California Coast

Princess Cruises is taking the plunge and basing one of its ships year-round in San Francisco . The 2,600-passenger Grand Princess is offering trips to Alaska, Mexico , Hawaii and the California coast from the City by the Bay. Hawaii is a mainstay of the schedule, with frequent 15-day round trips in the spring, fall and winter. Ports of call include Honolulu ( Oahu ), Nawiliwili ( Kauai ), Lahaina ( Maui ) and Hilo ( Hawaii ) in the islands, plus Ensenada, Mexico.

Princess Cruises is taking the plunge and basing one of its ships year-round in San Francisco . The 2,600-passenger Grand Princess is offering trips to Alaska, Mexico , Hawaii and the California coast from the City by the Bay. Hawaii is a mainstay of the schedule, with frequent 15-day round trips in the spring, fall and winter. Ports of call include Honolulu ( Oahu ), Nawiliwili ( Kauai ), Lahaina ( Maui ) and Hilo ( Hawaii ) in the islands, plus Ensenada, Mexico.

A good argument can be made that no one since Father Junipero Serra has had as much impact on coastal development in California as Peter Douglas. Douglas, who died a week ago, wrote and helped pass Proposition 20, the California Coastal Commission initiative, in 1972. He wrote the 1976 Coastal Act, worked for the commission from its early days and was its outspoken executive director for more than 25 years despite often fierce opposition, including a nearly successful attempt by then-Gov.

A magnitude-4.3 earthquake centered just offshore rattled the Northern California coast Sunday morning but caused no damage, authorities reported. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake's epicenter was in the Pacific Ocean about 28 miles southwest of Ferndale, a quaint town of 1,370 people filled with dozens of well-preserved Victorian homes and store fronts. The temblor occurred at about 10:25 a.m. ALSO: Hiker killed at Eaton Canyon was 17-year-old girl Pain doctor's office raided in prescription drug abuse probe Bauhaus rocker Peter Murphy denies he was drunk when arrested dan.weikel@latimes.com

Early on the first day of 2009, a gold Toyota Corolla exited Interstate 5 in southern San Diego County and headed west, dodging puddles and "SUBJECT TO FLOODING" signs until it reached Border Field State Park, the coastal reserve where California's coastline begins. That was me, on the brink of something big. It was a cloudy, soggy Thursday morning. I stepped from the car and set off on foot, following an unhelpful set of signs until my sneakers were caked in runoff gunk from the rain-soaked Tia Juana River Valley.

After being brought back from the brink of extinction, sea otters are again in peril, with an unprecedented number of deaths along the California coast in the last year. The U.S. Geological Survey reported that 335 dead, sick or injured otters were found in 2011, a record high. "We're starting to see a perplexing trend suggesting increased shark attacks on sea otters," said Tim Tinker of the USGS' Western Ecological Research Center. Shark bites accounted for 15% of otter deaths in the late 1990s, but that percentage nearly doubled in 2010 and 2011, Tinker said.

Reporting from Sinkyone Wilderness, Calif. ? The wind roared like a Roosevelt elk in rut. Rain smacked into plank walls like waves breaking on rocks. Down the bluff, the Pacific surged and heaved. What bothered me, though, was the scurrying in the rafters. We had found shelter after hiking through a downpour but apparently were not alone in this drafty seaside barn in Mendocino County's Sinkyone (pronounced SINK ee yoan) Wilderness. A muffled plunk sounded inches from my face, the only part of me not encased in a mummy bag. Struggling to free an arm, I groped for the flashlight.

On March 15, whales began stranding on the beaches of Abaco Island in the Bahamas. Local residents and a team of scientists in the area pushed a lucky few out to sea, but many of the whales did not survive. Three months later, the U.S.

The Bush Administration has decided to withdraw 87 remaining tracts off the California coast from its new five-year plan for federal oil and gas leasing on the outer continental shelf. Totaling some 500,000 acres off Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, the tracts had been left vulnerable to development in 1990, when President Bush put the rest of the federal government's offshore tracts along the state's coastline off limits until the year 2000.

A state Senate subcommittee was warned Thursday that not only could an oil spill the size of the Valdez incident happen in California waters, but it would be harder to clean up. Representatives from the Coastal Commission, Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Coast Guard told the Senate subcommittee on offshore oil and gas development that heavy seas off the coast of California would make surface containment of an oil spill almost impossible.

