The University of California San Diego was awarded $7.35 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a multidisciplinary program to advance  understanding of marine contaminants and nutrients in a changing climate, and to ensure that safe and healthy seafood is available and accessible to all people.

The funding, to be awarded over five years, will enable the re-establishment of the Scripps Center for Oceans and Human Health as one of four new nationwide centers focused on understanding how ocean-related exposures affect people’s health.  

The center brings together experts from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and the School of Biological Sciences, as well as NOAA’s California Sea Grant and the Southwest Fisheries Science Center. Its multidisciplinary research team will explore the sources, fates and potential toxicity of human-made and natural chemicals in the ocean, and further study their environmental distribution and movement through the marine food web. 

“The Scripps Center for Oceans and Human Health will bring together a range of scientific disciplines to advance of our understanding of seafood security to ensure we maintain our access to safe and healthy seafood,” said Bradley Moore, professor of marine chemistry at Scripps Oceanography and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, who will serve as center director. “Scientific discoveries are the first of many steps to ensuring seafood safety, and to help with the process, the center will also have a focus on community engagement to work with fishers, chefs, non-profits, and the public at large to bridge scientific discovery with the community.” 

The team will look at health benefits from nutrients like selenium and omega-3 fatty acids, and examine toxic heavy metals like methylmercury and organic pollutants like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and how concentrations may be impacted in a changing climate. PCBs are industrial chemicals banned in the U.S. in 1979, and PBDEs are a class of fire retardant chemicals that can be both human made and occur naturally in the ocean.

“The ocean is absorbing more than 90% of excess heat caused by human activity, which is causing habitat migration and compression, low oxygen zones, and biodiversity loss,” said Margaret Leinen, vice chancellor for marine sciences at UC San Diego and director of Scripps Oceanography. “It’s important to understand how these changes may impact seafood security, given that three billion people consume seafood globally each year. UC San Diego is uniquely positioned to bring together leaders across oceanography, biomedical and human health sciences, and community engagement experts to bridge the science to society.”

The center will focus on three primary research endeavors and include a large community engagement program: 

Climate change impacts on the human intake of seafood micronutrients and contaminants

Led by Scripps Oceanography marine biogeochemist Amina Schartup and biological oceanographer Anela Choy, this project aims to understand how nutrients and contaminants like methylmercury and other chemicals are bioaccumulating in the marine food web. Schartup and Choy will also develop models to simulate the cycling of methylmercury and PCBs, and potential human exposure, under different climate change scenarios. 

In 2019, Schartup led novel research that found warming oceans could lead to an increase in methylmercury in popular seafood, including cod, Atlantic bluefin tuna and swordfish. Her findings attributed the increases to corresponding changes to food web dynamics.   

“Habitat change such as fish leaving or fish joining an ecosystem means a new food source has entered the ecosystem of a region,” said Schartup. “We’ll be looking at if those ocean changes are potentially going to impact contaminants or micronutrient levels in these animals.”