March 15th 6:30 - 8:30pm
SoCal SETAC is pleased to invite you to our Winter Dinner Meeting on March 15th from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm. Join us at Pizza Port in Carlsbad to hear from our guest speaker Dr. Ochan Otim who will discuss the declining white croaker population. A three-course dinner will precede Ochan’s presentation and will be a great time to catch up with our SoCal SETAC community. To ensure all of our safety during this in-person gathering, we are requiring that all attendees be fully vaccinated/boosted or provide a negative COVID test within three (3) days of the event. Thank you in advance for your cooperation and we look forward to safely seeing you there!
If you have any questions please contact Karin Wisenbaker at karin(at)aquaticbioassay(dot)com
Ochan Otim, PhD, BCES
LA Sanitation and Environment
Environmental Monitoring Division
Dr. Ochan Otim is a Board Certified Environmental Scientist and a member of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists. He is a Senior Chemist with the Environmental Monitoring Division of the City of Los Angeles, California (USA) and teaches chemistry at the University of California-Los Angeles.
Dr. Otim specializes in developing methods for quantifying and assessing the health risk associated with organic and metal contaminants in foods and the environment. He is also interested in finding ways to mitigate the impact of harmful algae in coastal and inland water bodies, and in sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide into biological matrices. Samples of Dr. Otim's work can be found elsewhere in the 15 papers authored or co-authored in the last three years.
In his talk, Dr. Otim will provide empirical evidence suggesting a potential DDT/PCB-associated decline in the robustness of white croaker population endemic to the Los Angeles Outer Harbor.
Online registration is now closed. On site registration is still available.
Previous Meetings
2021 Fall Meeting
On October 18th, 2021 SoCal SETAC virtually hosted Dr. Caroline Moore who discussed building toxicology into Wildlife Conservation.
2021 Spring Meeting
On March 9th, 2021 SoCal SETAC virtually hosted Ms. Adrienne Cibor and Mr. Peter Arth from Enthalpy Analytical, Ms. Molly Colvin from the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, and Dr. Kari Sant from the San Diego State University Public Health Department.
2020 Spring Dinner Meeting
On Wednesday, March 11, SoCal SETAC hosted Richard Gersberg (San Diego State University) and Goran Bozinovic at Leucadia Pizzeria in Encinitas.
2019 Fall Dinner Meeting
On October 16, 2019, SoCal SETAC hosted Richard Gossett from Physis Environmental Laboratories (Anaheim) who discussed sediment contaminant concentrations from the EPA National Coastal Condition Assessment Program and compared the data to those collected in California Bight 13 survey.
Richard Gossett is an environmental chemist and the owner of Physis
Environmental Laboratories in Anaheim. Gossett specializeds on GCMS analyses and expanded his analytical expertise into organophosphorus pesticides, pyrethroids, neonicotinoids,
and contaminants of emerging concern.
2019 Spring Dinner Meeting
On March 7th, SoCal SETAC hosted Regina Wetzer from the LA Natural History Museum who presented a fascinating talk on "Linking specimen-based marine biodiversity with state of the art genetic tools to greatly accelerate understanding of our changing oceans."
Regina Wetzer is Associate Curator and Director of the Marine Biodiversity Center at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (LACM) since 1999. She is currently working with an extraordinary team of Invertebrate Collections Managers who collectively oversee, curate, and manage the great diversity of animals (35 phyla) in the LACM marine invertebrate collections. Her research interests include exploring evolutionary hypotheses involving previously unexplained life history traits, homoplastic morphological features, and biogeographic distributions.In 2016 Wetzer and her team launched the Diversity Initiative for the Southern California Ocean (DISCO) at the LACM. This research initiative is greatly enhancing biodiversity documentation in the marine environment by applying modern genetic technology. [https://research.nhm.org/]
2018 Fall Dinner Meeting
On October 10, 2018, SoCal SETAC hosted University of California Riverside's Dr. Andrew Gray who discussed watershed-scale management, sediment dynamics, and their roles in managing aquatic system health.
Dr. Andrew Gray is an Assistant Professor of Watershed Hydrology at the University of California, Riverside in the Department of Environmental Sciences. His research group investigates the roles of fluvial sediments in determining water quality and fluvial geomorphology, with particular interest in post-wildfire sediment dynamics, coastal sedimentology, watershed scale sediment fingerprinting, and microplastic pollution.
2018 Spring Dinner Meeting
On March 8, 2018, SoCal SETAC hosted University of California Santa Barbara's Dr. Arturo Keller to discuss the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology.
2017 Fall Dinner Meeting
SoCal SETAC hosted the Fall Dinner meeting at Bagby Beer Company in Oceanside on October 5, 2017. Dr. David Weller from the Marine Mammal Turtle Division at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center provided an overview of emerging concerns of bottlenose dolphins off Southern California based on 30+ years of research.
2017 Spring Dinner Meeting
SoCal SETAC hosted the Spring Dinner meeting in San Pedro on February 23, 2017. Mas Dojiri, PhD, BCES from the Environmental Monitoring Division of LA Sanitation discussed the 1-mile diversion monitoring program of the Hyperion Treatment Plant.
