Mark Gold Named CalCOFI’s New Director By Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Mark, let's begin by congratulating you on your appointment. From NRDC and the Ocean Protection Council to UCLA and Heal the Bay, you’ve led from nonprofit, academic, and government-related institutions on the environment. What now attracted you to your new role at CalCOFI, and what are you primarily hoping to accomplish in this new position?

Thanks, David. Scripps Institution of Oceanography has always been the premier ocean research institution in the world. For someone like me, who’s spent my entire life working on ocean conservation issues, the opportunity to work here at Scripps honestly felt like a dream come true.

Now, the work at CalCOFI—granted, not the easiest name to explain to people, and no barista jokes please—is incredibly meaningful. It's the longest-running and one of the largest ocean monitoring programs in the country. The program spans from the Mexican border up past San Francisco Bay and extends 300 miles offshore. CalCOFI has built a 76-year and counting treasure trove of data tracking the impacts of climate change on the ocean: physically, chemically, and biologically. It shows us changes in ocean chemistry, biodiversity, and the population dynamics of our fisheries over time. 

For me, it felt like the ideal place to apply my skills in applied ocean science and help strengthen the program, especially at a time when ocean monitoring faces real challenges. For those who may not know, CalCOFI is not just a Scripps program. It’s a true partnership, and not your typical, single-institution initiative. California Department of Fish and Wildlife is a partner. NOAA contributes substantial scientific, leadership, and management effort and resources, many of which, candidly, have been cut recently. That’s part of the challenge, and part of the reason I felt compelled to step in and help.

In our last conversation, you emphasized the importance of coastal resilience on interagency coordination. Address for our readers the opportunities at Scripps for like collaborations. 

One of the reasons Scripps brought me on was my long experience working across academia, government, NGOs, and other sectors. In the month I’ve been here, I’ve had regular meetings with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), the Ocean Protection Council, NOAA, and organizations like the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project. These conversations have centered on understanding what California truly needs to ensure the continued success of its ocean and coastal monitoring efforts—needs that, in many cases, are unprecedented in both scope and urgency. 

A key part of my role is to work collaboratively to address these challenges, whether through targeted issue-specific strategies or broader, systems-level approaches. The good news is that the State, through the Ocean Protection Council, the State Water Resources Control Board, CDFW, the Coastal Commission, and over a dozen other agencies, continues to hold ambitious goals protecting our coast and ocean. Many initiatives are tied into that, but especially the need for a growing, sustainable blue economy. Through CalCOFI, Scripps provides the rigorous monitoring data needed and expands upon new monitoring efforts, which enable agencies and stakeholders to make informed, faster, and more effective decisions to protect and manage California’s extraordinary marine biodiversity and fisheries.

Regarding monitoring, address how recent federal funding decisions, specifically NOAA as a long-time core partner of CalCOFI, have impacted your priorities. 

At a basic level, one of the first things I’ve tried to do is assess the resources we have and what we need. Anytime you step into a large management position, there’s usually some understanding of what support you’ll receive, and I’ve asked for additional resources.

Those won’t come close to making up for NOAA’s staffing reductions, but we’re starting a program to fund UCSD students to assist with sample analysis in the lab. Our reality is that our quarterly research cruises collect samples at 75 to 113 locations, and they need to be analyzed for a wide variety of parameters, including temperature, primary productivity, carbonate chemistry, zooplankton, fish and fish larvae, environmental DNA, and more. Simply put, there aren’t enough people to do it, and supporting NOAA through sampling is one thing we can do.

To be candid, I’m also working on getting the State more involved, not just in the form of direct funding, though that would help, but in deeper partnerships. That might mean loaning staff or providing collaborative support in key areas. Trying to secure funding from any level of government right now is incredibly tough, so it’s a challenge, but we’re doing what we can to patch the holes and improve our monitoring efforts.

CalCOFI’s data is a critical global, national, state, and local resource. Speak to NOAA’s role here and their importance concerning the monitoring of weather, our oceans, and the coast. 

