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CalCOFI stations over wind, oil & gas and aquaculture areas

Erin Satterthwaite’s requests (2026-10-02 to 10-05), each answered with a CalCOFI Explorer link and a screenshot

1 What changed

Erin, 2026-10-02 (email “Stations (and lines?) overlaid on WEAs”): “I need a map of the CalCOFI stations (and lines, if possible) with the Wind Energy Areas behind them (and maybe even gas and oil areas and AOAs).”

The CalCOFI Explorer now draws its energy and industry boundaries from the Ocean Metrics places gazetteer, so the other apps can use the same layers. Six layers are wired in, under Layers → Add a layer → Energy & Industry:

Table 1: The energy and industry layers in the Explorer, each a collection of the gazetteer with its own licence, attribution and provenance in its README.

Explorer layer	What it is	Gazetteer collection
BOEM Wind Leases	lease outlines; the popup gives each lease’s current status and status date	boem_wind_leases
BOEM Wind Planning Areas (rescinded)	the planning areas and WEAs BOEM rescinded on 30 July 2025, kept as history	boem_wind_planning_rescinded
BOEM OCS Planning Areas	Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas planning areas	boem_ocs_planning
BOEM 11th National OCS Program (Draft Proposed)	the draft program areas, including those off California	boem_program_11_draft
BOEM Pacific Oil & Gas Leases	active Pacific OCS oil and gas leases	boem_pacific_og_leases
NOAA SoCal Aquaculture Opportunity Areas	NOAA Fisheries’ Southern California AOAs	noaa_aoa_socal

The Explorer also has two new layers (Section 5): Observations, every cast at its own position as a black dot, and Lines, each CalCOFI line threaded through its stations and named at both ends. Both draw with or without the data, so the maps below show the sampling and the lines over the sea floor and the boundaries with no temperature colour.

Every map below is a link: it opens the same view, and everything on it (lens, layers, colours, extent) can be changed from there. The screenshots are from release v2026.10.08.

2 Every cast over the wind areas, sea floor only

Each black dot is a site where temperature was sampled (a CTD or bottle cast, at its own position to 0.01°, all years, 0–500 m), over the GEBCO sea floor and the six layers, with the data layer off. The repeat occupations of a station make the clusters, and the white lines thread the stations of each CalCOFI line, named at both ends.

Open in the Explorer: Point Conception to San Diego

Figure 1: Every temperature cast as a black dot, the CalCOFI lines threaded and named, over the sea floor and the six energy and industry layers, Point Conception to San Diego.

Off the Central Coast, the Morro Bay leases (purple) sit over the rescinded Morro Bay WEA (brown), with the oil and gas leases off Point Arguello to the south. Hover a lease for its status.

Open in the Explorer: the Central Coast

Figure 2: The Central Coast: the Morro Bay wind leases and the rescinded WEA beneath them, with every cast around them.

The Humboldt leases lie north of the CalCOFI grid, so there are no casts near them to show.

3 Oil and gas areas and AOAs

Erin, 2026-10-05: “Also do we have oil/gas & AOAs too?” Yes: the oil and gas leases (brown outlines), the OCS planning areas and the draft 11th Program areas, and NOAA’s aquaculture opportunity areas (the small blue squares off Ventura and Oxnard).

Open in the Explorer: Southern California Bight

Figure 3: The Southern California Bight: every cast over the oil and gas leases in the Santa Barbara Channel and off Huntington Beach and the OCS planning areas.

Open in the Explorer: the aquaculture opportunity areas off Ventura

Figure 4: NOAA’s Southern California aquaculture opportunity areas (small blue squares) between the Santa Barbara Channel oil and gas leases and Ventura, with the casts around them.

4 The clusters, up close

Erin, 2026-10-05: “is there a way to put a black dot at the ‘center’ of these clusters and just have a basemap that is the ocean floor (not temp)?” Closer in, each cluster resolves into the individual casts at one station: the ship’s position on each occupation.

Open in the Explorer: the Santa Barbara Channel

Figure 5: The Santa Barbara Channel and Point Conception: each cluster of black dots is the casts at one station, over the sea floor and the oil and gas leases.

5 How to draw it yourself

Open Layers (top right of the map): untick Data, tick Lines and Observations (and pick the dots’ colour), then add or remove boundary layers under Add a layer → Energy & Industry. The dots follow the selection, so choosing another variable, an organism, years, seasons or depths changes which casts or tows are drawn. The link (Share, or the address bar) carries all of it: data=off&obs=on&lines=on.

Figure 6: The Layers card: Data off, Lines on, Observations on in black, the sea floor in three parts and the boundary layers in draw order.

If a single dot per station is wanted instead, the Stations lens with the data on draws one, here shaded by its count of observations (open in the Explorer).

Figure 7: One dot per station, shaded by how many observations it holds (black = most), over the sea floor and the six layers.

6 How many stations go into a surface

Erin, 2026-10-02: “To be able to see how many stations are actually going into the interpolation/mean for a given summarized area.”

In the Contours lens, fitted to the station grid, show the inputs draws every station the surface was fitted to, sized by how many observations it holds, and the checkbox gives their number (222 stations here). Under it the fit reports itself: the number of points, the leave-one-out error and the variogram. The Stations lens with count of observations (Figure 7) gives the same at each station, and Regions gives a mean and its count inside each polygon of a boundary layer (sanctuaries, protected areas, counties; not yet the gazetteer layers above).

Open in the Explorer: Contours over the station grid, inputs shown

Figure 8: The Contours lens over the station grid: the white dots are the stations the surface was fitted to; the Controls panel gives their number and the fit.

7 The lines

Erin, 2026-10-02: “a map of the CalCOFI stations (and lines, if possible)”. The Lines layer threads each line through its official stations and writes its name past both ends, on the 2-D map in every lens. Historical positions the program no longer works are not threaded, nor is an inshore station on a line of its own.

Open in the Explorer: every line, with every cast

Figure 9: The CalCOFI lines 60 to 93.3, each threaded through its stations and named at both ends, over every temperature cast and the sea floor.

The Sections lens in 3-D draws the same pattern at the sea surface, each station numbered, under a section hanging over the sea floor.

Open in the Explorer: line 80 in 3-D

Figure 10: The Sections lens in 3-D: a temperature section along line 80 hanging over the GEBCO sea floor, with every line of the station pattern threaded and labelled at the surface.

8 Diablo Canyon and the age of the wind data

Erin, 2026-10-05: “I think that the Diablo canyon area is no longer a thing right? Just verifying that the WEA dataset is a recent one.” Answered by email on 2026-10-08:

• Diablo Canyon was only a 2018 call area. It was never designated a WEA or leased, and it is in none of BOEM’s current layers.
• BOEM rescinded all designated WEAs, including Humboldt and Morro Bay, on 30 July 2025. They are the rescinded history layer (Table 1).
• The five California leases from the December 2022 auction are still drawn, each with its status from BOEM’s California page in the popup (cancelled, relinquished, under settlement or unchanged).
• The Data Basin layer is a 2022 snapshot of the proposed, pre-auction lease areas, so it is not used.

The gazetteer re-checks its sources weekly and records when each layer was retrieved (Table 1).