Heal the Bay Blog

Frankie Orrala, our Pier Angler Outreach Manager, introduces us to one of the more unusual animals in the Bay.

The lizard fish is a unique creature that inhabits the coast of California. It has a long brown body, which serves as camouflage in the sandy ocean floor habitats. It feeds on small fish and squid. The lizard fish develop and hatch their eggs outside their bodies and probably spawn during the summer.

Their name is derived from their elongated cylindrical body, with a head and mouth that resemble those of a lizard. The body goes from a brown color on the back to a white on the ventral sid . It has a dorsal fin on its back and a small average adipose fin, pelvic fins are yellowish and have a forked caudal fin. The lizard fish can grow up to 25 inches in size and weight up to 4 pounds. (Although the species we observed in the Southern California piers this year did not exceed 12 inches in length.)

Because of its body and long sharp teeth, lizard fish are occasionally mistaken for California barracuda. The barracuda however is silver instead of brown and has two dorsal fins of similar size with ample space between them.

The lizard fish of California is distributed from San Francisco to the Gulf of California in Mexico. Some species have been reported in the region of British Columbia in Canada and the Galapagos Islands. Although most commonly found in shallow sandy bottoms (5-150 meters), they have been sighted frequently this year by fishermen at almost all Southern California piers.

How many of us know that the largest underwater Superfund site is in our own backyard? Throughout the 1940s-70s more than 100 tons of DDT and PCBs were dumped into our local waters, deposited in an area known as the Palos Verdes shelf.

But some recent tests indicate that the contamination is disappearing, without being cleaned up.

As the Environmental Protection Agency investigates the mystery of what happened to all of that industrial residue, officials decided to delay their remedying of the Palos Verdes shelf, opting instead to conduct further testing of the area.

Heal the Bay‘s James Alamillo recently took to the airwaves during KPCC’s Air Talk to discuss what should happen next.

Concerned that we continue to find an increase in the number of local fish contaminated by these chemicals, James recommends that the EPA proceed with its remediation, specifically with a limited cap of clean sediment placed on top of the toxic sediment. This cap would have a direct impact on reducing contaminate levels simply because the contamination would be buried, allowing for biological life to thrive within and above the cleaner sediment.

In the meantime, Heal the Bay’s award-winning Angler Outreach team continues to advise local fishermen and their families to avoid fishing in contaminated areas and consuming white croaker among other species.

Learn about more ways Heal the Bay is working to keep our communities healthy.

The tip sheet that Heal the Bay’s Angler Outreach team distributes to fishermen along piers throughout the Santa Monica Bay area, courteresy of the Fish Contamination Education Collaborative. Get yours today!

Staff scientist Dana Murray reports on a mysterious disease hitting West Coast tidal zones:

Missing limbs … melting masses of flesh … gooey lesions overtaking the entire body.

No, it’s not the stuff of a sci-fi horror movie. Rather, it’s a troubling series of misfortunes befalling sea stars along the Pacific coast of North America. This winter, divers and tidepoolers are encountering numerous sea stars with white lesions that eventually decompose body tissue into a goo-like blob.

These keystone predators are victims of “sea star wasting disease,” a fast-moving infectious disease that has occurred along our coast for decades, but not at the recent widespread level. Reports of disintegrating sea stars have come from as far north as Anchorage, Alaska, to our shores along Palos Verdes, and down south to La Jolla.

Scientists first described the symptoms in 1978, and several outbreaks have occurred since. Warmer water temperatures led to massive sea star die-offs in Southern California in 1983-84 and again in 1997-98.

This year’s epidemic began in Washington in June; since then at least 12 different species of sea stars and even some purple sea urchins have been found as victims of the wasting disease. By September, the disease had become widespread along the Pacific coast. The progression of symptoms can be very rapid, with initial signs leading to death within a few days.

Sea stars, in particular ochre stars, are an important keystone species that have the potential to dramatically alter rocky intertidal community composition. Removal of this top predator from intertidal ecosystems can affect the whole food chain. After the 1983-84 wasting event, ochre stars were absent along Southern California’s shoreline for years.

Collaborative research teams are studying affected sea stars, keeping a close eye on any cascading on the food chain and local habitats. Scientists aren’t sure what is causing the disease. Suspected factors include warm water events, low oxygen levels, and ocean acidification. Past outbreaks on the West Coast were traced to bacteria, while a recent East Coast wasting disease was linked to a virus.