The best way to think about NOAA beyond weather forecasts, hurricane warnings, and flood risk alerts is that they are the ocean scientists of the United States. NOAA plays a central role in monitoring the health of our fisheries, tracking the impacts of climate change on our oceans, studying shifts in marine biodiversity, and advancing sustainable aquaculture. 

When it comes to offshore wind, NOAA is the federal agency responsible for assessing the environmental impacts on marine ecosystems as the lead agency enforcing the Marine Mammal Protection Act. If you’re concerned about whales, dolphins, sea lions, or other marine mammals, NOAA is the agency tasked with protecting them. On management, NOAA oversees the National Marine Sanctuaries, which is an incredibly important responsibility, as about half of our coastline is part of a National Marine Sanctuary. That includes the Channel Islands, the newly designated Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, Monterey Bay, and the Farallon Islands. NOAA is the agency ensuring those areas are protected and managed properly.

NOAA often operates behind the scenes, and many people may not think about it day to day. But when you look at the scope and scale of what they do, it’s truly remarkable—and absolutely vital.

Elaborate on the role CalCOFI plays in providing baseline ecosystem data and impact assessments for federal offshore wind leases. Is there still demand for such data and assessment thereof?

The answer is a little uncertain, David. What I can tell you is that it’s been a major priority for CalCOFI—as well as NOAA. Recent cruises have specifically focused on stations located near the proposed offshore wind areas around Morro Bay. We’ve been monitoring a wide range of parameters in those areas, including environmental DNA, which has become a big focus for us as a way to assess biodiversity in open ocean waters. So yes, that work is still a major priority.

While the State has reaffirmed that offshore wind is a top priority, the future of how and at what pace it will move forward is up in the air. A statewide monitoring plan is currently being developed and expected to be released early next year: a collaboration between the Ocean Protection Council, the California Energy Commission, and others. 

There’s also a meeting next month at Asilomar, organized by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and others, to bring together everyone involved or interested in offshore wind monitoring, including NGOs. The idea is to have a focused conversation around the very question you’re asking: What does the future of monitoring look like in the context of offshore wind development and operation? The discussions aren’t limited to environmental monitoring. We’re trying to understand how to enable offshore wind in an environmentally protective and economically sustainable way, with no harm to tribal cultural resources.

Today’s college-educated graduates reportedly find meaningful work hard to find. You have been deeply attuned to this issue through many of your past academic and NGO positions. Describe the current mindset and job challenges of the young college students and graduates that you’ve worked with over many years.

David, you’ve known me a long time, and you know that eaching has always brought me immense joy—it's something I’ve done for many years at UCLA. One of the greatest rewards is the opportunity to learn from students, work alongside them, and help shape their path into the environmental field.

Just this past spring, I taught at UCLA in the Institute of Environment and Sustainability as an adjunct professor. I always take on a group of students for their Senior Practicum Project, solving a real-world environmental issue. In the last two quarters, I made a point to ask the students, every time we met, how they were doing during these challenging times and how they felt about the future. There’s a lot of fear. Many students are first-generation students, graduating with significant debt, and the possibility of not finding a job is a huge source of anxiety. 

Many dream of working for the U.S. EPA, but that’s not where I’m steering them right now. I spend a lot of time with students discussing job opportunities they might be overlooking—like positions in state and local government, or with water utilities. These agencies still hire for a wide range of entry-level environmental roles. They’re not easy to get, but they do exist.

I strongly encourage students to graduate with a tangible product they can point to and say, “I helped write this. I did this. You can read it.” That kind of deliverable can really help them stand out, and I know that may sound like basic advice, but most students don’t receive that kind of guidance. Over the years, I’ve seen how much of a difference it can make.

Before returning to offshore wind, speak to the growing importance of real-time sensing, autonomous monitoring platforms, and AI-enhanced analytics. How is CalCOFI intending to modernize and build on such technological advancements?

