Goleta Magazine 2017 - 34

UC Santa Barbara

Crowdsourcing a Sea Change
With a $10 million gift from Marc and Lynne Benioﬀ,
UC Santa Barbara establishes the Benioﬀ Ocean
Initiative to study and solve ocean issues
M AY B E I T ' S A L L T H E P L A S T I C you see on the
beach where you take your kids. Or that news story you read
about shark-finning and can't quite get it out of your mind.
Are you frustrated trying to identify sustainable options on
the menu at your favorite seafood restaurant?
These are common concerns, and they all lead back to one
place: the ocean. And with climate change acidifying and
heating up the seas, global fisheries being overharvested
and more than 5 trillion pieces of plastic working their way
into marine food webs, they're the tip of a massive threat to
our oceans.
The Benioff Ocean Initiative at UC Santa Barbara is a bold,
nascent endeavor to research the root causes of these pervasive ocean problems and use science to solve them. Launched
with a $10 million gift from Lynne and Marc Benioff, the
chairman and CEO of Salesforce, the initiative has now
announced its first project: reducing collisions between
ships and whales.
The incidents known as "ship strikes" have become all too
frequent as ship traffic proliferates along migratory whale
routes and feeding areas. Reports of whales being struck
and killed in such impacts have increased dramatically in
the past 50 years.

"This is an incredibly important problem to address," said
Douglas McCauley, director of the Benioff Ocean Initiative
and an assistant professor in UCSB's Department of Ecology,
Evolution and Marine Biology. "These collisions are impacting some of the most endangered and spectacular whales on
the planet."
The UCSB-led initiative will devote $1.5 million to finding
and implementing solutions that will curtail ship strikes
and reduce whale mortality. This is an issue of concern here
in the ocean right off of Santa Barbara where researchers
estimate that 10 blue whales were killed every year during
the late 2000s.
It's a matter of major consequence for blue whales, a species
whose population today is just 3-11 percent of their historic,
pre-industrial whaling abundance. Losses of these marine
megafauna are significant, as whales play important ecological roles as movers of nutrients, consumers of prey and
engineers of marine ecosystems.
"Blue whales are the largest animal that has ever lived -
they are bigger than the dinosaurs," McCauley said. "They
pump blood with a car-sized heart through arteries that are
large enough for a diver to swim through. This is an animal
whose future we want to protect."

B Y S H E L LY L E A C H M A N
U C S A N TA B A R B A R A O F F I C E O F P U B L I C A F F A I R S & CO M M U N I C AT I O N S

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Goleta Magazine 2017