Marine Life

It's not surprising that with eight arms and inquisitive nature, the two-spotted octopus is pretty handy around its tank at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium. Still, those reporting for work Thursday at the popular beachfront attraction were caught by surprise when they were greeted by water lapping around the kelp forest display, the shark and ray tank and the rocky reef exhibit.

The first comprehensive effort to identify and catalog every species in the world's oceans, from microbes to blue whales, is a year from completion. But early discoveries have profoundly altered understanding of life beneath the sea, senior scientists say. New tracking tools, for example, show that some bluefin tuna migrate between Los Angeles and Yokohama, Japan; one tagged tuna crossed the Pacific three times in a year.

A proposal to install an electrified artificial reef on the ocean floor off Lauderdale-by-the-Sea has won approval from a key federal agency, making it more likely that the high-tech conservation project will get built.

On Thursday, a state task force could recommend meaningful protections for crucial parts of the ocean off Southern California. Or it could settle for far too little. In the 50 years I've been exploring the world's oceans, I've seen drastic changes. Many of the marine species we depend on for food and other products have been decimated -- existing now at only about 10% of their previous levels. And as marine life has disappeared, commercial fishing operations have faltered or failed.

The ocean off the Palos Verdes Peninsula has become one of the key battlegrounds in the long-running effort to implement a state law designed to create a network of habitats off the California coast to protect depleted fish populations. The contentious debate over the size of the marine habitat in the waters around Rocky Point is emblematic of the disputes and hard-fought battles that have been waged since the Marine Life Protection Act was adopted in 1999. The waters off the promontory are abundant with marine life and have long been favored by sport and commercial fishing crews.

Trevor Niemann has grown up along the cliffs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, with the Pacific Ocean as his backyard playground. To this 17-year-old avid beachgoer, it just makes sense to be concerned about the welfare of the coastal waters and marine life. Niemann, a senior at the Chadwick School, signed up for marine biology this year, but he and his classmates have taken their studies outside of the classroom, supporting proposals under review by a state-appointed task force to preserve a large swath of coastal water from fishing.

In the wee hours one morning in 2006, the trawler Infidel sank off the southern end of Santa Catalina Island, taking several tons of squid and a 9,000-pound fishing net down with it. The Infidel came to rest on its keel, about 150 feet under the sea. But in the turbid currents, the fine-mesh hemp and polypropylene net -- 40 feet high, several hundred feet long and made to last thousands of years -- wrapped itself around the wreck and became a deadly snare for marine life.