Developing better, more efficient instrumentation for real-time monitoring is one of Scripps’ strengths. It’s exciting to be among people who’ve been driving technological innovation. While I’m not deeply involved in it myself, the advances are impressive—for example, the ability to collect and analyze environmental DNA samples in real time is incredibly promising and not far off. Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute have been leaders in automation, so partnering with them makes a lot of sense.

Much of what’s happening at Scripps, especially with the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System (SCCOOS), which Clarissa Anderson leads, has moved significantly toward automation. A key focus there is on tracking harmful algal blooms. SCCOOS has become the go-to source for understanding the state of harmful algal blooms, making strong progress toward predictive modeling. That evolution has been really exciting to watch, as we’ve now had four consecutive years of major harmful algal blooms off Southern California—this past year being one of the worst ever recorded. 

From a modeling perspective, you’re seeing Scripps and other institutions expanding their capabilities so they can understand more complex systems and generate answers that support better, faster coastal resource management. That’s a very high priority for us. 

On the instrumentation side, we’re seeing increased use of autonomous vehicles like gliders and robotic systems to handle more of the monitoring and sample collection. Scripps has long been at the cutting edge of that work, and it’s only accelerating.

You inspire a question about AltaSea and your efforts to attract an array of academic researchers to incubate and scale the blue economy. What’s your present take on AltaSea, and where it stands in importance to Scripps or even Monterey? 

AltaSea, because of the leadership of Terry Tamminen, has become very entrepreneurial, and that’s not a surprise to anyone who’s ever worked with him. Providing large-scale space to the academic community, particularly those without that kind of space at their home institutions, I think they’re doing well. That space doesn’t exist at Scripps, MBARI, or similar institutions. You can’t easily come in and do enormous projects, like testing CO₂ removal technologies from the ocean. As research and development move into the startup space, they need that infrastructure, and that’s the niche AltaSea has identified.

I expected an anchor academic tenant, but it seems they're leaning towards creating space for specific research, as you’ve likely seen multiple universities using the facility for focused projects. Personally, I’d love to see them evolve more on the academic side, but that would take universities stepping up. One of my biggest disappointments was that UCLA didn’t follow through on a partnership, and that feels even more striking now, given that UCLA has acquired the South Bay campus in Palos Verdes and nearby student housing. The good news is that there are UCLA professors, like Gaurav Sant, who have engaged with AltaSea, so there’s involvement, even if it’s not institutionally anchored the way we once envisioned.

Pivoting back to offshore wind. The California Energy Commission projects that meeting the state's 2045 clean energy goals would require more than 1,600 floating offshore wind turbines. Thoughts on how California could meet that goal under current conditions?

I'm not going to go all the way out to 2045. I’d like to see us get some floating offshore wind in the water in California first, and then see how well that develops over time. I think that’s a pretty important place for everyone to get aligned: how do we get offshore wind going as soon as possible, rather than focusing entirely on where we need to be by 2045. Whether we ultimately hit the target or not, I’d be happy if we make meaningful progress, like five gigawatts in the water by 2035. Once you get there, it becomes easier to expand what you’ve already built, rather than starting with, “Hey, we need to get to 25 gigawatts right away.” A big part of enabling offshore wind is ocean monitoring, which assesses impacts on marine life. 

I’d say let’s get those foundational pieces moving as quickly as possible, and commit to a strategy that balances equitable environmental stewardship with economic development, especially for the communities building and supporting these ports. We must also ensure we’re not causing harm to tribal resources. All of these priorities are achievable, and we need to act on them without delay.

Given your academic experience and public policy expertise, speak to how Scripps and CalCOFI might best be positioned to illuminate the nexus between coastal pollution sources and the increase of ocean acidification and hypoxia in Southern California. This connection is not always recognized by the public.

An important example related to climate: Right now, acidifying seas and increasing low-oxygen conditions—also known as hypoxia—are having significant consequences. For ocean acidification, numerous organisms with calcareous shells are particularly vulnerable. Examples include a type of phytoplankton called pteropods (essentially floating snails), and Dungeness crab larvae, which support one of California’s top two fisheries, alongside California market squid. We’re literally seeing shells dissolving due to ocean acidification in the California Current off the West Coast. CalCOFI is the premier monitoring program for understanding the impacts of ocean acidification on marine organisms. Specifically, at what depths and in which locations. 

