Since 1949, CalCOFI cruises have sampled the California Current — one of the longest-running ocean observing programs anywhere. CalCOFI.io turns those observations into an open data ecosystem: reproducible workflows load each dataset into a versioned integrated database, which powers interactive apps, a browser SQL playground, standards-based services and an R package — for scientists, resource managers, students and the curious.
ship → workflows → database → apps · services · R
Visualize and download subsets of data from the integrated database via these applications, oriented by station, hexagon or cruise.
Discover what's measured at each CalCOFI station — station × dataset coverage (time, depth, observations, surveys) built from the integrated release database, with variable search and dataset crosswalk. Continues the 2026 UCSB student capstone.
Explore decades of fish larvae and oceanographic bottle data together — filter by taxa, depth and season over dynamic hexagon maps, time series and depth profiles.
Cross-dataset observation explorer — compare coverage across cruises, datasets and depths, with shareable deep-link URLs.
Visualize and download CalCOFI oceanographic data in map, time-series and depth-profile views.
Map pollutants in the Southern California Bight from the Regional Monitoring Program via SCCWRP.
Hosted endpoints serving the data directly — standards-based access and public cloud storage.
R packages with documented functions, browser-based query and schema tools, and the reproducible workflows behind every release.
R package of database tools for ingest workflows — cloud storage, Parquet conversion, DuckDB management and frozen releases.
How the data ecosystem works, and the server stack it runs on.
Capstone and fellowship projects by university students partnering with CalCOFI.
Statewide inventory of California ocean and coastal monitoring programs within 12 nmi of the coast — hex-grid coverage at 1/3/5 km, survey transects, discharger stations, bathymetry, monitoring gaps, wind energy areas, and marine protected areas.
UCLA Capstone · 2026 · Betty Huang
Explore CalCOFI fish-larvae (ichthyoplankton) abundance over time and space — filter by species or habitat across seasons and decades, with trend, correlation, stability and spatial views plus CSV/PDF export.
UCSB Data Science Capstone · 2026 · Joy Chang, Abhijit Brahme, A. Senthil, Chengcheng Fang, Kaeya Mehta, Shenyi Jiang
Map-based discovery of what is measured at each of 115 CalCOFI stations, with live variable search and auto-generated ERDDAP, Euphausiid and ZooDB queries.
UCSB Data Science Capstone · 2026 · Nicole Xu, Aashish Krishnan, Qiongwen (Lucy) Cao
Marine mammal eDNA detections and visual sightings visualized against oceanographic conditions on the CalCOFI grid.
UCSB Data Science Capstone · 2025
An interactive TimelineJS journey through 75 years of CalCOFI milestones — from the 1949 founding after the sardine collapse to the NORPAC expedition, the 1957–58 El Niño, CTD sampling, and the first all-female research cruise.
CalCOFI–CA Sea Grant Data Storytelling Internship · 2024 · Anneliese (Annie) Adams
A scrollable story of hypoxia in the California Current Ecosystem and its changing oxygen levels over the past 71 years.
CalCOFI–CA Sea Grant Data Storytelling Internship · 2024 · Mallika Gupta, Anneliese (Annie) Adams
An interactive map for planning ocean monitoring around California's floating offshore wind areas — toggle Essential Ocean Variables and long-term monitoring programs to reveal gaps in baseline datasets.
SIO Masters Capstone · 2024 · Eliza Thomas
Personalized fish-consumption advisories for Southern California anglers — DDT levels predicted by species and catch location.
UCSB Bren MEDS Capstone · 2024
Spatial and temporal visualization of the CalCOFI bottle dataset — the first student capstone built on the database.
UCSB CCDSP Fellowship · 2022
