# @ucsantabarbara on Instagram

- **Type:** Video
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DXcJL61DJtE
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/64588681-ucsantabarbara-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/aa3497fef9.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-04-22T16:00:22.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** UC Santa Barbara (@ucsantabarbara) — https://gondola.cc/ucsantabarbara

## Caption

This #EarthDay, meet a #UCSB marine ecologist who has spent 25+ years studying humans' impact on the ocean. 

Ben Halpern, who went to graduate school at UCSB’s eemb_ucsb and went on to complete his doctoral work in 2003, has now been the executive director at UCSB's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (nceas.ucsb) for over a decade. 

In his long-term research, Halpern predicts that cumulative human impacts on the ocean could double between now and midcentury, while encouraging individuals to assist in ocean recovery with the daily choices we make.

“Any individual action can feel so tiny compared to the scale of the problem,” Halpern says, “but if you collectively sum up thousands or millions of people's individual actions, it suddenly becomes a force of change that can make a really big difference at a global scale.”

Read the full UC Santa Barbara Magazine story at the link in our bio 🌊

#UCSantaBarbara #EarthSciences #MarineEcology

## Stats

- **Views:** 5,374
- **Likes:** 741
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- **Comments:** 5

## Tags

ucsb, earthday, earthsciences, ucsantabarbara, marineecology

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