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Heal the Bay Blog

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Watermen and women braved some seriously huge waves on Saturday at the Santa Monica Pier Paddleboard Race and Ocean Festival (pictured left).

For the fourth year in a row, the event’s organizers chose Heal the Bay and the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium as their charity of choice and we couldn’t be prouder!

The festival promotes the connection between the Santa Monica Bay and the community of watermen and women who have enjoyed a myriad water sports for generations – all folks who recognize the role Heal the Bay plays in keeping the ocean healthy for us all. 

We offer special thanks this week to the Roth Family Foundation and the Joseph Drown Foundation for their commitment to education and creating opportunities for LA’s youth!

A “thank you” also goes to the Union Bank Foundation for their longtime support of Coastal Cleanup Day, the annual international volunteer event held every September. Heal the Bay staff coordinates the efforts in L.A. County. Mark your calendars: This year’s CCD will be on September 21, 9 a.m.-Noon.

Speaking of cleanups, employees from DIRECTVSymantec Corporation, and Wells Fargo joined us for Corporate Healer Beach Cleanups. More than 80 employees from DIRECTV in El Segundo picked up 182 pounds of trash from Dockweiler beach. Fierce competitors, the winning cleanup team, “Direct 6,” collected 30 pounds!  Wells Fargo volunteers picked up an unbelievable 1,268 cigarette butts!

Not to be outdone, a 13-member team from Symantec Corporation collected more than their share of beach trash. Plus, all three companies made dollar donations to sustain our work. Big thanks to last week’s corporate healers!

You can support a clean ocean today and every day.



Reel in the love this weekend at Fisherman Appreciation Day on the Venice Pier.

Created to teach local anglers ways to ensure the fish they catch are safe to eat, Fisherman’s Appreciation Day will be held this year on June 15 from 7 a.m. – 2 p.m. at the Venice Pier.

Fishing experts will be on hand to share healthy tips on cooking and catching fish, plus there’ll be contests with prizes (such as family passes to Heal the Bay’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium) and free food!

Among the experts will be members of Heal the Bay’s Angler Outreach Program (AOP team, pictured left), who’ve educated more than 100,000 anglers about the health risks of eating certain fish (e.g., white croaker). Our bilingual AOP team span eight different piers ­‑‑ Santa Monica, Venice, Hermosa, Redondo, Pier J, Rainbow Harbor, Belmont and Seal Beach‑‑ to spread their message.

Download a guide to eating fish caught in the bay and find more tips courtesy of the Fish Contamination Education Collaborative.

Are you an educator? Healthy, sustainable fish choices are also covered in the curricula for our K-5 marine education program, Key to the Sea.

Fisherman Appreciate Day



As I rode over Las Virgenes Road into the sun soaked valley, I was reciting what I would get to say to the 350-plus students and faculty of Mariposa School of Global Education.

The amazing students held their 5th Annual Beach Clean-A-Thon fundraiser and field trips April 15-17, which brought them down to the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium for education programs and a chance to help clean our beaches. As the students were learning about the animals off our coast and cleaning up their home, they were also raising funds to support their programs as well as donate to Heal the Bay. So I was there to accept the amazing gift of $2,300 they were presenting to Heal the Bay.

The students raised $23,000 through lemonade stands, video messages, letters and even their own piggy banks. I was welcomed on stage to shouts of “Nick!” from the audience, as they recognized me from their trip a month before. I spoke to them about how wonderful their commitment to the environment is and how they are the key to the future of our planet. When the oversized check presentation occurred (pictured left, courtesy Ziva Santop Photography), I realized I had a problem. I was on a motorcycle. Luckily for me they had a smaller version to fit in my pocket, but either way it was such a joy to accept such a wonderful gift and continue the two-year partnership with Mariposa.

— Nick Fash

Education Specialist, Heal the Bay’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium

Schedule a cleanup for your school.

Plan a visit or field trip to our Aquarium.

Help us bring our ocean education programs to Los Angeles students.



No one knows good taste like Coastal Living magazine, and now you can have that penchant for a stylized, seaside life in your own backyard!

