About Us
The Ocean Sciences Department is an inclusive, supportive, and innovative community of people involved in oceanography and other marine sciences. We offer undergraduate and graduate courses in these disciplines. Students have access to a wide variety of research facilities and equipment through faculty sponsors. In addition to research and instructional activities along the California coast, interests of the core faculty and their students include biological, chemical, and physical oceanography; sediment, marine, organic, and trace metal biogeochemistry; marine plankton, phytoplankton ecology, paleoceanography, aquatic microbial ecology, ecological modeling, and remote sensing (satellite oceanography); numeric modeling of coastal and basin-scale dynamics; midwater ecology and climatology, among others.
Explore Ocean Sciences News
The latest high-impact science in Ocean Sciences
Scientists use Hawaiian fossils to study the past and future of climate change
This month, an international team of researchers returned to shore after a two-month-long ocean expedition exploring fossil coral reefs off the coast of Hawai’i. The fossils provide a record of past climate conditions, so scientists are using them to learn about environmental changes throughout geologic history and make predictions about the future
Five UC Santa Cruz projects win California Climate Action Grant funding
Millions of dollars in new funding will support UC Santa Cruz and partners in tackling some of California’s toughest climate change challenges through innovative research and community engagement
Coastal fisheries show surprising resilience to marine heatwaves
Researchers found that fish biomass often increased or was unaffected in the year following a marine heatwave