New research from California Sea Grant explores people’s motivations for fishing and eating catch from San Diego Bay, despite well-known health risks. Understanding these underlying meanings could help to craft more effective and socially-tailored consumption and health guidelines.
California’s beaches are threatened by sea level rise. By 2100, up to 67 percent of California's iconic beaches are expected to disappear entirely. But the impacts of these losses will not be distributed evenly among California’s diverse population. Sustaining beaches and equitable access will require coordinated efforts among stakeholders, as well as the knowledge of how resilient each beach is and how their management affects access, use, environmental justice and economic value.
When it comes to easing the effects of ocean acidification, it pays to get a little help from your friends.
If your friends are red seaweed, that is.
The San Francisco Bay wasn’t always an expansive, open mud flat. It once had habitat with a rockier shoreline that supported native oysters. But scientists have discovered ways to restore the oysters’ habitat and the local food web.
“Olympia oysters are a critical foundation species, but they're losing ground in California estuaries,” says Ted Grosholz, an ecologist at the University of California, Davis who led the study. “So, we are undertaking restoration to try to keep these populations healthy and resilient.”
Emily Chen, a fourth-year Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, has been awarded a two-year 2022 NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service-Sea Grant Fellowship.
The two most important Chinook salmon stocks for fisheries in California — the Sacramento River Fall Chinook and the Klamath River Fall Chinook — were designated as overfished in 2018. Assessment errors could have contributed to the decline. Regulatory agencies use forecast models before each season to set harvest levels and to develop long-term management strategies. For Sacramento River Fall Chinook, a preseason overforecast of abundance resulted in overharvesting.