The Walls of Yosemite Are Coming Down

The Man Who Saved the Owens Pupfish

Less than 2.5 inches in length, the Owens pupfish is a silvery-blue fish in the family Cyprinodontidae. Endemic to California’s Owens Valley, 200 miles north of Los Angeles, the fish has lived on the planet since the Pleistocene, becoming a new species when its habitat was divided by changing climatic conditions, 60,000 years ago.

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MBARI and the Machines That Let Us See the Deep

From glowing deep-sea creatures to underwater canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon, MBARI is helping uncover the mysteries of the Pacific off California.

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Curiosity Is the Point

The more you look around in California, the more you realize there is almost always something fascinating to notice and something worth learning a little more about.

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The Valley That Feeds a Nation

When it comes to a geological feature that has quietly shaped daily life in California more than almost any other, we should consider the Central Valley, arguably the state’s most important geological masterpiece.

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California’s Daily Tidal Wave of Life

Every day, trillions of marine animals migrate up and down through the ocean in the largest daily movement of biomass on Earth. California’s exceptionally productive waters, and research hubs like MBARI near Moss Landing, make the state one of the best places in the world to observe and study this vast, invisible pulse of life.

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Measuring the Earth’s Tremors and the Development of the Richter Scale

In 1935, Charles F. Richter, a seismologist at CalTech, introduced a groundbreaking method to quantify earthquakes: the Richter scale.

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