-qi Chew (UC San Diego Anthropology).
MAS in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation
The Master of Advanced Studies in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation (MAS MBC) program matriculated 23 students in ‘23-’24. Their 2023 summer program delved into the theme of “extreme environment,” culminating in some stellar summer final project films - but this was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the learning and growth to come throughout the rest of the academic year. Students came from many backgrounds to the program, and their final spring research capstone projects reflected an equal diversity of interests and topics. You can view the summer projects, as well as watch the 2024 Capstone Symposium presentations in full here.
As the MAS MBC program enters its 20th year this June (!), our programs have de-coupled some of our remaining administrative links, with CMBC staff capacity being retooled to fully focus on CMBC programming. We’re thrilled to have such strong partners in education through MAS MBC and will continue to champion their many successes, students, and alumni. We look forward to continuing to connect current students with research opportunities, colleagues, and events through our CMBC network, and support alumni via our weekly jobs list and quarterly alumni updates.
Community
Started in April 2024, CMBC's Student Co-working Group is an opportunity for our community to get together and work on their projects with other students, postdocs, and staff. The majority of our attendees are PhD students, but the group is open to all members of UC San Diego/Scripps campus. In our first quarter, we served 19 unique students, with ~5 students per session. Members share that they enjoy having dedicated time to work in community and find it helpful to have others to bounce ideas off of and motivate each other to get things done. We are continuing to host weekly sessions through the summer.
COMMUNICATION
CMBC Goal 4: Increase public understanding of science, social and economic drivers of marine ecosystem change and provide sound scientific analyses to policy makers.
Outreach
Following the update of our website (cmbc.ucsd.edu) in Winter 2023, we continued upgrading our internal and external communications products by launching a quarterly newsletter in Spring 2023. For fiscal year ‘23-’24 we’ve sent a total of 3 quarterly newsletters, and a number of supplemental marketing emails for public and internal events. Moving to the quarterly newsletter gives constituents timely information about our Center and member activities and digests information succinctly in text and graphic formats. These emails have been opened by 2236 recipients across our staff, students, faculty, alumni, donors, partners, and friends since we launched the newsletter! Want to join our mailing lists? Contact us via our website.
Public EVENTS
We had four big public events this year, bringing nearly 600 individuals to Scripps Oceanography campus to engage with research topics across biodiversity and conservation. We kicked off the year embodying our interdisciplinary nature as we brought chefs, scientists, NGOs, visual artists, and performers together for a joyful celebration of all ocean flora at our "Seaweed Speakeasy." Our other bookend was our first in-person Knowlton-Jackson Lecture since the onset of the COVID19 pandemic, welcoming CMBC founding members, and professors emeritus, Nancy Knowlton and Jeremy Jackson back for their namesake lecture - this year focusing on connecting science to deep ocean policy in the high seas.
Salty Cinema continues to be a very popular “community-funded” event, made possible by generous donors over the last seven years. We are actively looking for sponsorship for our ‘24-’25 academic year and beyond to be able to continue this as a free event open to the public. If this program is valuable to you, please consider visiting our "Giving" webpage to learn more about this and other opportunities to support CMBC at Scripps Oceanography.
Network
CMBC Goal 4: Provide leadership roles in campus-wide, national and international integration across disciplines, institutions and society. Facilitate knowledge exchange, promote mutual understanding, and leverage differences to promote creativity.
Resources
One of the main ways CMBC executes our mission is by acting as a hub for interdisciplinary convenings of all kinds - meetings, workshops, events, conferences, seminars, courses, and more! Recognizing that our Center and staff have a unique set of knowledge about hosting events on campus, we wanted to share this expertise with our affiliates to support more impactful and successful convenings. This prompted the creation of “CMBC’s Resource Guide for Coordinating Convenings on Campus.” UC San Diego affiliates can email CMBC staff to request access to the Resource Guide.
After moving to the Ted and Jean Scripps Marine Conservation and Technology Facility (MCTF) in Fall 2022-Spring 2023, CMBC took on some administrative responsibilities for the building which is our physical and programmatic home. We provide both: 1) conference room reservation services, and 2) golf cart access approval and reservation coordination for the building and the Scripps Oceanography Biology Section.
In just one year, CMBC’s administrative support for MCTF’s three medium-sized conference rooms has facilitated access for 520 meetings, ranging from routine lab meetings and spillover space for course instruction, to donor and academic partner meetings. In FY’23-’24, we’re proud to have helped host a UC Office of the President meeting on climate data, a UC Natural Reserve planning meeting, and a workshop for the Sandin Lab and their partners at the Waitt Institute, just to name a few. Over 130 trips have been taken in the golf cart over just the past 6 months, the majority supporting field research on kelp conducted off of the Ellen Browning Scripps Pier.
INTERNAL EVENTS
VisitorS
CMBC has hosted a number of campus visitors and research partners this year, including:
- San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
- Sea Trees
- National Geographic: Pristine Seas
- NOAA Fisheries
- San Diego Architectural Foundation
- Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology
- One Reef
- University of Florida
- ESRI
- UC Office of the President
- UC Natural Reserve System
- Waitt Institute
Financials
FY23/24 CMBC finances reflect carry forward of revenue that we plan to leverage in FY24/25 to increase core staff capacity to run programs and host events. Please note that 60% of the carry forward in Private Giving is restricted in use (e.g. dedicated for specific initiatives or events).
We are grateful to all of our supporters and boosters - financial, programmatic, and institutional - who make our Center possible.
If you wish to support CMBC and our work, you can learn more about funding needs and philanthropic opportunities here.