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
Research highlights
Water Resilience in a Changing Climate
The growing volatility in California's climate, fluctuating between intense atmospheric rivers and long dry periods between storms, increases the state's needs for water resilience and improved water reliability.
In response, the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at Scripps is working closely with water managers on a program called Forecast-Informed Reservoir Operations. This program uses modern forecasting methods fueled by advances in understanding and predicting atmospheric rivers to give reservoir operators better decision-making tools to optimize water resources. The advanced forecasts can help water managers make decisions to retain water if no additional storms are forecast, or release it to mitigate the risk of flooding.

At Sonoma County’s Lake Mendocino, this program enabled a nearly 20 percent increase in water storage. At Prado Dam in Riverside, Calif., which supplies water to Orange County, an assessment found that enough water could be conserved to supply an additional 60,000 people per year.
Separately, scientists from Scripps and UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy are using advanced satellite data to map the “pulse” of groundwater flow through the San Joaquin Valley, the southern portion of the Central Valley. Groundwater is a key resource for water users in this major agricultural hub.
Scripps’ Morgan Levy, Wesley Neely, and Adrian Borsa studied how recent advances in remote sensing via satellites and GPS enabled the detailed mapping of surface deformation and associated changes in groundwater resources. Their March 2021 study is the first to look at where and when the groundwater in the region is being recharged. This recharge causes the surface to rise, as the aquifer swells due to the increased volume of stored water.
The findings are particularly timely as California implements its Sustainable Groundwater Management Act to better understand and protect its groundwater resources
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.

Drugs from the Sea:
Compounds from Marine Bacteria as Treatments for Brain Cancer and COVID-19
Scripps Oceanography is home to a large collection of marine bacteria, and the compounds derived from this collection are the focus of marine drug discovery for researchers with the Center for Marine Biomedicine and Biotechnology.

Scripps researchers have discovered hundreds of bioactive natural products, and in 2021 development of drugs from the sea continues to advance. Chemist Bill Fenical and microbiologist Paul Jensen collected a microbe from sediments of the tropical Atlantic Ocean in 1990. A compound produced by the microbe is now in the final phase of clinical trials, being tested on patients with the brain cancer glioblastoma. The compound, now named Marizomib, demonstrates the unique ability to pass through the blood-brain barrier to target the aggressive cancer.
Additionally, a marine cyanobacterium from Panama is showing potential as a COVID-19 therapeutic. Marine chemist William Gerwick says the cyanobacterium, called “mermaid's hair” because of its red, filament-like structure, yielded a compound named gallinamide A that shows profound activity against a human enzyme called cathepsin L. The SARS-Cov-2 virus uses cathepsin L as one of two pathways to infect cells and replicate. By combining gallinamide A with another compound they are finding a potentially effective way to block both pathways by which the virus enters cells. The testing of these compounds continues with support from the National Institutes of Health. If successful, the compounds could help treat COVID-19 infections.
Advocating for Aerosols in Fight Against COVID-19
Kimberly Prather is an atmospheric chemist who has spent her career studying aerosols, including conducting studies measuring the thousands of miles aerosol particles can travel around the globe. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear to Prather and an international team of experts that the predominant way people were becoming infected was through the air—yet this airborne transmission pathway was not being acknowledged by public health agencies.

Prather co-authored several high-profile publications, including a letter to the Biden Administration, calling for immediate action to address and limit transmission of COVID-19 via inhalation exposure. She has also advised local and federal government officials, school districts, and the public at large on how to safely re-open, with a focus on cleaning the air. As campus reopened this fall, she spearheaded an effort to assemble do-it-yourself air filtration boxes to be distributed in lecture halls and the Preuss School to add another layer of defense against the airborne spread of the virus.