Through the generosity of our friends at Coastal Living, these gorgeous cabana packages are being auctioned to benefit Heal the Bay.  Each cabana package, valued at $7,500 includes:

  • Lee Industries Nandina Double Chaise Lounge
  • 2 Lee Industries custom Ottomans
  • 2 Wisteria Tray Tables
  • 1 Jaipur Maroc Collection 8×10 rug
  • 2 coral scuptures with succulents
  • 12 battery operated paper lanterns

Along with Coastal Living, the stunning cabanas are provided by Sunbrella, Lee Industries, Wisteria and Jaipur. Here’s to your most stylist summer yet!

Bid now!



It was hard to ignore the front page news that a world-record breaking-size mako shark was caught this week just off our shores in Southern California. Here, Jose Bacallao, diver of 20+ years and the Operations Manager at Heal the Bay’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium, provides his take on the ethics of this recent shark hunt.

The 1,323-pound mako shark caught off our coast this Monday near Huntington Beach—possibly the largest on record– was reeled in not for food and definitely not for scientific study. A crew filming a reality series for the Outdoor Channel hooked this mako. Therefore, the 12-foot-long shark was sacrificed merely for commercial entertainment purposes.

I am not arguing that the crew who caught this shortfin mako violated any California laws. They were within their full legal rights to do it. In fact they could have legally have done it twice that day, as that’s the limit. And maybe they should have killed two mako sharks, because it would have pointed out just how asinine and ignorant this killing was. Landing this giant mako shark is unintelligent, but it would best be called unethical. There is no reason to hunt this fish unless you are planning on eating it, which these men did not do.

Also disappointing was how the mako catch was portrayed by the members of the media, who allowed Jason Johnston, one of the men who caught the shark, to describe the mako as “definitely a killing machine” without disputing this notion. In reality, in the real world, mako sharks are not a threat to people. Using terms such as “killing machine,” “man-eater” or “monster” is tragically misleading. I have been in the water with mako sharks and I don’t agree with this assessment. It is unfounded and lacks any rationale. The mako does not treat humans as prey.

Another of Johnston’s comments that went undisputed in initial media reports of the mako catch was: “There are not that many sharks being taken out of the water. It’s not hurting the population. If we pull four fish out of the water per year, that’s just four.” This is both inaccurate and illogical. There is overwhelming evidence that global shark populations have been decimated by years of fishing pressure.

This impact along with the ongoing shark finning industry is altering the ocean’s ecosystems. Thank you for the math lesson, Jason Johnston. Clearly, you miss the point. The 1,300 lbs mako could have produced, not four, but dozens of new shark pups. It takes many, many years for these large predators to reproduce. Now that you killed her, for TV viewing entertainment, she will not be able to provide the much-needed contribution to her depleted species. Your hunt, which you did not eat, has removed one of the last few giants out of the ecosystem.

So what exactly were these guys thinking? Apparently the crew has plans to donate the shark’s body for scientific research. Are you kidding me? Donating it to science, really? Your effort, killing this mako shark, is benefiting the scientific community? Please educate me on this strategic plan. Explain to me how you are contributing to the conservation of the species? Give me a break, bro.

I invite these gentlemen to spend a few minutes in the water with a mako shark and me. Get educated and have an understanding as to what this animal actually is. You can reach me at Heal the Bay’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium.

You can spend a few minutes getting to know the misunderstood shark at Heal the Bay’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium on Shark Sundays at 3:30 p.m.



World Oceans Day on June 8 provides us with the welcome excuse to celebrate the vast water body that links us all. We hope you find a way to honor the sea this week!

Last weekend, we honored the legacy of ocean lover Nick Gabaldon, who perished while surfing at the Malibu pier in June 1951. Gabaldon, the first documented L.A. surfer of African and Mexican descent, has inspired local surfers for generations. He continued to serve as inspiration on Saturday when the Black Surfers Collective and Surf Bus Foundation provided free surf lessons to kids from Watts and other inland communities. (You can get the feel for how awesome the day was by listening to this NPR story.)

