Researchers, growers and seaweed enthusiasts gathered at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Waterfront Park in San Diego in early November to celebrate all things nori, dulse, kombu, wakame and more. 

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is, in many ways, a place of legend. It's one of the world’s great wetlands, now heavily reworked for agriculture. Two-thirds of Californians depend on the region for drinking water. Millions of birds and fish pass through each migratory season.

But what do locals think of their home? That, for many years, has been a missing piece of data. A recent, first-of-its-kind survey helped sharpen the picture — finding that while diverse residents agree that it’s an important and complex region, their satisfaction with their quality of life varies widely.

In the early 1970s, California’s population exceeded 20 million — triple what it had been at the outbreak of World War II. Then, as now, a majority of Californians lived along the coast, which created an urgent need to find ways in which those who depend on or enjoy the coast could coexist. 

California Sea Grant is excited to announce that Anastasia Telesetsky has joined the program as a member of the extension team. Telesetsky will support communities along the Central Coast in their decision-making about innovative offshore wind farms in the area.

There was a chance that it was already too late for coho salmon in the Russian River. 

Fish biologist Mariska Obedzinski had been working in Maine, helping to recover endangered Atlantic salmon. Now, as a newly-hired California Sea Grant researcher, she was turning her attention to Russian River coho — a fish that lay a mere whisker away from extinction itself.