Visit the kelpforest....

We went to the beach again to participate in Hands Across the Sand. Apparently the girls next to us were hestitant to hold hands with Angus; they wouldn't grab on until the last second, and then dropped hands and ran up the beach as soon as it appeared to be over. I chatted with the older man next to me who seemed to be from Northern CA and said something about having started one of the first organic farms in the state. He asked about the oil rigs visible a few miles in the distance, and I told him they were pretty much grandfathered from before the ban on drilling. However, the major oil spill we've had here was when I first started at the Department; an oil terminal right about a mile of Newland St. where tankers offloaded to the Edison plant. A captain forgot to take the shallow water and the tides into account and the ship sat on its own anchor. Guess what company it was. >:( The guy shook his head and nodded at Avalon running back and forth among the pier pilings and in and out of the water, then said, "We aren't doing this for ourselves. It's for people like her."

An older woman up on the pier looked down disgustedly and yelled, "DRILL, DRILL, DRILL!"

Hands Across the Sand
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
26 June 2010

( civic duties )

After finding an Earthcache up in Spokane, I was pleased to see one (of several)a little closer to home. This one is in a neighborhood in San Pedro, only a few blocks up the street from the harbor, where I occasionally go to sample fish. Not a real wonderful neighborhood, but a rarity in that the geology is exposed to view; normally placed like this would be covered up by iceplant or a retaining wall or something. In this case, one layer of ancient seabottom cuts across another, older and tilted at an angle. There are all kinds of fossils here; part of getting credit for this one was emailing in what made the holes in the sediments at the contact. Hint: there were fossils of them spread throughout these sediments.

Urban Unconformity
San Pedro CA
Canon EOS 1000D
18 June 2009

( Ancient Diggers... )

Hmm, a decent picture or a not-so-good picture with an interesting story. The latter today, I guess. We went to the Aquarium today. And there were lots of fishy pictures. However, after we left the Aquarium, we walked around Rainbow Harbor to the park (and my real camera's batteries were dead by this time - time to get new prechargeables, I think; they're only lasting about 10 minutes before they die on me). On the way, we noticed people working on this raft, which had a small plane fuselage sitting on it. Some signage on the dockside explained that the raft's floats are entirely made of plastic bottles, and when constuction is finished, it's due to embark on a cruise from Long Beach to Hawaii (!) in order to raise awareness of the problems of plastic in the ocean ecosystem. The craft is called Junk and the project is being run by the Alagalita Marine Research Foundation. Here's the raft's blog, if you're interested.

More power to em, but yeesh! I'd be leery if it tried to go to Catalina! That's about 20 miles offshore, and they're supposed to be towing it there for a shakedown cruise this coming Sunday.

Rainbow Harbor
Downtown Long Beach CA
Kyocera Switchback phone camera
10 May 2008

( Bottle Pontoons... )

To be fair, the middle house is on only a half size lot, but still...how would you like to have those neighbors towering over you?

( the sort of new growth I do like... )

Yesterday the city council of Huntington Beach approved plans for a desalinization plant - http://www.kcrw.org/show/ww (requires real player)

Huntington Beach Approves Nation's Largest Desalination Plant During a drought in the early 1990's, Santa Barbara constructed a desalination plant. It operated for about a month before the City got on the much cheaper state water project, and it hasn't run since. Early this morning, in chambers packed with partisans on both sides, the Huntington Beach City Council voted 4 to 3 to go ahead with a desalination plant of its own, even though the Metropolitan Water District says current supplies are sufficient to meet demand for the next 25 years. The plant could mean 50 million gallons a day for Orange County, but completing won't be easy. At the moment, nobody knows who's going to buy it. Is it drought insurance or an invitation for more urban sprawl? We hear the pros and cons.

I haven't had a chance to listen to this yet (can't listen to streaming things at work, and I forget when I get home), but my friend Carole has been very concerned that the company the city is thinking of using does not have a working plant anywhere in the country. The neighborhood surrounding the designated area is very against it - the usual NIMBY stance, but if it's where I think it is, that place is a Superfund site that is going to require YEARS of cleanup first. Just the summary on the KCRW page is enough to give me pause - "drought insurance or an invitation for more urban sprawl?" I do not want an excuse for any more development here. A few parks here and there do not make up for the habitat being covered by houses and shopping malls.

This was a kelp harvesting company, the only one of its kind in California, I think, although in recent years it had been bought out by larger conglomerates. A number of biologists here worked closely with them. Dale Glantz, mentioned in the article, is a co-author of book that's been sitting on my shelf for a number of years, The Amber Forest. It appears to be still in print if you'd like a book of beautiful kelp forest photos.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050609-9999-1b9kelp.html

Goodbye to a sea giant - Kelp-harvesting firm based in San Diego for 76 years will move operations to Scotland

( article )

Released great white doing just what the other sharks do
( article )

I had been wondering what was going on along Pacific Coast Highway at the south end of Bolsa Chica State Beach. The entire road bed has been shifted to the east about 25 yards, a large berm has been constructed along the beach, and cranes and pile drivers have been putting concrete piles into the sand. I was not sure what was going on; I was thinking possibly they were raising the road since the section between Seapoint and Warner floods every time it rains hard and they have to completely close the road. John had said a neighbor told him the Bolsa Chica Amigos had lost out and another housing development was going in - which seemed crazy to me because that area is tidal (I think now they were referring to the mesa). TN at work, mentioned some restoration work going on - which I knew had been proposed in the past, but I had not heard was actually in the works. Finally, some signs were erected along the road construction site with a web address:

http://www.fws.gov/pacific/bolsachica/

Wow! I had no idea - almost the entire area is set to be restored into tidal basins to mitigate wetlands loss in Long Beach and L.A. Harbor. There is going to have to a lot of clean-up, since much of the area was oil fields for so long. The small area at the front has been a state preserve for a long time, with walkways and a small interpretive center.

The downside is that the Coastal Commission approved 349 homes to be built on the mesa overlooking the wetlands, a far cry from the 1700 units originally proposed, but still, upscale homes many of which will probably commercial gardening services applying fertilizers and pesticides that will all be draining right into the wetlands in the runoff. There is still a section of field adjacent to the wetlands where another developer is proposing another tract of homes, already approved by the city council (grrrrr! they don't fool me by all being members of the Tree Society). I hope the following groups fare better at opposing the development than they did for the Mesa - I don't know why this city feels it has to cover every open acre with overpriced humongous houses.

I feel a bit silly not knowing about this - this is like two miles from my house, and my agency is on the steering committee, but in a different region and the person involved is clear down in the San Diego office.

The Amigos de Bolsa Chica

The Bolsa Chica Land Trust

The Bolsa Chica Conservancy

I'm ashamed to admit I've never read The Log From the Sea of Cortez, although I have read a good many other Steinbeck books. Steinbeck's good friend Ed Ricketts wrote the main text for my Intertidal Invertebrates course in college, Between Pacific Tides. Ricketts was also the inspiration for Doc in Cannery Row. This article reminds me I need to get a copy of The Log...

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-steinbeck16jun16.story
Sea Change Since Era of Steinbeck - Retracing the author's 1940 voyage to Mexico, a group of enthusiasts finds a vastly different marine environment.

Suprisingly, in some places, it's better than it was more than 60 years ago.