Huge thank yous to L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and his staff for their support of the day. We are also grateful to historian Alison Rose Jefferson for sharing her work and expertise with us. In addition, we’d like to thank the following supporters:

As part of the Nick Gabaldon Day celebration, we debuted our new mobile educational game SurfGod for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. While we think the app is super fun, a lot of work went into it. We’d like to thank Matt Fairweather from Torrid Games who dedicated countless hours to making the eco app such a huge success! We’re already at 1000 downloads! Download it for free today and let us know what you think.

Download the Nick Gabaldon Day coloring book pages from the aquarium here.

A big thank you also goes to two partners who made Heal the Bay’s first gay Pride event a memorable success. Thank you to American Apparel for printing our ultra-cute neon yellow tank tops and to Roosterfish bar for hosting the after-party.

We hope you enjoy LA Pride and World Oceans Day this weekend!

Consult our calendar for more ocean celebrations all summer.



In honor of dads and grads and in celebration of the male seahorse’s unique role in childbirth, the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium’s seahorses are available for aquadoption at the special price of $50 during the month of June. Fostering a seahorse through the Aquarium’s aquadoption program is a special way to connect with an animal; leave the actual daily care to Aquarium staff while you can feel proud of your important contribution to this unique creature’s well being.

Growing up to 12 inches in height, the Pacific seahorse, Hippocampus ingens, is among the largest of the world’s seahorses and the only one to be found along the California coast. In the seahorse family, the males do all the heavy lifting, carrying eggs in their brood pouch, which are deposited there by the female. The male can give birth to hundreds of babies – known as fry – at one time.

A yearlong aquadoption of a seahorse includes a personalized packet with an adoption certificate, photo, fact sheet and a yearlong membership to Heal the Bay – and free family admission to the Aquarium for the year. Aquadopt now!



Heal the Bay’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium joins more than 1,800 museums nationwide in offering free admission to military personnel and their families this summer. In collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts, Blue Star Families and the Department of Defense, the Aquarium will admit all active duty military personnel and up to five family members free of charge from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

This is the third year the Aquarium has participated in the Blue Star Museums program. Blue Star Families is a national, nonprofit network of military families from all ranks and services, including guard and reserve, dedicated to supporting, connecting and empowering military families. Blue Star Families hosts an array of programs with its partners and also works directly with the Department of Defense and senior members of local, state and federal government to highllight military family issues. Working in concert with fellow nonprofits, community advocates and public officials, Blue Star Families raises awareness of the challenges and strengths of military family life and works to make military life more sustainable.

Congress established the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. To date, the NEA has awarded more than $4 billion to support artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities. The NEA extends its work through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector.

View the complete list of Blue Star Museums.



Sipping on an artisanal cocktail, winning a life-changing vacation and jamming to the music of Ziggy Marley during a Santa Monica beach sunset — does life get any better? Yes, it does when it goes to benefit clean oceans!

Bring Back the Beach on May 16, 2013, at the Jonathan Beach Club in Santa Monica, was truly the ultimate beach party. Hollywood A-listers and guests joined us for an evening under the stars to honor Heal the Bay’s former president Mark Gold, D. Env., Oscar-winning actor and environmental champion Jeremy Irons, and founder of the Inclusive Health movement and philanthropist Dr. Howard Murad.

Our supporters were treated to a special acoustic performance by five-time Grammy Award winner Ziggy Marley, who received the true VIP treatment, with Heal the Bay’s Marine & Coastal Scientist Dana Roeber Murray and her husband Brian chauffeuring him home after the show!

Guests had the chance to bid on a completely decorated cabana set, courtesy of Coastal Living magazine, and a new 2013 Scion FR-S, contributed by LAcarGUY.

Thanks to our dedicated guests, we exceeded our goal, and raised more than $1 million for programs that work toward clean beaches and oceans. Rest assured: Our teachers, water quality scientists, policy advocates, beach cleanup organizers, and aquarists, to name a few, plan to put those dollars to good work.

