CalCOFI.io open data ecosystem
CalCOFI cruises have sampled the California Current for seventy-five years. 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 scientific programming packages in R and Python β for scientists, resource managers, students and the curious.
ship β workflows β database β datasets β apps Β· services Β· R Β· Python Β· portals
Find what has been collected. One record per dataset β coverage, every endpoint it can be reached through, its licence and how to cite it β by category, with the holdings CalCOFI has but has not ingested yet. All datasets data.json
Phytoplankton counts by taxon or functional group, and imaging flow cytometry (IFCB)
Picoplankton and bacterioplankton abundances by flow cytometry
Net-tow zooplankton: displacement volume, imaged and identified taxa, decapod larvae
Euphausiid species and stages from bongo tows
Ichthyoplankton β fish eggs and larvae from oblique and vertical tows and the continuous underway egg sampler
Midwater trawl catches of mesopelagic fishes
Strip-transect counts of seabirds and marine mammals along the cruise track
Metabarcoding and environmental DNA β ASV tables, eDNA-derived abundance and density
Temperature, salinity, density, oxygen, pressure and dynamic height from bottles and CTD casts
Nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, silicate and ammonium from bottle samples; particulate and total organic carbon and nitrogen, nitrate isotopes, and trace metals (iron)
Dissolved inorganic carbon, alkalinity, pH and pCO2
Chlorophyll a, phaeopigments, primary production (C14) and light (PAR)
Wind, air temperature, pressure, cloud, visibility, sea state and water colour from the underway METS and ship observations
No dataset matches those filters.
Explore CalCOFI data in the browser β across every ingested dataset, or deep on one.
StationsHexagonsCruisesRegionsSectionsContoursstudent contribution
The Explorer brings the spatial grains together as lenses in one app; the others each go deep on one grain β station, hexagon, cruise, or contour.
One app, five lenses β stations, hexagons, cruises, regions and sections β for one organism or one ocean variable at a time over the frozen release. The queries run in your browser (no server), every view is a URL you can share, every download carries its SQL, and feedback comes with an annotated screenshot.
Discover what's measured at each CalCOFI station β station Γ 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 β filter by taxa, depth and season over dynamic hexagon maps, time series and depth profiles.
Cross-dataset observation explorer β 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.
Apps focused on a single dataset or data source.
Cross-shelf temperature, salinity, oxygen, density and fluorescence sections along every CalCOFI line, for every cruise since 1993 β drawn nearshore to offshore with no station picking, and mapped so you can see where each transect is. Opens on the anomaly against each station's day-of-year climatology (warmer or colder than usual, and by how much), with the measured value one click away. Flags each cruise's processing stage, and shows the uncorrected sensor series on cruises whose bottle merge has not run.
Visualize CTD casts β temperature, salinity, oxygen and more β by cruise, station and depth, from individual profiles to whole-grid maps.
Map pollutants in the Southern California Bight from the Regional Monitoring Program via SCCWRP.
The ways to get the data: standards-based services, public cloud storage, browser SQL, and the R and Python packages that read a release directly.
Python package mirroring calcofi4r β query the versioned database releases with DuckDB and the CTD team's PostgreSQL working database, credentials-free via .pgpass.
The pipeline behind every release and the documentation tying it together β the ingest workflows, the database tooling, the schema browser and the technical docs. Read the docs
R package of database tools for ingest workflows β cloud storage, Parquet conversion, DuckDB management and frozen releases.
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 β hex-grid coverage at 1/3/5 km, survey transects, discharger stations, bathymetry, monitoring gaps, wind energy areas, and marine protected areas.
UCLA Capstone Β· 2026 Β· Betty Huang
Explore CalCOFI fish-larvae (ichthyoplankton) abundance over time and space β filter by species or habitat across seasons and decades, with trend, correlation, stability and spatial views plus CSV/PDF export.
UCSB Data Science Capstone Β· 2026 Β· 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 Β· 2026 Β· 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 Β· 2025
An interactive TimelineJS journey through 75 years of CalCOFI milestones β from the 1949 founding after the sardine collapse to the NORPAC expedition, the 1957β58 El NiΓ±o, CTD sampling, and the first all-female research cruise.
CalCOFIβCA Sea Grant Data Storytelling Internship Β· 2024 Β· Anneliese (Annie) Adams
A scrollable story of hypoxia in the California Current Ecosystem and its changing oxygen levels over the past 71 years.
CalCOFIβCA Sea Grant Data Storytelling Internship Β· 2024 Β· Mallika Gupta, Anneliese (Annie) Adams
An interactive map for planning ocean monitoring around California's floating offshore wind areas β toggle Essential Ocean Variables and long-term monitoring programs to reveal gaps in baseline datasets.
SIO Masters Capstone Β· 2024 Β· Eliza Thomas
Personalized fish-consumption advisories for Southern California anglers β DDT levels predicted by species and catch location.
UCSB Bren MEDS Capstone Β· 2024
Spatial and temporal visualization of the CalCOFI bottle dataset β the first student capstone built on the database.
UCSB CCDSP Fellowship Β· 2022