Rockin' Pop-Up at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History

Come explore local geology at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History! Every month, our "Geology Gents," Gavin and Graham, post up at the Museum for informal science chats. Bring any questions you have or rocks you want identified! Our May Rockin' Pop-Up will include a special focus on ocean circulation, with a special guest oceanographer. The ocean is right on our doorstep here in Santa Cruz, but do you know where all that water comes from, or where it's going? The Pacific Ocean is circulating, or flowing in a circular path, all the time! At the surface, winds push water around, creating currents that run hundreds of feet deep. The California Current flows along our coast, bringing water all the way from the chilly coast of Alaska!

But what about the deep, dark ocean waters? Some deep waters formed on the shelves of Antarctica, where the ocean is freezing cold and salty. Other deep waters come from the Atlantic Ocean and circle the whole globe before popping up in the Pacific! How can so much water travel such a far distance? Deep circulation is driven by the Coriolis effect as earth spins, pushing water along heat and density (saltiness) gradients, which is why it's called 'thermohaline' circulation. We care about the origin of ocean waters because they carry the nutrients that sustain the microscopic phytoplankton at the base of the ocean food web; we wouldn't have fish and sea lions and whales without the nutrients that ocean currents cary around the globe. Ocean currents also redistribute heat over the surface of the earth, directly regulating global climate and keeping the Santa Cruz coast cool and misty during the month of May.

About our Oceanographer: Beryl deLong is a PhD student in the Department of Ocean Sciences at UC Santa Cruz.

"The branch of oceanography I study is the geology and paleontology of the sea floor. I drill sediment cores from the bottom of the ocean and examine the layers of sediment that stack up through time. These sediment layers are rich with the shells of algae and other microorganisms that fall to the seafloor, creating a fossil record that reveals what the environment was like when those creatures lived." — Beryl deLong