Check out photos from Bring Back the Beach or spot your friends in the Lucky Laughter Photo Booth!

Update: We’ve added even more photos of guests at Bring Back the Beach on Flickr! Or tag your blue carpet moment on Facebook!

To our table sponsors, ticket buyers, and auction bidders, new and long-time supporters alike, we are truly grateful.



Most surfers know Bay Street beach for its easily-accessible, often fun waves. But on June 1 we’ll be celebrating more than just a sweet surf spot. We’ll be honoring the memory of Nick Gabaldon, an ocean pioneer, the first documented surfer of African American and Mexican descent. Aside from being where Gabaldon experienced the ocean for the first time, the site itself holds cultural significance as a shoreside haven for African Americans during the Jim Crow era.

Here, historian Alison Rose Jefferson shares her thoughts about the cultural complexities of Bay Street/Inkwell as an historical site.

On June 1 we celebrate our shared California seaside, cultural and historical heritage, and outreach to promote the joys of surfing and the beach, historical studies and ocean stewardship. This event is also a way of using historic preservation, nature conversation and environmental justice movement ideals to engage broader audiences in the preservation and ocean stewardship of our precious cultural, natural and historical heritage.

The City of Santa Monica officially recognized the historical African American beach gathering place controversially known as the “Inkwell” during the nation’s Jim Crow era and Nick Gabaldon, with a landmark monument at Bay Street and Oceanfront Walk on February 7, 2008. This site and Gabaldon were locally recognized for cultural and social history significance, rather than architectural or natural aesthetics significance.

This kind of designation infusing a cultural and natural resource site with complexities of human history and experiences strengthens both the historic preservation and nature conservation movements by giving them a critical dimension beyond beauty, rarity and environmental protection. From an environmental justice viewpoint, the inclusion of this history is symbolic of limited social change and pushes forth a sense of shared cultural belonging and common membership in American society that helps in forming a basis for social progress and action in the future.[i]

In the more recent decades, the historic preservation movement has reconsidered the definition of what is worth protecting. Now there is an understanding of a need for a definition going beyond architectural significance in the traditional sense. The movement has slowly acknowledged there are layers of history at sites that deserve recognition, even when those layers affect the original character of the building or there is no extant building.[ii]

Sense of place stories, intangible cultural heritage or social value are the “heritage” that makes many historic sites important to communities of color. These types of social value sites remain a tough sell in many circles of preservation, as well as nature conservation. In order for the historic preservation movement to be relevant in diverse communities, it is slowly finding its way towards more recognition and affirmation of such sites and landmarks.[iii]

The inclusion of the ethnic history such as that of the Inkwell and Nick Gabaldon in the cultural landscape of Santa Monica requires engaging the painful as well as the prideful aspects of the past. Place memory and stories, and human connection are entwined with the built and the natural environment, creating a repository of environmental memory at these cultural landscapes. The Inkwell/Gabaldon monument creates an identified sense of place and inclusive social history in the landscape, allowing for a more culturally inclusive, shared civic identity, and history encompassing public process and memory.[iv]

All this being said, there are still large influential segments of white America, even in Los Angeles County, that continue to have a problem dealing with an identity as a more diverse nation, and the loss of “whiteness” as a defining feature of the dominant group’s American identity. Further this group continues to lag at embracing painful aspects of the past and the breadth of human experience in the nation’s history as a more complex multiracial landscape to see a common destiny. Popular memory of many historical events and sites has proven difficult to extricate or add new information to, even with new scholarship and more enlightened historical and cultural site administrators who began work in the 1990s.

African Americans pioneered leisure in America’s “frontier of leisure” through their attempts to create communities and business projects, as Southern California’s black population grew during the nation’s Jim Crow era. With leisure’s reimagining into the center of the American Dream, black Californians worked to make leisure an open, inclusive, reality for all. They made California and American history by challenging racial hierarchies when they occupied recreational sites like the Bay Street/Inkwell site, and public spaces at the core of the state’s formative, mid-20th century identity.[v]

Black communal practices and economic development around leisure created these sites, marking a space of black identity on the regional landscape and social space. Through struggle over these sites, African Americans helped define the practice and meaning of leisure for the region and the nation, confronted the emergent power politics of leisure space, and set the stage for them as places for remembrance of invention and public contest.

