As I jog along a local beach, a raucous skirmish brings me to a full stop. In a furious duel for possession, two squawking gulls are tugging a Dungeness crab into the air. When their grip loosens, the hapless victim plummets—upside down, legs flailing---onto the sand....
Mud sucks—literally. On land, it squishes underfoot and slimes your shoes. In seaside shallows, it clutches your feet and tugs with the ferocity of an angry alligator.
I know. Wading back to shore after fieldwork with Bodega Marine Lab scientists in Tomales Bay, I lost my balance and plunged into what felt like slow-hardening concrete. Every time I tried to pry my foot loose, I lurched back into the sludge. A graduate student reached out to help—only to skid into the ooze next to me.
The carnage began in 2013. The victims were the multi-armed, jewel-bright sea stars that glisten along the West Coast of North America. They suffered a gruesome decline: oozing lesions, arms twisting into odd shapes and sometimes breaking away, bodies dissolving into a mucus-like white goo.
As vast colonies vanished, ocean floors resembled macabre battlegrounds, strewn with detached limbs and pulpy flesh. Not even those in captivity were safe. Sea stars died in public aquariums, visitors’ centers, university laboratories. By 2017, Sea Star Wasting Syndrome had spread from Alaska to Mexico, with the toll soaring from millions to billions.
The first time I held a white abalone, its muscular foot pressed into my palm, its shell lifted, and two googly black eyes and flexible tentacles emerged. But even more remarkable than the endearing appearance of this iconic sea snail is its survival.
In the 1960s and ’70s, white abalone—prized for their tender meat and iridescent mother-of-pearl shells—were overfished almost to extinction. Today, there are more in captivity than in their home waters off the coast of Baja. But a sudden cutoff of federal funding to the keystone breeding program has put this mollusk at risk—again.
A mussel bed along Northern California’s Dillon Beach is as healthy and biodiverse as it was about 80 years ago, when two young graduate students surveyed it shortly before Pearl Harbor was attacked and one was sent to fight in World War II.
Their unpublished, typewritten manuscript sat in the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory’s library for years until UC Davis scientists found it and decided to resurvey the exact same mussel bed with the old paper’s meticulous photos and maps directing their way.
It’s a dance as old as the tides. Long before whales sang or seabirds wheeled through salty air, forests rose from the seafloor, unfurling blades toward the sun. Over eons, kelp evolved exquisite ways to bend to the sea’s rhythms, but its ballet is no mere performance. With stipes stretching up to 100 feet or more, kelp forests produce oxygen, store carbon, prevent coastal erosion and shelter a vast array of marine life.
These vital ecosystems now face unprecedented threats. As ocean waters warm and voracious grazers like purple sea urchins multiply, California’s lush kelp forests have declined by up to 90 percent. Pushed to the brink, kelp is altering its choreography.
A lioness licking her cub. An elephant twining its truck around her calf. A polar bear nuzzling its pup. These heartwarming images remind us that wild animals can be doting mothers, much like us. But in coastal waters, where survival depends on timing, camouflage and luck, motherhood takes extraordinary forms.
Native tribes called the Sonoma Coast the “place of churning waters.” The mighty Pacific never stops splashing, crashing, snaking into fissures, wearing away cliffs, grinding rocks into stones, stones into pebbles, pebbles into sand. But the force that parts the seas and moves the waters comes from the wind, which propels the seasonal explosion of life known as Upwelling.
Years ago I learned to sail by the wind on a 26-foot sloop in San Francisco Bay. After the initial terror, I came to relish the exhilaration of skimming across the water, rocketed by gusts and tugged by currents. At times I’d imagine endlessly drifting on the open sea with the sun and the stars as my only companions.
Velella velella (from the Latin for “veil”), commonly known as “by-the-wind sailors,” live this fantasy. Ancient mariners found in oceans around the world, they have no need for seaworthy vessels. They are shaped like exquisite toy sailboats.
On a blustery March day, a squad of volunteers and researchers from the Bodega Marine Laboratory and Reserve take up grabbers and gloves against a sea of microplastics. Our mission: Clear trash from a local beach and document the prevalence of plastic on the...
