Scripps Institution of Oceanography
2021 Annual Impact Report
From the Director
In 2021, the community at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography continued to showcase its resilience and reawakened after a mostly virtual 2020. Our academic research fleet safely returned to sea, Birch Aquarium reopened to the public, students and faculty came back for in-person and hybrid learning, and our research continued to make an impact.
Scripps Oceanography’s thoughtful return to research, education, and outreach on campus is important because making an impact is key to our mission. For the first time we are recognizing this by initiating an annual impact report rather than a report that attempts to provide an overview of all that we do. Observing and understanding our environment is vitally important, but this year I’ve also been proud of how that research is benefiting our public health, the protection of our environment, and our work toward a more equitable and diverse community.
Our 2021 impact report aims to highlight outcomes of our activity. We’ve showcased research underway to understand the impact of an environmental tragedy, the effect climate change is having on our health and the health of our planet, and the discovery of potentially life-saving drugs from the sea—a new treatment made possible thanks to the tenacity and work of Scripps marine chemists over the past several decades. We’ve highlighted some of our stellar alumni, who are making waves around the world through their work on marine conservation, space research, environmental science, journalism, building sustainable cities, and more. I’m also incredibly proud to see the results from concerted efforts to improve the diversity of the Scripps community; this fall we welcomed the largest and most diverse graduate class in our history. While continuing to diversify, we are committed to building a more inclusive and equitable community at Scripps Oceanography.
Thank you to our supporters, students, staff, and faculty for being the driving force behind this impact.
Sincerely,
Margaret Leinen
Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences, UC San Diego
Director, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
DIRECTOR'S COUNCIL
Maxine Baker
Mary Ann Beyster
Paul Brooks
Julia Brown
James L. Cairns
Bernard David
Patty Elkus
Sheldon Engelhorn
Tim Gallaudet
Cindy Glancy
Rodney H. Glover
Stuart Goode
Richard Gulley
Richard Hertzberg
James Jameson
Wayne Kennedy
Dona Lucas
Dennis McGinn
John “Mac” McQuown
Chyrsa Mineo
Elizabeth Oliver
Tom Page
John Patton
David Price
Margaret Scripps Klenzing
Dixon Smith
Mike Stone
Stephen Strachan (Chair)
J. Craig Venter
Caroline Winn
Dawn Wright
The Lasting Impact of a Coastal Dumpsite
Investigative reporting by the Los Angeles Times reinvigorated public outcry that the coast off Los Angeles once served as a dumping ground for the pesticide DDT and other toxic chemicals.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography researcher Eric Terrill led an expedition in March 2021 on research vessel Sally Ride to survey the seafloor using autonomous underwater vehicles.
The sonar data collected on the expedition soon became overwhelming, and the team turned to machine learning to develop an algorithm to tally the barrel-like targets. They mapped more than 27,000 targets with high confidence to be classified as a barrel, and an excess of 100,000 total debris objects (and this is just at one of two known dumpsites).
As the extent of this environmental tragedy unfolds, Scripps scientists are on a quest to understand the effect of this DDT in the marine ecosystem and determine how to best mitigate the problem.
This summer, Scripps chemical oceanographer Lihini Aluwihare collected samples of pelagic organisms during a California Current Ecosystem LTER expedition, visiting the dumpsite that Terrill had surveyed earlier. Aluwihare, along with Scripps biological oceanographer Anela Choy, will investigate which organisms may be transferring DDT from the seafloor up through the marine food web. Scientists also hope to look at Scripps’ decades-old archive of marine specimens in the CalCOFI and marine vertebrate collection to see when DDT concentrations began appearing.
Scripps’ Lisa Levin, Paul Jensen, and Greg Rouse also collected marine specimens and sediment samples near six barrels last summer, on a Schmidt Ocean Foundation expedition aboard R/V Falkor. Sponges, microorganisms, and other invertebrates living on barrels were slurped up by a remotely operated vehicle. They hope to evaluate these specimens to determine what role microbes might play in potentially bioremediating, or consuming, the chemicals coming out of the barrels.
View the full scope of Scripps-led efforts to study the coastal dumpsite.
Ship Impact
Despite the pandemic, Scripps vessels accomplished great things during calendar year 2020. We completed the midlife refit of R/V Roger Revelle, and returned to productive service in a big way with a pair of challenging missions, a 51-day mission to the central Pacific, and a 60-day mission to the far Southern Ocean (60 degrees south) staged from Honolulu, led by Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences’ Barney Balch (PhD ‘85). Balch’s expedition aimed to investigate how carbon dioxide is being cycled between the atmosphere and ocean at an area of intense upwelling and high concentrations of nutrients.
R/V Sally Ride successfully carried out scientific missions for major programs sponsored by the NSF, the Office of Naval Research, DARPA, and NOAA—as well as three student-led expeditions through the UC Ship Funds Program. Additionally, in July 2020, the 71-year-old California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) program accomplished an historic event, setting sail with its first-ever all-female science party. Our workhorse vessel, R/V Robert Gordon Sproul, had an exceptionally light schedule because one of its primary duties—carrying students to sea for classes or independent projects—was curtailed due to COVID.
SPOTLIGHTING SCRIPPS HISTORY
In June, a book was published on the history of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Authored by Scripps communications officer Robert Monroe, Images of America: Scripps Institution of Oceanography is part of a series of photo books that highlight historical points of interest across the country. The first comprehensive publication of Scripps Oceanography history in several decades, the book features more than 200 photographs spanning the period from Scripps’ founding in 1903 to 21st century research on climate change, the achievements of groundbreaking alumni, and technological advances in the institution’s second century of research. After its debut, the book placed on the Los Angeles Times’ list of Southern California bestsellers for paperback nonfiction for several weeks. The book is available at the UC San Diego Bookstore, Birch Aquarium gift shop, San Diego-area independent bookstores, through Amazon and other retailers.
Giving Impact
The Marine Conservation and Technology Facility is set to open in spring of 2022 under its new name: the Ted and Jean Scripps Marine Conservation and Technology Facility. Members of the Scripps family gifted $6 million in support for the naming of this research building—a space dedicated to education, research, and technology development on marine ecosystems and science-inspired solutions, for both scientists and students alike.
“As climate change firmly takes hold and alters the ocean environment, it is more important than ever to understand the challenges our oceans face and what we can do to preserve them,” said Ed Scripps. "This center is fundamental in that process.”
The Ted and Jean Scripps Marine Conservation and Technology Facility is slated to open in March 2022.
Thank you to our donors!
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Anonymous
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Valorie Seyfert
$500,000+
Ellen Lehman, PhD and Charles Kennel, PhD
$100,000+
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Anonymous
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$25,000+
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$10,000+
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Statement of Activity
This section provides an overview of revenue and expenses, census and award info, and a list of sponsored research funding entities.