Scripps Oceanography
2022 Annual Impact Report
From the Director

As we wrap up 2022 and I reflect on this year, it is clear that the Scripps Institution of Oceanography community achievements and impact have been extraordinary.
With the support of the National Science Foundation and UC San Diego, we opened SOARS, a first-of-its-kind ocean, atmosphere, and biology simulator that will allow scientists around the world to conduct unprecedented experiments with conditions simulating our changing climate. We also advanced designs on our new hydrogen-hybrid research vessel that will be an innovation in the maritime industry for its zero-emission capabilities.
Our scientific discoveries are informing policy and decision-makers on important issues like the cross-border pollution crisis at the Tijuana River Valley, and the increasing threat of cliff retreat across the state of California. At both poles our scientists are conducting high-impact research about the mechanisms of climate change in polar regions.
We have created several new programs to welcome more diverse people into the geosciences. These range from the creation of a student-initiated and donor-supported fellowship to increase diversity in scientific diving, a new program to expose community college students to hands-on research at Scripps, and a program developed in partnership with minority-serving colleges and universities.
Our impressive alumni continue to make an impact as entrepreneurs, climate advisors, and environmental justice advocates, positioned with organizations like the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Academy of Sciences.
Thank you to all of our supporters, staff, students, postdoctoral scholars, researchers, faculty, and alumni who help make Scripps a world leader in education, research, and global impact.
Sincerely,
Margaret Leinen
Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences, UC San Diego
Director, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
DIRECTOR'S COUNCIL MEMBERS
Mary Ann Beyster
Maxine Baker
Paul Brooks
Julia Brown (Vice Chair)
Bernard David
Patty Elkus
Sheldon Engelhorn
Tim Gallaudet
Cynthia Glancy
Rod Glover
Stuart Goode
Richard Gulley
Dick Hertzberg
James Jameson
Wayne Kennedy
Donna Lucas
Dennis McGinn
Mac McQuown
Michael Meredith
Chrysa Mineo
Elizabeth Oliver
Tom Page
John Patton
Maggie Scripps Klenzing
Michael Silah
Dixon Smith
Mike Stone
Steve Strachan (Chair)
Craig Venter
Caroline Winn
Dawn Wright
Research Highlights
New Scripps Ocean-Atmosphere Simulator Debuts
The new Scripps Ocean-Atmosphere Research Simulator, or SOARS, became operational in 2022, hosting its inaugural experiment over the summer. This new instrument, funded by the National Science Foundation and UC San Diego, is the only instrument of its kind in the world that can replicate the ocean, atmosphere, and biology of the oceans, from polar to tropical conditions.
The NSF-funded Center for Aerosol Impacts on Chemistry of the Environment (CAICE) at UC San Diego was the first group to put the new instrument to the test in a multi-week experiment that examined the composition of the gases and sea spray aerosols coming out of the ocean at high winds, and how this affects their ability to seed marine clouds.
“SOARS allows us to move the ocean-atmosphere-biology system into the lab in a truly unprecedented way,” said atmospheric chemistry professor Kimberly Prather, founding director of CAICE and co-principal investigator for SOARS. “Our inaugural experiment let us study the production of sea spray aerosols as a function of wind speed in a way that is not possible over the open ocean. This information on how much sea spray is released into the air will be vital in understanding the properties and lifetimes of marine clouds and how this will changing as our Earth system warms.”
Biomedical Breakthroughs