At leisure and recreational spaces, systematized white racism in ethnically diverse Los Angeles was most consistently targeted at African Americans. Yet they proved this regional style of racism more readily challengeable than elsewhere in the country. From working class roots, Nick Gabaldon participated in the sport of surfing at this time when bigotry and prejudice where not far away on land or in the ocean. His courage and dedication have empowered many to pursue their passion of surfing and other human experiences. His and others actions are the local stories historians identify as “document[ing] a national narrative of mass movement to open recreational facilities to all Americans.” In reconsidering the formation of California’s leisure frontier, scholars have moved beyond examination of economic and political issues, to demonstrate how the struggle for leisure and public space also reshaped the long civil rights movement.[vi]

Strategies may vary, but both historic preservation and nature conservation movements focus on the fundamental need to keep all the unique and irreplaceable pieces of our heritage intact for all people to enjoy. The nature conservation movement’s engagement of broader and more culturally inclusive audiences can be enhanced by developing the cultural and historical heritage of natural sites such as the Inkwell to reach specific audiences and align with community values. Both movements must acknowledge that issues of race, diversity and social justices are entwined with heritage matters. Inclusion of the language of injustice, discrimination, inequity and racism in the natural, cultural and historic heritage discussion acknowledges the continuing struggle to totally dismantle these conditions, which in more places than some may want to recognize continues inhibiting communities of color from full civic participation, human experiences, and civil society entitlements.

The Nick Gabaldon Day beach celebration, and, the identification of the historical Bay Street/Inkwell beach site as a local landmark, and as a Heal the Bay/International Coastal Cleanup site opens the door towards environmental justice by recognizing that communities of color have a right to historical and cultural sites, along with clean air, water and enjoyment of America’s nature resources.

These broad public process activities bring the work of the historic preservation, nature conservation and environmental justice movements together, giving us an amazing opportunity for action, education, remembrance of our collective history and shared cultural identity, and, new ways to connect people with natural, cultural and historical heritage. United by our love of the ocean, we remember the past and move forward together as stewards of this precious environment and cultural touchstones.

–Alison Rose Jefferson is a doctoral candidate in Public History/American History at University of California, Santa Barbara and a consultant on Nick Gabaldon Day celebration, June 1, 2013 event. She is the author of “African American Leisure Space In Santa Monica: The Beach Sometimes Known as the ‘Inkwell.’” Southern California Quarterly, 91/2 (Summer 2009). Her website, “Celebrating the California Dream: A Look at Forgotten Stories” is at www.alisonrosejefferson.com.

To learn more about Nick Gabaldon’s legendary surfing athleticism and why he inspires many surfers of color and otherwise to consider him a role model, you can read the BlackPast.com encyclopedia entry entitled “Nick Gabaldon (1927-1951).” 

Join us at the Nick Gabaldon Day, Saturday, June 1, 2013 celebration with the Black Surfers Collective, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, the Santa Monica Conservancy, the Surf Bus Foundation, among others.  

[i] Delores Hayden, The Power of Place, Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press), 8-9; Ned Kaufman, Place, Race, and Story, Essays on the Past and Future of Historic Preservation (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group), 307.

[ii] Stephanie Meeks, “Sustaining The Future,” California Preservation Foundation Conference: Preservation on the Edge, Santa Monica, California, May 16, 2011, 5-7.

[iii] Ibid., Meeks, 6; Kaufman, 2-5, 12-13, 326; Hayden, 7-13, 15, 22, 46-48, 54.

[iv] Ibid., Hayden, 11, 227.

[v] Lawrence Culver, The Frontier of Leisure, Southern California and the Shaping of Modern America (New York, NY: Oxford University Press), 1-14.

[vi] Culver, 66; Victoria C. Wolcott, Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters, The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 2-3, 6; Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91, 4 (March 2005): 1-28.