October 19th 6:30 - 8:30pm
SoCal SETAC is pleased to invite you to our Fall Dinner Meeting on October 19th from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm. Join us at Station Craft Brewery + Kitchen in Dana Point to hear from our guest speaker Jim Leather who will discuss NIWC Monitoring Data for Mass Balance Models. A three-course dinner will precede Leather's presentation and will be a great time to catch up with our SoCal SETAC community. We look forward to seeing you there!
If you have any questions please contact Maggie Stack at mstack@sdsu.edu
Online registration is now closed
Dr. Jim Leather
Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC)
Jim obtained a PhD at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and has worked in academic, oil industry, and government laboratories for over 25 years. He currently works at Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC, formally SPAWAR) on sediment geochemistry issues including field screening analytical techniques, flux chambers, fingerprinting contaminant sources, and most recently passive sampling techniques. His talk today will discuss the integration of NIWC monitoring tools with modeling approaches to allow better long-term evaluation of sediment remedial options.
His talk will demonstrate the use of passive samplers to measure pore water and overlying water concentrations of PCBs and mercury. These measurements provide a means to derive a diffusive flux of contaminants out of the sediment to determine whether sediments represent a continuing source of contamination to overlying waters. PCB passive samplers use simple polyethylene (PE) plastic sheets that are also used for several other organic contaminants. Mercury, like other metals, use diffusive gradient in thin-films (DGTs) for passive sampling. These passive samplers provide several distinct advantages over standard grab sampling by measuring bioavailable fractions at low detection levels. Examples will show how these data can be used with Fate and Transport Models in San Diego Bay and Puget Sound to allow better long-term evaluation of sediment remedial options.
Previous Meetings
2023 Spring Dinner Meeting
On March 22nd, 2023 SoCal SETAC hosted Dr. Bhavna Shamasunder (Occidental College) who discussed environmental injustice in Los Angeles.
2022 Fall Dinner Meeting
On October 25th, 2022 SoCal SETAC hosted Shelly Moore (Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research) who discussed microplastics.
2022 Spring Dinner Meeting
On March 15th, 2022 SoCal SETAC hosted Dr. Ochan Otim (City of Los Angeles) who discussed the declining white croaker population.
2021 Fall Meeting
On October 18th, 2021 SoCal SETAC virtually hosted Dr. Caroline Moore (San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance) 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.
