Science By The Sea

Every beachgoer has probably noticed plastic trash littering their favorite beaches, however remote. A new study of microplastic distribution on national park beaches indicates that whichever one you visit, there is probably also some amount of plastic that is harder to see, mixed in with the sand between your toes.

Steve Whitaker a marine ecologist with Channel Islands National Park delves into his research on rockweed at the park. Rockweed is a foundation species that has experienced rapid decline. Explore Whitaker's research on rockweed and the recovery efforts of Channel Islands National Park's rockweed.

NOAA has been actively trying to find and study basking sharks since 2009. They managed to find and tag four individuals in 2010-2011. Then, they found no more...until this year! No one is quite sure why, but this spring there were a slew of basking shark sightings in the Santa Barbara Channel. For example, in early May Channel Islands National Park staff spotted a school of 21(!) basking sharks.

In November 2018, the Woolsey Fire burned a whopping 42% of the natural area in the Santa Monica Mountains, including 88% of National Park Service lands. No species escaped unscathed. One or more mountain lions perished in the fire or its aftermath. Entire bobcat territories were reduced to ash. And federally threatened California red-legged frogs lost years of hard-won habitat and population gains.

With the growing popularity of citizen science National Park Service scientists are employing the power of the people to help them solve the problems they face. Read on to learn about one such project that just concluded at Cabrillo National Monument.

Starting each February, Cabrillo National Monument volunteers and natural resources staff eagerly await low or minus tides, but not for the excellent tidepooling as you might expect. Rather, it is the opportunity to hike out on otherwise submerged rocks for a view of the cliffs above. There, they can record sightings of a pair of the world’s fastest animals, peregrine falcons, which have nested on the cliff since 2014.

In 2014, Channel Islands National Park biologists began to notice a new and impressive seabird roosting on East Anacapa Island, and on Sutil Island, off of Santa Barbara Island. They recognized the birds as brown boobies, which had been occasionally seen passing through over the years. Last fall, David Mazurkiewicz and his fellow seabird biologists counted 102 brown boobies on Sutil Island, and in an exciting new development, they discovered four active brown booby nests!

Several years ago, in his former role as a field monitor, restoration ecologist Joey Algiers started noticing dense clumps of native plants in Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area fuels reduction areas. They stood out because these areas had otherwise become oceans of invasive species due to annual mowing. That got him wondering: could higher densities of native plants help keep invasive species at bay in fuels reduction areas?

The wart-stem ceanothus is an evergreen shrub native only to San Diego County and Northern Baja California. As a species that requires fire to germinate, it is also threatened in San Diego County by fire suppression, as well as by urbanization. As a result, Cabrillo National Monument is taking steps to help.

In mid-March, biologists and bald eagle fans watched with excitement as a live webcam captured three eggs hatching within a few days of each other on a nest in Sauces Canyon, Santa Cruz Island. Another webcam at a nest on Santa Cruz Island’s Fraser Point captured a similar scene: three more eggs hatching in close succession. Those six were among a total of 19 eaglets to be successfully raised by a record 20 breeding bald eagle pairs across the Channel Islands in 2018.