PAT-UC Covers - California Sea Grant - UC San Diego

Program Overview
Welcome to California Sea Grant (CSG). The pages that
follow contain an overview of the organization and
management of the program, brief descriptions of program
components, information regarding planning activities,
benchmark data on program attributes, information on finances
and a sampling of portfolios. All of this material is oriented
toward the past five years, March 1998 through February 2003.
California occupies approximately two-thirds of the West Coast
of the contiguous continental United States. The state stretches
more than 1750 km from the Mexican border to the 42nd
Parallel. The California coastal environment is remarkably
diverse and encompasses two distinct marine zones. In the
northern part of the state, the coast is characterized by cold
water swept south from Alaska by the California Current,
high-energy rocky coastlines and northern and transition zone
marine flora and fauna. South of Point Conception (near Santa
Barbara), the coast has warmer water fed by the California
Counter Current, lower energy coasts with sandy beaches,
and marine flora and fauna common to more temperate and
subtropical waters. The continental shelf is quite narrow,
ranging from less than 3 km to no more than 16 km. Against
this backdrop is a rich coastal marine flora and fauna with
more than 525 species of fish, kelp forests, large populations of
marine mammals and shorebirds, and high rates of productivity.
This diversity and richness of California’s coastal environment
is challenged by human encroachment. Over 80 percent of
California’s 34 million residents live in coastal counties. The
coastal environment has historically been rich in fisheries and
mineral resources. Entire California coastal communities were
founded on fisheries such as sardines and tuna. Oil drilling
platforms still characterize the Santa Barbara Channel. Two
enormous commercial seaports are found in Long Beach-Los
Angeles and Oakland-San Francisco, and a large military port
in San Diego. Tourism is a major industry with Huntington
Beach drawing almost as many visitors per year as all the
beaches in Delaware. Tens of thousands of surfers enjoy the
waves along the southern coasts. However, major problems
exist from coastal water pollution, depletion of fisheries, loss
of wetlands, urbanization of the coastline and introductions of
exotic species. The challenges to managing and preserving this
environment are extensive.
Against this backdrop, CSG has developed a program that
encompasses a wide diversity of issues in research, education
and outreach. Major foci for the program are coastal sciences,
coastal fisheries, aquaculture, and marine biotechnology,
with smaller efforts in marine policy and law, and marine
engineering.
California Sea Grant is the largest of the thirty Sea Grant
Programs nationwide. The annual budget of the program is
approximately $8 million from all sources, including matching
funds. From its beginning, the program has been characterized
by excellence in research and graduate education. In California
an extraordinary pool of academic talent has driven research in
marine sciences, and many high-caliber students are associated
with those researchers. CSG typically supports forty-five to
fifty concurrent research projects at up to $100,000 per year for
a maximum of three years. In addition to the research funds
for each project, additional support for one or two graduate
students called “Sea Grant trainees” is provided.
Until recently, the outreach portion of CSG was tailored
primarily to reflect the research effort. The six marine advisors
and two specialists have had a research component in their
position descriptions that was matched to one of the six
program foci. In a similar vein, the communications effort of
CSG was almost exclusively focused on technical publications
such as proceedings of symposia, resource books and peerreviewed
publications.
In the past few years, CSG has undergone a transition,
particularly in outreach. While continuing to support
approximately the same number of research projects and
graduate students, the program has sought to diversify and
broaden its outreach activities. This is driven by a desire to
reach a larger constituency and a conscious effort to better
integrate all aspects of the program into a research-outreach
continuum. Examples of this continuum include: results of
research routinely recast into a style and format readily used
by the news media, placement of research feature articles in
popular media, technical workshops organized for specific
user groups, and conferences and symposia that bring together
researchers and outreach staff.
Following is a broad-brush view of CSG. The reader is
encouraged to request additional materials for any item(s) that
pique their interest.
Redfish (male), Pimelometopon pulcher (Ayers). San Diego. (1882)
1
California Sea Grant: 1998-2003