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Heal the Bay Blog

Category: News

What Are Those Black Clumps on the Beach?

08.20.2012 |

News

“I was walking along Dockweiler Beach from Marina del Rey towards El Segundo, and I couldn’t help but notice black sticky roundish clumps all along the beach in the sand where the water breaks along the shore. Are these oil deposits? I stepped on a few and they stuck to my feet and I was wondering what they were? Thanks for your help.” 

As we often receive variants of this question, our Science & Policy team prepared an answer:

“Natural oil seeps are present in the Santa Monica Bay off the coast of Redondo Beach and Manhattan Beach. They are a natural geological occurrence and are not caused by any human activity. On average, about 10 barrels (420 gallons) of oil from the seeps reach the sea surface daily in Santa Monica Bay. Surface oil generally drifts northward, towards the shore, reaching the beaches from Redondo Beach to Malibu in a few days. Tar on Santa Monica Bay beaches also comes from natural seeps in the Santa Barbara Channel. Geologic activity, like earthquakes, can affect the flow of natural oil seeps.”

As for removing beach tar from the bottoms of your feet, many of us beachgoers—especially those of us who’ve spent time on Santa Barbara’s beaches, where tar is even more prevalent—recommend using either baby or olive oil.

Got more questions? Ask them on our Facebook page.

Want to connect more with Heal the Bay? Join us!

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And the Emmy Goes to…

08.15.2012 |

Long Beach / AvalonMalibu / Pacific PalisadesMarina del Rey / Playa del ReyNewsPalos Verdes PeninsulaSanta MonicaSouth BayVenice Beach

We are proud to announce that KTLA5 won a 2012 Emmy for its one-hour special about Heal the Bay’s Coastal Cleanup Day program. The Emmy was the third that KTLA has won for its CCD-focused programming.

We are grateful to KTLA for showcasing our work so effectively. This Emmy win is testament to KTLA’s long support of our mission to keep Southern California’s coast and waters healthy, safe and clean.

In case you missed the show, KTLA will rebroadcast it on Saturday, September 8 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, September 9 at 4 p.m., just in time for Coastal Cleanup Day on Saturday, September 15.

You can join this year’s Coastal Cleanup Day, the biggest volunteer day on the planet: Find a cleanup site near you and sign up now.

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Sewage Spill in Orange County

08.13.2012 |

Beach Report CardNews

As of August 11, the harbor water area at the Huntington Harbour Boat Launch in Orange County at Warner and PCH to the boat docks at Bluewater Lane is closed to swimming and diving due to a sewage spill.

Baby Beach in Dana Point and Poche Beach in San Clemente were also on alert for high bacteria levels.

County environmental health officials also advise beachgoers to avoid contact with any beach area adjacent to storm drains, creeks and rivers, where bacteria may be high.

Ocean and bay waters are closed when an immediate health hazard is identified, such as a sewage spill.

More information here.

 

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Win Tix to 'Frozen Planet' Premiere at Hollywood Bowl

06.28.2012 |

News

Want to celebrate International Joke Day? Submit your funniest ocean-themed joke for a chance to win a pair of tickets for the July 6 world premiere of Frozen Planet in concert at the Hollywood Bowl. In order to win, you must Like us on Facebook and submit an aquatic/ocean-related joke.

Entries must be submitted in the form of a comment to the post on our Facebook wall by Monday, July 2 at noon PST. We will choose the best joke and announce the winners at 5 p.m. PST on Monday. The winner will receive two tickets to the Frozen Planet in concert performance at the Hollywood Bowl July 6 at 8 p.m.

About Frozen Planet in Concert

Los Angeles Philharmonic

George Fenton, conductor

This stunning new production is the ultimate portrait of the Polar Regions. Led by the award-winning composer, the event combines live orchestral music with breathtaking HD footage from the landmark series Frozen Planet, co-produced by the BBC and the Discovery Channel.

Special Offer for Heal the Bay’s Facebook fans

20% discount to July 6 event at the Hollywood Bowl. Discount available for bench seats in sections M & N. Tickets may be purchased online, by phone at 323-850-2000, or in-person at the Box Office (2301 N. Highland Avenue) by using the code word PLANET, available now.

For tickets and information, visit HollywoodBowl.com

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San Onofre to Power Down?

06.25.2012 |

NewsSouth Bay

The Los Angeles Times reports that “California energy officials are beginning to plan for the possibility of a long-range future without the San Onofre nuclear power plant.”

The story continues:

“The plant’s unexpected, nearly five-month outage has had officials scrambling to replace its power this summer and has become a wild card in already complicated discussions about the state’s energy future.

That long-range planning process already involves dealing with the possible repercussions of climate change, a mandate to boost the state’s use of renewable sources to 33% of the energy supply by 2020 and another mandate to phase out a process known as once-through cooling, which uses ocean water to cool coastal power plants, that will probably take some other plants out of service.”

Heal the Bay has long worked to end once-through cooling, a process in which fresh ocean water is sucked into the power plant, cycled through to cool the systems, and flushed out, destroying thousands of animals a day.

Help our efforts to protect marine animals from threats such as once-through cooling, desalination and habitat degradation.

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It Takes a Village to Clean the L.A. River

06.18.2012 |

Marina del Rey / Playa del ReyNews

Even though the L.A. River has received significant media attention since the EPA designated it a “traditional navigable water” in July 2010, a lot of work still needs to be done to educate the public about the river and its many access points.

There are 1 million people living within a one-mile footprint of the Los Angeles River, and there are 9-10 million people living in the L.A. River watershed, according to Friends of the LA River staffer Karin Flores, writing in a KCET Departures blog post.

