News & Updates

I still can remember the first time I had the opportunity to sail on a large research vessel. We transited nearly 300 miles off the California coast. As we moved into the open ocean, the water became a deep crystal blue. The color and quality of the water was unlike anything I had ever seen in my life and the clarity of the water felt almost symbolic. Being that far offshore, aboard a large ship, and immersed in the vastness of the ocean, made the importance of ships very clear to me. I realized what an essential platform they are to connect people directly to the open ocean and to each other, to enable essential data collection, and to underpin science that serves society.

Technicians from ESNZ joined the CalCOFI 2511 cruise to gain hands-on experience with at-sea instrumentation, calibration, and sampling workflows. From CTD operations and SUNA integration to oxygen sampling techniques, the exchange provided valuable insight that will help inform future Deep Argo float deployments and strengthen international collaboration in ocean observing.

My name is Ella Crotty, a recent college graduate and lab volunteer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the Fall 2025 CalCOFI cruise was my first multi-day research cruise! I was aboard as a volunteer on the MOSAIC (MURI Ocean Sampling Across an Integrated Continuum) project, a project that uses environmental DNA (eDNA) to detect marine mammals along the route of the CalCOFI cruise.

Please join us for this year’s CalCOFI Conference 2026, A Decade of Remarkable Change: Heatwaves, HABs, Hypoxia, and Other Ocean Changes off the California coast, which will be held May 27th and 28th, 2026 at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Seaside Forum, La Jolla, CA. The conference will happen in-person and will consist of keynotes, panels, contributed talks, posters, and discussions.

In November, I was invited to speak about my CalCOFI research on the Trophic Efficiency in Early Life Hypothesis at the 2025 PICES meeting in Yokohama, Japan. This talk was part of a session on “Applying Innovative and Established Approaches to Assess the Resilience of the Early Life Stages of North Pacific Fishes to Changing Oceanographic Conditions”.

In November 2025, I flew across the largest and deepest ocean on Earth and landed in Japan for a week of discovery and collaboration (and amazing food!) at the North Pacific Marine Sciences Organization (PICES) annual meeting. PICES promotes and coordinates marine research in the North Pacific. The conference brought together over 600 ocean professionals from across the North Pacific to explore Innovative Approaches and Applications to Foster Resilience in North Pacific Ecosystems.

The Ocean Biomolecular Observing Network (OBON) is a UN Decade program building a global biodiversity monitoring system using environmental DNA (eDNA). As co-lead of West Coast OBON, I traveled to the annual OBON Projects Meeting in Hobart to share our 2025 progress, including two workshops, a new reference sequence guide, and protocol development with BeBOP. I learned about innovative Western Pacific efforts such as PacMAN, the Australian Microbiome Initiative, and Make eDNA FAIR. I also helped lead discussions on improving global reference libraries and planning a microgrant proposal. The meeting highlighted the importance of coordinated, FAIR eDNA data to advance marine biodiversity science.

We are thrilled to share the news that Mark Gold has been named new director of the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations, the renowned oceanographic

We are excited to welcome Ben Gire to the SIO CalCOFI oceanographic team! Ben holds a B.S. in Oceanography from Cal Poly Humboldt and previously