Like many California transplants, David Helvarg has repeatedly reinvented himself. He's been a freelance journalist, a television documentary filmmaker, even a licensed private investigator. He seems to have found his true calling with the sea, or more precisely marine conservation. It began in earnest with his 2001 book, "The Blue Frontier: Dispatches From the America's Ocean Wilderness. " Since then, he founded the Blue Frontier Campaign, becoming an environmental activist, hosting an annual summit for small coastal and ocean conservation groups to join his Seaweed Rebellion.

Shipping lanes along the California coast - the oceanic superhighways for Asian goods coming to America - are poised to be rerouted in order to protect endangered whales from collisions. The International Maritime Organization, which governs global shipping, has approved three proposals that would shift one lane through the Santa Barbara Channel and the approaches to the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex and ports located in San Francisco Bay. The route adjustments were recommended by the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration after four blue whales were thought to have been killed by ship strikes in the Santa Barbara Channel in 2007 and an additional five whales were suspected ship-strike victims off the Central and Northern California coast in 2010.

Hundreds came in uniform to Terminal Island on Saturday to say goodbye to the veteran Coast Guardsman killed last week when his boat was rammed by suspected smugglers. His shipmates called him a patriot and gave him the standard salute for a comrade killed in action. But amid the pomp and circumstance of military mourning - the flyovers and rifle salutes - another side emerged to Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne III, 34. A doting father known to do push-ups with his two young sons on his back.

The small Coast Guard inflatable vessel was 20 yards from the panga, an open fishing boat that law enforcement officers say has become the craft of choice to ferry untold numbers of marijuana bales and undocumented immigrants from Mexico to Southern California. Spotted earlier by a Coast Guard cutter, the panga was running without lights, a standard practice in the illicit trade, according to investigators. The four men on the boat dispatched from the cutter Halibut approached it cautiously, about 200 yards from the shore of Santa Cruz Island, off the Santa Barbara coast.

In its day, the five-masted George E. Billings was a graceful schooner that crossed the Pacific with enough lumber to build 100 homes. In the end, it was a barge for weekend anglers, a white elephant so costly that its owner towed it to sea, torched it and let it sink. A four-paragraph story in the Feb. 12, 1941, Los Angeles Times made a vague reference to its resting place: "a lonely island reef north of here. " A photo showed a flaming hulk with smoke billowing over rugged hills.

A 39-year-old man surfing off the Santa Barbara County coast was killed Tuesday in a shark attack that occurred off the same beach where a bodyboarder was killed two years ago. Francisco Javier Solorio Jr. of nearby Orcutt was dragged by a friend onto the beach after he suffered a massive bite on his upper torso that turned the water around him red, Santa Barbara County sheriff's officials said. He died at the scene. "His friend saw the shark bite him," said Sgt. Mark Williams.

A 45-day extension of a 4-year-old moratorium on new, exploratory drilling for oil and natural gas off the California coast was approved today by the House Appropriations Committee. The extension of the drilling moratorium was routinely incorporated in a continuing resolution intended to finance the Interior Department and a host of other federal agencies at current spending levels until Nov. 15.

John and Josette Rekettye of Laguna Niguel used the break in a series of storms Sunday to get out of the house and take their two, large golden retrievers for a walk along Dana Point Harbor. After a week of stormy weather, the partly sunny skies and beautiful views Sunday led thousands of Orange County residents to spend a day outdoors for the first time since the devastating recent storms that put emergency services to a punishing test in Southern California.

Now that that the temperatures aren't so gnarly at the beach, you might want to head to Ventura on Saturday for the first Ventura Oysterfest to celebrate our favorite mollusks. According to the news release, the idea is to “show off the best of what's local: exceptional cuisine, great music, crated beers and outstanding local wines.” To provide the oysters, the organizers have called on oyster farms up and down the California coast. Those attending include the Jolly Oyster , Drakes Bay Oyster Co. , Tomales Bay Oyster Co. , Pickleweed Point Oyster Co . and Carlsbad Aquafarm . Plying the crowd with noshes will be Ventura County restaurants the Sidecar , Osteria Monte Grappa , Twenty88 Food & Drink , Ventura Meat Co. and more.

Sea levels along the California coast are expected to rise up to 1 foot in 20 years, 2 feet by 2050 and as much as 5 1/2 feet by the end of the century, climbing slightly more than the global average and increasing the risk of flooding and storm damage, a new study says. That's because much of California is sinking, extending the reach of a sea that is warming and expanding because of climate change, according to a report by a committee of scientists released Friday by the National Research Council.