Flores continues: “Three thousand volunteers is a great start, but we need more. …here’s what you can do to help the revitalization plans: explore the river, and share it with those who have never experienced it. Show friends and family the many pocket parks, historic bridges, murals, and decorative gates. Pedal the bike paths, birdwatch in the estuary, and ride a horse on the equestrian river trails.”

Explore the river yourself. Join Heal the Bay and the Pacific American Volunteer Association on June 23 for a river cleanup to kick off Take L.A. by Storm this summer.

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Calif approves new marine protected areas off north coast, finishing statewide network

06.07.2012 |

Long Beach / AvalonMalibu / Pacific PalisadesMarina del Rey / Playa del ReyMarine Protected AreasNewsPalos Verdes PeninsulaSanta MonicaSouth BayVenice Beach

California created another group of ocean protection zones on Wednesday, putting the finishing touches on a vast network of protected areas that dot the sea from Mexico to the Oregon border.

The Fish & Game Commission voted unanimously to approve the new zones off the state’s far north coast from Point Arena in Mendocino County to the Oregon border, where fishing is restricted or banned outright in areas.

“We are poised to return California’s marine resources to the sustainable abundance we all once enjoyed,” said Richard Rogers, a commission member from Santa Barbara, choking up as he cast his vote after more than seven years of work on the project.

The vote was an outgrowth of the 1999 Marine Life Protection Act, which called for a system of marine protected areas along the coast based on scientific study and years of public input.

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L.A., ban the plastic bags

05.22.2012 |

About UsMarina del Rey / Playa del ReyNewsPalos Verdes PeninsulaSouth BayVenice Beach

On May 23, Heal the Bay will lead a rally on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall to urge the City Council to vote for a ban on single-use shopping bags. Once again, we are heartened that the Los Angeles Times editorial board joins us in urging the approval of “a ban on the carry-out bags to protect the environment.”  Read an excerpt from their May 22 editorial below:

The City Council on Wednesday will consider whether to ban stores in Los Angeles from offering single-use plastic carry-out bags. A ban would take some getting used to, but examples from other jurisdictions, including the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, show that it can be done and that shoppers and stores quickly adapt. A ban is the right move. The council should adopt it.

For a city with such a strong environmental ethic, Los Angeles is lagging on the plastic bag issue. It has been batting around the idea of a ban for three years as cities up and down the state acted to keep millions of the bags from being freely distributed, only to end up fouling waterways, beaches and the ocean.

Like the Styrofoam containers that once held fast-food hamburgers, plastic bags became popular because they seem cheap and convenient. But it turns out they seem cheap only because the true costs aren’t assessed directly to the seller or the buyer, but to all of us when we bear the burden of environmental degradation and cleanup. Some fast-food chains recognized that they, their customers and our society could take a step forward by reaching back and returning to the use of paper containers. Others caught up when laws required them to. No one is the worse off for it, and we’re all better off without the Styrofoam clogging streets and sewers and, eventually, forming part of a floating mid-ocean garbage patch.

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Plastics Threaten Ocean Ecology and Our Food Web

05.11.2012 |

Long Beach / AvalonMalibu / Pacific PalisadesMarina del Rey / Playa del ReyNewsPalos Verdes PeninsulaSanta MonicaSouth BayVenice Beach

They may be small, but sea skaters are alerting scientists to the immense perils posed by plastic pollution in the ocean.

“We’re seeing changes in this marine insect that can be directly attributed to the plastic,” says Miriam Goldstein, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, who’s studying these invertebrates.

Goldstein told the Inter Press Service (IPS) that sea skaters now lay their eggs on the abundant fingernail-sized pieces of plastic floating in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean instead of relying on a passing seabird feather or bit of driftwood.

According to IPS, the study is the first proof that plastics in the open ocean are affecting marine invertebrates with consequences for the entire marine food web because nearly all plastics break down into smaller and smaller pieces and everything from turtles to seabirds and fish mistake bits of plastic as food (read more here).

Researchers at Scripps have also reported that nine percent of the fish collected during their expedition to the Pacific Gyre (the site of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch) had plastic waste in their stomachs. They estimated that fish in the intermediate ocean depths of the North Pacific Ocean ingest plastic at a rate of roughly 12,000 to 24,000 tons per year.

One of the ways Heal the Bay is working to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up polluting the ocean and threatening the fish we consume, is by advocating for a ban on single-use plastic bags in Los Angeles, with the long-term goal of establishing a statewide ban. Less than five per cent of the 19 billion plastic bags used in California every year are recycled and many of these plastic bags become litter and eventually end up polluting our oceans.

Join our fight against plastic bags and take action today.

Find out more about marine debris. 

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Weather Underground, HTB Partner on Beach Report Card

05.07.2012 |

About UsBeach Report CardLong Beach / AvalonMalibu / Pacific PalisadesMarina del Rey / Playa del ReyNewsPalos Verdes PeninsulaSanta MonicaSouth BayVenice Beach

Just in time for summer vacation planning, weather information site Weather Underground is now providing Heal the Bay’s Beach Report Card grades to beachgoers in California and the Pacific Northwest on its Beach Weather pages, potentially reaching 12.5 million users each month in the U.S.

Not just weather geeks, but tourists, surfers and swimmers alike can assess water quality before heading to the shore, as well as real-time weather forecasts, wind conditions and tidal phases. Live webcams and satellite images also document up-to-the minute conditions.

Grades from our Beach Report Card are also available as a free iPhone or Android app and at www.beachreportcard.org.

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