Marine Sanctuaries

A plan to turn 26 miles of Malibu coastline into the largest marine sanctuary in California has won preliminary approval from the city but may need to wait a year before being sent to the Legislature, officials said this week. Although members of the city's Environmental Review Board endorsed the concept of a marine refuge Tuesday, a comprehensive bill package would need to be completed in as little as two months to be heard before the Legislature this year, said board Chairwoman Marti Witter.

The sea lion pups jostled with one another in the small pool, diving for the herring and capelin being thrown at them and popping up with fish tails poking out of their little mouths. "The difference a month makes!" JoAnn Smith, a volunteer at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, remarked as the pups tangled in the water. "Amazing!" The months-old sea lions had come to the care center starving and struggling to survive. They were malnourished, lethargic, ribs and hip bones showing through their smooth dark fur. Their mothers had left them to forage for food, and they were stranded, fending for themselves.

Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica) said Thursday he will introduce legislation designating Santa Monica Bay as a national marine sanctuary. Levine said that he decided to carry the bill after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declined to declare the bay a marine sanctuary on its own. Levine said that a study by UC Santa Barbara justified the designation.

Federal officials Thursday proposed a massive expansion to federal protection of waters off Northern California from offshore oil drilling, seabed mining and ocean dumping. The proposal would more than double the size of the national marine sanctuaries around the Cordell Bank and the Farallon Islands. When combined with the massive Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, the newly expanded system would protect more than a third of California's offshore waters from oil drilling, from Cambria in San Luis Obispo County to Point Arena in Mendocino County.

The Malibu City Council has approved a scaled-back version of a marine refuge, limiting the proposed coastal sanctuary to two small no-take zones and designated tide pools after legislators said they could not back a more extensive plan. In letters to the city, Sen.

After seven years of soul-searching, federal officials on Thursday agreed to allow tow-in surfing at California's most famous big-wave riding spot, known as Mavericks, as part of a major expansion of federal rules governing three marine sanctuaries.

The value of the waters off Ventura County is more than surface deep. They are an aquarium, home to 25 shark species, elephant seals and the world's largest concentration of the largest animals ever, blue whales. They are a factory, where cold currents from Alaska and warm water from Baja churn in a nutrient broth to pump energy through the food web. They support an industry of squid, urchin and rockfish. And this week, these waters become a laboratory.

It is one of those observations that seldom alight in our awareness. A realization too grandiose and, at the same time, too ethereal to take hold. Unless we pause. Then we savor what an astonishing thing is at hand: The greatest of California's many natural wonders remains hidden at our doorstep. The largest animals that ever lived, bigger than dinosaurs, are swimming out there now on the other side of Highway 1.

The Bush Administration is debating whether to allow oil and gas drilling in the newly established Monterey Bay national marine sanctuary, Rep. Leon Panetta (D-Carmel Valley) charged Monday. "I think it's nuts," Panetta said at a news conference where he appealed to President Bush to support a ban on oil-gas exploration or development in the highly sensitive waters, which includes parts of the Big Sur coastline and breeding areas for seals and sea lions.

In a mixed message for marine protection, a citizens advisory panel offered two dramatically different approaches Wednesday for managing waters rich in marine life that surround the Channel Islands off the Ventura County coast. The 20-member sanctuary advisory council, after more than a year of study, deadlocked over two competing visions for the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.

State wildlife officials cited a Riverside County man Sunday for allegedly poaching dozens of lobsters inside one of Southern California's new marine sanctuaries, in what authorities called the first major violation of fishing restrictions that took effect Jan. 1. The state Department of Fish and Game said Marbel A. Para, 30, of Romoland and a companion were diving off Laguna Beach shortly after midnight when wardens stopped them and found 47...

A well-known marine biologist and whale-watching tour operator has been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly feeding killer whales in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, in violation of federal wildlife provisions. Nancy Black, owner and operator of Monterey Bay Whale Watch, was indicted in San Jose federal court Wednesday and charged with violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which bars harming, harassing, feeding and otherwise interfering with marine mammals, including dolphins, sea lions and whales.

Wardens won't be the only people on patrol when new fishing restrictions take effect Jan. 1, setting up a network of state marine reserves on about 15% of the Southern California coast. Environmentalists are deploying dozens of volunteers to keep an eye on the region's new Marine Protected Areas through a coalition of programs called MPA Watch. By boat, plane and from the shore, they will monitor fishing vessels, kayakers, divers and any other human activity in the new sanctuaries.

A coalition of environmental groups is asking the federal government to require ships traveling through California's marine sanctuaries to slow down to avoid fatal collisions with whales, a problem they say has climbed to "unsustainable levels. " Four groups filed a petition Monday asking the U.S. Department of Commerce to establish a 10-knot limit for large commercial vessels traveling through California's four National Marine Sanctuaries in the Channel Islands, Monterey Bay, Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank.

After seven years of soul-searching, federal officials on Thursday agreed to allow tow-in surfing at California's most famous big-wave riding spot, known as Mavericks, as part of a major expansion of federal rules governing three marine sanctuaries.

The Monterey Bay marine sanctuary off California's Central Coast will expand its borders to include one of the largest undersea mountains in U.S. waters, President Bush announced Friday. Speaking before the Smithsonian's new Ocean Hall exhibit in Washington, D.C., Bush pledged to proceed with the long-awaited expansion of the sanctuary to include the Davidson Seamount, a dormant undersea volcano, and its coral forests.

Out here, you can see nothing of the turbulence below. Ghost-like boats pass through the tropical heat mist. Otherwise, water and sky fuse into an empty horizon. Underneath, however, great oceans collide at this place, and America's dreams for managing them too. These waters off the Florida Keys mark the convergence of the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. They also mark the collision zone for age-old demands and New Age claims on the nation's marine resources.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes When the waves turn the minutes to hours? --Gordon Lightfoot, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" * Every awful thing that could happen to a mariner eventually did. During the 200-year history of shipping on the Great Lakes, nightmarish gales screeched down from Canada, explosions and fires caught men off guard, collisions shook the air on foggy nights, lost captains groped the coastline only to hear the sickening strike of hull against rock.

Cleanup efforts have slowed and garbage continues to pile up in a remote chain of Pacific islands that President Bush two years ago made the biggest and most environmentally protected area of ocean in the world. Winning rare praise from conservationists, Bush declared the 140,000-square-mile stretch of ocean including a chain of islands in northwestern Hawaii the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in June 2006. His proclamation featured some of the strictest measures ever put in place for a marine environment, including a prohibition on any material that might injure its sensitive coral reefs and 7,000 rare species -- a fourth of them found nowhere else in the world -- even if the debris drifts in from thousands of miles away.

When the Macon was launched in 1933, the giant dirigible was more than just the biggest object ever to sail through the skies. To a nation laid low by the Depression, it was a symbol of hope. "Floating majestically in the sky, the Macon is a sight thrilling to every American and an impressive symbol of our Navy's airpower," crackled a newsreel of the day. Newspapers called the Macon "the queen of the airways."