Spring is prime time around the University of California Natural Reserve System. As winter thaws, and skies dry, scientists and students alike start migrating to the protected lands of the network’s 41 reserves. Field stations bustle with university classes on field trips, who rub shoulders with faculty and student researchers, and may intersect with buses […]
Año Nuevo Island Reserve
Elephant seal “supermoms” produce most of the population
by Tim Stephens, UC Santa Cruz Most of the pups born in an elephant seal colony in California over a span of five decades were produced by a relatively small number of long-lived “supermoms,” according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The long-term study, published September 17 in the Canadian […]
Citizen scientists census animals on Año Nuevo Island Reserve
By Tim Stephens, UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz researchers are inviting citizen scientists to help achieve the first comprehensive counts of the thousands of seals, sea lions, and seabirds on Año Nuevo Island, a rocky islet north of Santa Cruz along the San Mateo coast. The Año Nuevo Island animal count project (sealcount.com) launched […]
Weighing seals by drone
Undergrad’s innovative research may lead to new methods of weighing seals, expanding our understanding of the mammals and the oceans
Learning to swim, elephant seal style
Elephant seals were born to swim, and scientists have the data to show it. For the first time, researchers at the University of California have tracked the diving behavior of northern elephant seal pups on their inaugural journeys into the open ocean. Like videos of a toddler’s baby steps, the recordings show the 300-pound youngsters […]
Reviving field research with living laboratories and outdoor education
By Lily Dayton for UC Santa Cruz In the spring of 1948, UCLA graduate student Ken Norris was eager to return to his field research site in the Coachella Valley, where he’d spent previous seasons crouched in the sand dunes, observing the desert iguanas that scurried beneath the Dicoria bushes. When he arrived at his research plot, […]
Disease caused catastrophic sea star declines
by Julie Cohen, UC Santa Barbara Five years ago, a mysterious disease began crippling sea star populations along the West Coast. Many sea star species died in record-breaking numbers over a short period of time, and a keystone known as the ochre sea star (Pisaster ochraceus) was among the hardest hit. The outbreak extended from […]
Tracking data reveals common patterns in marine animal travels
by Tim Stephens, UC Santa Cruz The movements of marine mammals and other large animals that spend their lives in the ocean were largely unknown prior to the development of sophisticated tracking devices researchers could deploy on animals in the wild. Insights gained from this technology have revealed unexpected behaviors and migratory patterns in marine […]