Earth & Space
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Are Saturn’s rings made of a lost, shattered moon? New evidence arises for the case
The findings, led by Yifei Jiao of the University of California, Santa Cruz, are the latest in a growing body of evidence pointing to a solution to two long-standing puzzles, Saturn’s present-day tilt and why its rings appear far younger than the planet itself, which formed more than 4.5 billion years ago.
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Vanishing Giants: Turning the Tide
Emmy-winning TV journalist Stephanie Lin joined Ocean Sciences Professor Ari Friedlaender as his team collected tissue samples from marine mammals off the coast of Santa Cruz.
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Elephant seal pup spotted in Santa Cruz
As scientists continue to survey Año Nuevo beaches, they find an average of two newly sick elephant seals and two newly dead elephant seals each day, said Patrick Robinson, Año Nuevo Reserve director at UC Santa Cruz.
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Bay Area elephant seal deaths round triple digits amid bird flu outbreak
Año Nuevo Reserve Director Patrick Robinson told KRON4 on Friday that the estimated total number of elephant seal deaths from HPAI on the mainland is about 50, plus another 45 to 50 on the island.
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I paused my PhD for 11 years to help save Madagascar’s seas
After more than a decade away from doctoral studies, Rabearisoa started a new PhD, this time researching marine conservation at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She investigated how the web of LMMAs that she helped to create is affecting fish populations and fisher incomes.
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California Condors Are Still Dying—Despite a Lead Ammo Ban
“Condors are very long-lived, so very small changes in their survival rate can make big differences on whether or not they will go extinct or not go extinct,” said Myra Finkelstein, an environmental toxicologist at UC Santa Cruz and senior author on the paper.
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Galaxies without dark matter mystify astronomers
Hubble data confirmed the overly bright nature of the globular clusters in a study led by University of California, Santa Cruz, Ph.D. student Yimeng Tang. We then used the Keck data to study the stars and measure their velocities, confirming the lack of dark matter.
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Salmon survival: Betting on the right fish
“Just like you don’t want all your stocks in one company … you also don’t want all your individuals to be represented by exactly the same genetic type” or the same age, said Eric Palkovacs, UC Santa Cruz Fisheries Collaborative Program director.
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27 elephant seals test positive for bird flu in Bay Area outbreak
Patrick Robinson, the Año Nuevo Reserve director at UC Santa Cruz, shared that scientists have found about 47 dead seals — both pups and adults, particularly males — along the shoreline since the outbreak began. “Although some mortality of weaned pups are expected, this year’s mortality rate has been about four times higher compared to…
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Bird flu rips through another beloved Bay Area species
“The depth of the data is something we’re really proud of,” Zeka Glucs, the director of the Predatory Bird Research Group at UC Santa Cruz and lead author of the study, told SFGATE. “And while the situation seems grim, as long as there are nests, there is hope.”
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Seymour Studios goes live with new community science podcast
The center’s new podcast, “Science, Solutions, Santa Cruz,” debuted Tuesday, marking the first production to come out of Seymour Studios, a newly built, state-of-the-art recording space located on UC Santa Cruz’s Coastal Science Campus. It was designed to make professional audio and video storytelling accessible to people across the community who lack the technical experience…
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Big cats, bigger protections: Santa Cruz County mountain lions now listed as threatened
Few people have tracked that tension more closely than UC Santa Cruz wildlife ecologist Chris Wilmers, who leads the long-running Santa Cruz Puma Project, a partnership between the university and the state. He called the listing “the appropriate thing to do,” emphasizing that it’s a long-overdue course correction for a species becoming gradually boxed in.