UC Santa Cruz is one of the top centers for marine mammal research in the world.
The campus has a unique combination of field sites and laboratory facilities for marine mammal research.
Including animal holding pools at Long Marine Laboratory.
And ready access to natural populations of marine mammals 
In Monterey Bay and at the university's, and Nuevo Island reserve. 
Well the Marine Lab is the university's coastal outpost for marine research
And the kinds of things we can't easily do in campus where we need running sea water. So the study of 
Nor Shore
Organisms. The study of marine mammals where we need large amounts of tank space and pool space,
A good supply of running sea water, and then, we have a whole public education program that tries to take 
The research that scientists does
And bring that to the public.
Grade school kids and there family's. So that w can get a better understanding of how the marine environment here that so important, thus works.
Biologist Cherry Williams is working here to answer fundamental questions about marine mammals
What does it take for a mammal to make a living in the ocean?
Were interested in, basically, what makes a dolphin, a dolphin.
And then, what a dolphin would need to survive.
Our research program tries to do two different things,
We've got sort of the up close physiology. Biology these animals that we do in a controlled setting like this.
And then, we want to know how does that really work out in the wild. How does the wild dolphin need to make it.
So we work all over the world. On the animals from the antarctic to the artic. 
And for the dolphins, the wild work is done in the Bahamas. Even looking at
Whether temperature, per say, is a big factor in these animal's lives.
How much do they need to eat during different seasons, and then, how much of a metabolism can change can we expect.
And again, it's cause of the idea of global climate change in water temperature changes that were certainly seeing in and off our coast.
[Splash]
Williams is also studying California sea otters, which are made of partial recovery after being hunted nearly to extinction.
But Williams wonders if our coastal ecosystems still have everything sea otters need to survive and to thrive.
There's a huge question about California sea otters right now.
How come the population hasn't just zoom through the roof. Something
Is holding the sea otter back.
Its very hard to work with otters in the wild.
So what we did, we convert the water tower over at Long Marine Lab into a simulated ecosystem for sea otters. The whole idea is
What does it take to be a sea otter.
what are those energetic needs and does the California coast really have what otters need to survive and for populations to increase.
One of the things my graduate student has found out, this is work by Lorey Aides, is that
The core body temperature of sea otters just fluctuates wildly during the day.
Their core body temperature is going up after eating 
And then, it just starts crashing down as their resting 
It gets to a point to where they have to go and eat. If they don't go and eat, it sort of stoke up that metabolic fire again to increase body temperature.
Umm
They could potentially have a core body temperature that gets lethal
What that means is that the availability of food, always having it their, is just critical for these otters.
You know, if it's not there,
Temperature is going to decline and they'll disappear. 
[Elephant seal roars]
When the tail gets really small, it means the animal's not moving.
Biologist Daniel Costa is using the latest satellite tracking technologies to study the amazing annual migrations of elephant seals.
And other marine mammals.
This is our latest and greatest technology. This is our GPS tag.
This measure to where the animals are within a five to ten feet.
This also give us information on what the animals are doing in terms of where they're diving, how long they're diving, how deep
And their general diving pattern. You could out this on a sea otter or a some sea lions.
So we use a tag like this which is much smaller.
But it gives us just a limited amount of information. it tells us just where the animal is.
The tags are harmlessly attached to the fur or animal's head or back and fall off when the animals molt in the spring.
So elephant seals have been a long term animal that we study here.
And in the last ten or fifteen years, we've been able to take that research much further when instead of just seeing what the animals do one the beach.
which is pretty much what were limited to. The, sort of, computer
Generation has taken over and we've been able to put radio tags first and satellite tags and time depth recorders.
So now we got an unprecedented view of what these animals are doing when they're at sea.
Hundreds, thousands of mile away from Nuevo Beach.
Research on elephant seals and other species has enabled Costa's group to identify hot spots in the open ocean.
Where marine mammals from elephant seals to albatrosses go to feed. 
We've got this program called Tagging Specific Pelagic. Were tagging different species 
Of marine mammals, birds, sharks, fish, one species of squid, whales.
So one of the things were trying to do is take this away from the point of view of just what do elephant seals do 
To what marine vertebrates do and where are the important areas in the ocean where the marine vertebrates are going to feed.
These tracking technologies and tracking large numbers of animals are certainly leading the way to figuring out how to
How to better conserve the ocean in area where we can't get to otherwise.
We are on an incredible position being on the edge of the nations largest main sanctuary
But not only is it incredibly productive biologically, probably the greatest diversity of marine mammals anywhere in the world.
So that, sort of, provides the perfect environment 
For the scientist at Ano Nuevo, the sea otters
We don't have to go thousands of miles to necessarily study these animals, we've got them right here in our backyard. 
Reporting from Long Marine Laboratory in Santa Cruz, this is Romney Dombar. 
