Douglas McCauley

Douglas McCauley began his career as a fisherman in the Port of Los Angeles. Eventually he migrated to marine science and now serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara and directs the Benioff Ocean Initiative. Prof. McCauley has a degree in political science and a degree in biology from the University of California at Berkeley. His PhD research was done at Stanford University where he studied the ecology of sharks, giant parrotfish, and coral reef ecosystems. Prof. McCauley did postdoctoral research at Stanford University, Princeton University, and UC Berkeley. Prof. McCauley’s science is motivated by the belief that we must better understand how complex ocean ecosystems work if we want to better protect them from threats like overfishing, climate change, and pollution. Incorporating new forms of tech into ocean science is an important part of the DNA of research in McCauley’s laboratory. Recent research by Prof. McCauley includes using electronic tags to follow sharks, satellites to monitor illegal fishing, and underwater scanners to find and study manta rays. Work from the McCauley Lab has been published in leading research journals such as Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA and has been featured in the New York Times, BBC, Time, US National Public Radio, and at the World Economic Forum. Prof. McCauley was named a Sloan Research Fellow in the Ocean Sciences.