Underway to the Channel Islands: Researchers from Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół» were joined by Amy Gusick, anthropology curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, and biologists from several universities, including the University of California, San Diego.
Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół» scientists spent a week at sea studying ancient indigenous landscapes buried up to 400 feet below the surface.
By Bryana Quintana Photographs courtesy of Jimmy Futty, Jillian Maloney, Roslynn King and Andrea Fabbrizzi
A GLIMPSE BENEATH THE OCEAN allows researchers to see thousands of years into the past. The Channel Islands off Southern California offer a rare opportunity to do just that. The northern islands, which include San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz and Anacapa, were one large land mass when the first humans inhabited them, but glacial melt after the Ice Age covered 75% of that landscape with water.
Over Thanksgiving, Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół» researchers—including Jimmy Futty, a geophysics Ph.D. student; Roslynn King (’22), now an assistant professor at Colorado School of Mines; Jillian Maloney, associate professor of geological sciences; and 13 students—set sail on Research Vessel Sally Ride alongside collaborators to study this largely unexplored submerged area. They partnered with the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians to identify culturally significant areas and align these with scientific interests.
The team endeavored to understand how the land evolved, where people lived and how resources were used, as well as potentially identifying early human migration pathways into North America. From strange bacteria to areas where sediment filled in old rivers and secrets behind Southern California’s shallowest known methane seep, their discoveries paint a picture of life long ago.
HANDS-ON LEARNING: Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół» students (from left), including seniors Madison Hack, Tyler Dodge and Jovani Bell, practiced methods they had only talked about in their geology classes, Associate Professor Jillian Maloney says.ALL HANDS ON DECK: The research team worked 12-hour shifts around the clock. “It’s been a wonderful partnership, utilizing the strengths of all the institutions to forward this research, to train students, and having other scientific disciplines think about the fact that they are working on ancestral lands,” Gusick says. “Including Indigenous knowledge should be a standard part of scientific exploration.”A SCIENTIFIC PATH: Futty, who led the research cruise, came to Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół» at age 30 to finish his undergraduate degree and is poised to become a triple Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół» alumnus in 2027. While he struggled with school growing up, the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department quickly felt like home.A THANKFUL CREW: Trip organizers didn’t expect many students to sacrifice their Thanksgiving break for this trip. “This is the first cruise where so many people wanted to come that I had to tell several that there weren’t enough seats,” Futty says.RESEARCHERS’ TOOLBOX: Researchers like Maloney (left) gathered samples of water around a shallow methane seep—a spot on the seafloor where methane gas leaks into the surrounding water. One of many cutting-edge research tools used during the cruise included one that gathered water samples in large bottles (right) and measured properties such as temperature, oxygen level and salinity.SHARK ENCOUNTER: Nightly, the crew launched an electromagnetic system to tow behind the ship and gather data. After the first deployment, one mount came back broken with serrated cuts all over. “When we went to clean it, one of the students found a great white tooth,” Futty says.A FUZZY SPECIES: An exciting find was this white, hairlike bacteria living on the surface of the methane seep. “It was a biological species that had never been identified around the islands before,” Futty says. “This is going to end up being one of the most shallow-water and near-the-coastline organisms of this type that’s ever been identified on the coast of California.” The team, including King (left), will analyze how it survives in such an extreme environment, living off gases bubbling out of Earth’s crust, and its effects on the surrounding ecosystem.TIME TRAVELING: Maloney says they were attempting to reconstruct the past through their findings. “As you move down the sediment core, you’re moving back in time,” she says. Cores collected from the seep were filled with an unknown chalky white sediment that bubbled up the tube and smelled like rotten eggs—the result of sulfides created by chemical reactions between methane and bacteria. Studying this sediment, its age and origins will lend key information on the landscape and climate that existed thousands of years ago.STUDENT COLLAB: Galilea Orihuela (from left), Cameron Kuld and Jovani Bell trade the classroom for open water. They join peers and researchers from UC San Diego, the University of Hawaii, Colorado School of Mines and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. This expedition was funded by the UC Ship Funds program.RAINBOW FOG: After seven seasons of bad luck, Futty expected rough seas. “We seem to get what I’m told is the worst storm of the decade, over and over again,” he says. But this time was different, with clear skies nearly the entire week. The crew only had to pause operations once, when it was too foggy to spot nearby marine animals that could be harmed by the research equipment.