Scientists with the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine had several major breakthroughs on research with implications for developing anti-cancer drugs and accelerating the pace of biomedical research.
In March, graduate student Kate Baumann led research to determine exactly how a marine bacterium makes a potent anti-cancer molecule called salinosporamide A, also known as Marizomib. Currently in Phase III clinical trials to treat the brain cancer glioblastoma, scientists now for the first time understand the enzyme-driven process that activates the molecule.
Baumann and colleagues found that an enzyme called SalC assembles what the team calls the salinosporamide anti-cancer “warhead.” The work solves a nearly 20-year riddle about how the marine bacterium makes the warhead that is unique to the salinosporamide molecule and opens the door to future biotechnology to manufacture new anti-cancer agents.
Additionally, a team in marine biologist Amro Hamdoun’s lab created a line of sea urchins whose genetic makeup is fully mapped and can be edited using the gene-editing technology CRISPR to study human disease genes.
Sea urchins, like fruit flies or lab rats, have been an organisms used in research for more than a century. They are used around the world to study the developmental origins of diseases, and the effects of pollutants on human and marine health. But few can be grown in the lab and genetically modified like other lab animals. Having this new “genetically enabled” urchin could dramatically enhance the efficiency, reproducibility, and utility of those studies, and ultimately accelerate the pace of marine biomedical research.
California Cliff Erosion Report
The first study to analyze California's coastal cliff retreat statewide using high-resolution data was released this summer and found that cliffs receded faster in the north than elsewhere in the state during the study period.
The data from the study, which detected erosional hotspots throughout the state, was made available on the new California Coastal Cliff Erosion Viewer website. The site is intended for coastal planning and development decision-makers, and allows users to browse any cliff in the state to see its past rate of erosion and related retreat statistics.
In the study, coauthors Adam Young and Zuzanna Swirad created one-meter digital elevation models and evaluated the cliff erosion and retreat between 2009-2011 and 2016 in five-meter (16.4 foot) segments along 866 kilometers (538 miles) of California's coast. Included in the analysis were data collected with airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), an advanced laser-imaging technology. New machine-learning techniques that Swirad developed expedited the large-scale study.
"Communities and critical infrastructure are located on the cliff top. It is really important to understand the hazard of cliff collapse," said Swirad, a former postdoctoral scholar at Scripps.
U.S.-Mexico Border Wastewater Transport Model Suggests Solutions To Reduce Coastal Contamination
Scripps Oceanography researchers working with the Environmental Protection Agency and Stanford University identified an intervention that can dramatically reduce sickness among swimmers near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Raw sewage from Tijuana, Mexico, flows into the coastal ocean at the Tijuana River Estuary near Imperial Beach, Calif., and also 10 kilometers (6 miles) south of the border at Punta Bandera where the outfall of the San Antonio de los Buenos (SAB) treatment plant is located. This raw sewage leads to sickness among swimmers and beach closures primarily at Imperial Beach, on the U.S. side of the border.
The Scripps-led team found that improving the treatment plant’s capabilities would be the most effective remedy to reduce swimmers’ exposure to pathogens in the ocean.
“This critical study helped us address beach water quality impacts caused by untreated sewage on both sides of the border more effectively and binationally,” said EPA representative Lily Lee. “Thanks to this effort, EPA proposed a series of projects that will better address U.S. and Mexican sources of sewage.”
The research also led to a Scripps Oceanography proposal to create a water quality forecast system based on this model, which would provide 3-to-5-day forecasts of when beaches should be closed in order to keep swimmers safe. Scripps Oceanography is proposing this project to the California Environmental Protection Agency and California State Water Resources Control Board for funding.
Scientists Measure Coral Reef Recovery

The largest global coral-bleaching event ever documented struck the world’s oceans in 2014 and lasted until 2017. Despite widespread damage reports, a 10-year study from Palmyra Atoll in the remote central Pacific Ocean shows that reefs outside the reach of local human impacts can recover from bleaching.
A team of scientists from the lab of marine ecologist Jennifer Smith visited Palmyra annually from 2009 to 2018 to document the same 80 plots spread across eight sites around the atoll along underwater transects. Using simple image-analysis tools and digital tracing, they analyzed more than 1,500 images to identify all bottom-dwelling organisms present in the plots to see if they are increasing or decreasing in abundance.
The research team saw signs of coral decline, but within two years this was restored.
Smith and co-author Adi Khen found that the atoll’s clean, protected waters and intact ecosystems helped harbor a healthy population of fishes that may contribute to the resilience of Palmyra’s reefs. They hope these lessons carry forward to other resource managers with coral reefs closer to human populations in locations beset with pollution, overfishing, sedimentation, warming and acidification.
“Certainly, they’re going to be more susceptible to large losses,” Smith said. “But to know that places like this are out there showing signs of resistance and resilience gives us hope and also shows us that there’s still a lot to learn about how these intact systems are functioning.”