Thesis defense – Drew Burrier
Thesis defense – Ryan Manzer
Congratulations to Ryan Manzer, recent graduate of the MLML Masters program from the Physical Oceanography lab!
Ryan was one of 14 MLML students who defended their Masters thesis and graduated in 2017. Read more about the class of 2017 and their research on the Drop-In blog.
Naturalist Night in Santa Cruz
Come see MLML Physical Oceanographer Tom Connolly talk about waves at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, on the evening of Thursday, December 14!
For more information, check out the Facebook event.
7:00-8:30pm. Doors open at 6:45pm.
$12 General Admission | $6 Children | Museum Members 50% off
Summary:
Ocean waves are a familiar sight on the central coast of California, carrying energy from beyond the horizon to the shoreline. However, there are even bigger waves below the surface, which help drive ocean circulation and create large fluctuations of temperature and dissolved oxygen in the Monterey submarine canyon. Other types of waves, which signal the onset of El Niño in the tropics, may be hundreds of kilometers long but less than a meter high. This presentation will discuss the many different types of waves in the ocean and how they affect marine ecosystems by transporting energy throughout the ocean.
Kelp forest physics and ecology
MLML Phycology student Steven Cunningham has been working with the Physical Oceanography lab to study transport and mixing in the kelp forests of Stillwater Cove. As part of his thesis on benthic particulate organic carbon in kelp forests, he has been conducting dye release experiments. An acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV) measures the waves and currents while a string of fluorometers measures the vertical position of the dye plume. And don’t worry, the dye is not radioactive or otherwise harmful to marine life. Kelp forests are complex in terms of both ecology and physics, and MLML has a long history of studying this system.

