A group of researchers from San Francisco State University since 2006 has been studying how currents move in the San Francisco Bay - hoping to make it easier to navigate and help clean up spills like the one caused by the Cosco Busan tanker.

Now, though, the project is in jeopardy because of a cut-off in California coastal-protection funds.

Operating out of the Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies, a San Francisco State field research station in Marin County, students and their professors use land-based, high-frequency radar devices to track surface water movement in San Francisco Bay and the outlying California coastline. The study is part of the Coastal Ocean Currents Monitoring Program, which looks at tidal movement along the entire California coastline.

The radar devices, which look like large radio antennas, are strategically placed around the bay in places where the public will not easily be able tamper with them.

Radar devices positioned at the Romberg center, Crissy Field, Treasure Island and Sausalito emit a high frequency that bounces off moving water currents and back to the radar antennas. The shift in frequency is then measured and sent to technicians at the Romberg center who determine where and at what speed the currents are moving.

Funding for the project, totaling $21 million, was made possible by Propositions 40 and 50, California coastal protection acts that passed in 2002.

Researchers say the monitoring offers several scientific purposes, including studying bottom levels of the food chain and the tidal currents of the Farallon Islands. It also has more practical purposes.

"We've helped predict where oil and sewage spills will drift in the bay," said Toby Garfield, a geosciences professor at San Francisco State and principal investigator for the project.

The program worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the organization that oversaw the Cosco Busan oil spill cleanup in 2007, to help track where the oil plume was headed and what beaches would be affected.

Authorities originally thought that the plume would hit the Farallon Islands, but the monitoring was able to show that the oil would drift past and not hit the islands - sparing pre-emptive cleanup efforts, Garfield said.

"Observations of ocean currents are helpful with starting a model for oil spill cleanup," said Jordan Stout, scientific support coordinator with the NOAA. "Having a clear picture of what the currents are doing will help determine where the currents will be going in the next few days."

In addition to helping with cleanup, scientists at the center want to show that this form of radar is valuable for port cities that have a lot of commercial and recreational boat traffic.

"It's kind of invaluable to have radar like this in big coastal cities," said Max Hubbard, a geosciences graduate student who has been working on the project since August. "There are so many tankers and cargo ships coming in and out of the bay - for them to know what the currents are doing is very important."

Hubbard is the only student currently working on the project.

While the water current data have been collected since the project's inception in 2006, continual monitoring is necessary if the scientists want to help clean up future oil and sewage spills.

Hubbard and Garfield would like to continue monitoring ocean currents and hope data will soon be available for all mariners navigating the San Francisco Bay.

A Dec. 19 stop-work order halted funding for California general-obligation bonds, but monitoring is still in progress because Garfield has been able to find alternative financing.

"We're subsisting off grants, federal and state, that are not bond funded - although these sources are drying up," Garfield said.

As they continue to monitor currents and seek funding, the scientists hope their work is not in vain.

"I have a year of San Francisco Bay water-current data," Hubbard said. "But if the funding stops, the data could stop flowing."