Scientists ask the public to keep an eye out for infected sea stars and urchins. If you see any possible infections while out in our local intertidal and subtidal seas, please report your findings to seastarwasting.org

White lesions on the surface of sea stars are sure sign that wasting disease has taken root.

CEO Ruskin Hartley gets up close with the wonders of the Bay.

For the last eight weeks or so I have largely been looking at Santa Monica Bay from the shore. Since moving to Los Angeles, I’ve enjoyed playing in the waves and swimming along the shoreline, but today was my first chance to get further out into the Bay. I joined our Santa Monica Pier Aquarium team on one of its weekly collecting expeditions, which harvest kelp to feed the animals in the aquarium. As our aquarist, Jose, says, it’s the weekly trip to the farmers market.

The Bay, and indeed the oceans, give us so much. After all they cover 71% of the planet and provide everything from the oxygen we breathe, to the fish we eat, to the natural substances that thicken Jell-O. The list goes on. But a few hours on the water off Palos Verdes gave me something distinct – a profound sense of the wonder of the ocean.

It really is a different world out there. The solid earth is replaced by the ever-shifting, fluid ocean. Wave upon wave. Powerful forces gently lifting our 14-foot dinghy up and down as we leaned over the side, straining for the kelp. The constantly changing play of light and shade on the water as the clouds and sun slid overhead.

Where we first encountered the kelp, the long tendrils reached for the light, laying down when they reached the surface. This caused the ripples to flatten out, leaving a glassy surface. The seals, sea birds, and even the odd kelp crab seemed quite at home out there. I was a grateful visitor.

Bobbing around on the surface of the vast ocean gave me the same sense of walking amid the redwood giants. A sense of being a tiny part of the wonderful world.

            Santa Monica Pier Aquarium aquarist Jose Bacallao shows Ruskin the ropes off Palos Verdes.

Heal the Bay chief Ruskin Hartley says sewage isn’t sexy, but it’s fascinating:

I recently had the chance to tour the Hyperion treatment plant with a group of staff and volunteers from Heal the Bay. Many thanks to our friends at the Bureau of Sanitation for organizing an instructive tour. Here’ some of what I learned:

1. Hyperion was one of the 12 Greek Titans and the father of the god Helius. Hyperion is also the name of a sewage treatment plant in L.A. It’s also the name of the world’s tallest tree — a 379-foot coast redwood in Redwood National Park.

2. Hyperion is the largest sewage plant, by volume, west of the Mississippi. It treats 300 million gallons a day (MGD) on a regular basis and can handle 900 MGD flat out. By comparison, you’d only need 100 MGD to fill the Rose Bowl. Or 90,000 fans. Take your pick.

3. You may have heard of effluent. It’s the treated wastewater discharged into a bay or ocean. But did you know that influent is the name for what they call the raw sewage that flows in the front door of the plant. I didn’t.

4. The city of L.A. purchased the land that Hyperion stands on in 1892 and built the first modern plant in 1949. Up until that time, raw sewage was discharged to the Bay. But I use the word modern loosely. From 1949-98, the plant blended treated and untreated effluent and then pumped it into the Bay. The result? Sick surfers, dead fish, and dolphins with skin lesions. Oh, and a fight with Heal the Bay.

5. Heal the Bay was founded in 1985 to get Hyperion to clean up its act. By 1987 officials had agreed to fix the problem. But it took 12 years and $1.6 billion to get to a place where only treated effluent was pumped into the Bay. Now surfers are healthier, dolphins are happier, and the fish die of natural causes. Unless it’s raining. But urban runoff is another story and a much more challenging problem we work on day in day out.

6. Despite the fact the new plant has allowed the Bay to recover, the treated effluent itself is not safe for humans. Seagulls may swim in the treated water ponds, but if you or I did the same we would get sick. So the last piece of the treatment puzzle is the dilution provided by the Santa Monica Bay. It does it tirelessly and doesn’t get paid.

7. It can take several days for influent to get from your toilet to Hyperion. But once there, the liquid is processed within a day. The solids take longer to be digested by beneficial bacteria and converted to compost that is used in Kern County farms and Griffith Park.

8. Some 6,700 miles of sewage line feed into Hyperion. That’s like L.A. to N.Y. and back.

9. About 80% of the power needs for Hyperion are met from methane gas generated on-site from all that poop.

Heal the Bay staff is all smiles after a tour of the Hyperion plant, the historic Ground Zero for the group.