The same goes for low oxygen. Think about forage fish like sardines and anchovies, the very reason CalCOFI was created 76 years ago. Certain fundamental species in our food web and fisheries can't thrive in low-oxygen conditions, and the fact that we study this so thoroughly and have an incredible time series spanning more than seven decades is essential to understanding these dynamics. Now, what we’ve learned over time is that it’s not just high CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere and ocean that are driving these issues. We’re seeing that coastal pollution sources like large sewage treatment plants are absolutely exacerbating and increasing ocean acidification and hypoxia in Southern California. We measure and track these impacts.

As an enormous supporter of water recycling, I’m still on the Metropolitan Water District’s board. If we were to move forward with water recycling to reduce nitrogen discharges into the ocean, then CalCOFI, in partnership with SCCWRP and others, would determine environmental improvements from reduced nitrogen pollution. The land-sea interface is absolutely critical in understanding how systems are connected, and we can better manage them for sustained ocean and fishery health.

To follow up on the land-sea relationship, address the at-sea collection of wildfire ash from LA’s January fires. Would you have any early findings to share? 

One of the most remarkable stories here is that scientists and technicians were actually out on a CalCOFI cruise during the January fires. I want to use the term serendipity, but it’s difficult, watching iconic communities burn from over 100 miles offshore. Samples were collected while ash was visible on the water and falling from that distance. The fires threw all the risk and impact models out the window—no one anticipated seeing effects that far offshore while the fires were still active, driven by the incredibly intense Santa Ana winds.

We have those samples, but we don’t have the results yet. It’s going to take time, and it’s a major priority for Scripps right now. We also continued quarterly sampling post-fires to track how conditions changed before, during, and after the fires in terms of chemistry and biodiversity.

Federal environmental research and support for ocean monitoring appear, for the foreseeable future, to be out of favor, and the platforms for communicating your work are less available. Notwithstanding TPR or VXNews, how do you plan on getting your scientific work more publicly appreciated? 

It’s funny you ask that, because one of the first things I talked to staff about here—as well as folks at NOAA and others at Scripps—was our communications. The reality is, not enough people know what CalCOFI is, what we do, and the ramifications of our work. I have a long history of being able to really promote the work at the places I’ve been, and to make sure it’s better covered, whether that’s through the news media, online, or by bringing in people way smarter than me to improve our social media. 

The monitoring work that’s happening off California’s coast is unparalleled, and CalCOFI is really the gem of that effort. It’s my responsibility to inform the public meaningfully, so people care about the ocean, and use our incredible data to make better resource management decisions. We’re only as good as the people who use our data, and that’s something everyone needs to understand: if they don’t know about our data, they’re not going to use it. If it’s not easy to use our data, they’re not going to use it. These are top priorities for me to tackle as quickly as possible.

Lastly, as you begin your tenure at Scripps and CalCOFI, challenged by all that we discussed in this interview, how are you calibrating what success looks like?

David, I’m still so stubborn. I’m still looking at this from the standpoint of: this is what we need to do overall. And I’m focused on how the program needs to grow and improve on a lot more than just, “Oh geez, if we can just tread water, that’s good enough,” because it’s not good enough. The impacts of climate change on fisheries and ocean health are upon us now.

Who’s monitoring microplastics in the ocean? No one. That has to change. CalCOFI recently added sample analysis for environmental DNA to expand our marine biodiversity baselines and track changes over time. It’s our responsibility to better understand what’s going on in the ocean and what’s causing those changes, so people can better manage coastal resources. 

Overall, what does the State of California need? We need a coast and ocean monitoring program. We don’t have it. We have a piecemeal collection of different programs, and that needs to change. Through the Ocean Protection Council, the State has mentioned it as a priority, and I hope that CalCOFI and Scripps are at the forefront of making that happen.