Mark Gold, director of CALCOFI and a former council member, briefed the Monitoring Council on a student‑led inventory project being carried out at UCLA. The practicum involves 10 students who will compile an inventory of ocean monitoring across California state waters including government compliance programs, academic monitoring and agency efforts, with a GIS component showing locations, frequencies and data gaps.

Gold said the project aims to reveal what is not being measured (for example, gaps in deep‑water monitoring, inconsistent microplastics monitoring, and unanalyzed archived samples) and to assemble datasets that could inform a model statewide ocean monitoring program. He asked council members to share contacts and existing metadata and said the project will produce a near‑final draft for review by DDW/OPC and the council by about June of the following year.

The council welcomed the work as directly relevant to the Monitoring Council’s data‑integration goals and to OPC’s strategic planning.