Part of the team departed for the Seychelles on 28 May 2016 to recover and re-deploy moorings, carry-out a process-based focus study, and do outreach with the local community. You can follow their trip on our NASCar-SLOMO project website. From left to right, Hugo, Isa, Rich, and Geno.
19 May 2016 Giddings and a few other scientists and policy specialists presented to community members at the City of Carlsbad Sea Level Rise Meeting. The City of Carlsbad hosted a panel discussion and community meeting about “The Future of Carlsbad’s Coast and Lagoons.”
Video, photos, and information from the event can be found here.
On 18-20 May 2016, the Los Peñasquitos lagoon mouth was dredged open following nearly 2 months of continuous closure and upstream flooding. On 19 May 2016 water levels were low enough for us to recover the buried pressure sensor located just inside of the lagoon mouth. This pressure sensor has been measuring wave energy entering the lagoon throughout the El Niño winter.
Now you can watch the lecture on El Niño and Our Urban Ocean by Sarah and Julie Thomas from SCCOOS at the Birch Aquarium’s Perspectives on Ocean Science Lecture Series.
SIO highlights all of the amazing El Niño work that has gone on during this 2015-2016 El Niño season in this article.
We recovered our gear from AHL this week! Rob and Maddie got to dive in the lagoon… visibility was less than an arm’s length! There was significant growth on the instruments but so far the data looks good.
Join Astrid and many others as they highlight the various citizen science projects occurring in San Diego. This will be the inaugural Citizen Science Expo for San Diego! Astrid will highlight the Urban Tides Initiative and Stormphoto citizen science projects which the Giddings lab has participated in and her results from analyzing the efficacy of these programs as part of her SIO MAS (you can read about Astrid’s work and the Urban Tides and Stormphoto initiatives). In addition to an exhibition in the community room featuring local citizen science projects, there will also be citizen science seminars, workshops, games, raffles, and more. This should be a great event to learn how you can get involved in a variety of different citizen science programs that allow you to learn from and help scientists throughout San Diego. Representatives from citizen science programs ranging from the medical field to oceanography to conservation and more will be represented!
The event takes place on 16 April 2016 from 10am-2pm at the La Jolla Public Library. Check out the flier here and find more information on presenters here.
The Tijuana River mouth closed last week in response to what we think are the combined effects of large waves throughout this El Niño season and potentially along-shore transport of sand from earlier beach nourishments. Our colleagues at the Tijuana National Estuarine Research Reserve have been monitoring the situation closely to better understand what is going on. See this news article about some of the unfortunate consequences of this closure combined with significant water quality issues from upstream. A paper by colleagues in the Guza lab should be coming out soon that looks at the beach component of this issue. While several of the smaller estuaries throughout California close more regularly, a closure of this estuary has not occurred since the last major El Niño in 1983.
Sarah joined Julie Thomas from SCCOOS to talk about impacts of the current El Niño on our coastline at the Birch Aquarium’s Perspectives on Ocean Science Lecture Series. There was an excellent turnout and a lot of interest by the community. A brief news clip of the talks is here, a full recording will be available soon.
Maddie explains her research in Los Peñasquitos Lagoon to beach walk participants.
Our beach walk was a great success! We saw extreme beach erosion, infrastructure damage, and a recently excavated estuary mouth.
Participants walk along a very narrow beach with no more sand!
Astrid Hsu, MAS student at SIO Is studying the efficacy of beach walks and the Urban Tides Citizen Science Initiative, both to figure out who and why people join the Initiative and whether citizens are learning something from their participation. Click “read more” below to read preliminary findings of Astrids’ results! And if you want to participate check out the Urban Tides Initiative website (for those that want to use an app and/or on-line program) and the Storm Photo website ( for those who would rather send images via email). More information about El Niño and its effects see here.