Shoreline

San Luis Obispo County sheriff's officials are investigating what they are calling the suspicious deaths of a 7-year-old girl and her 43-year-old mother, both of Hermosa Beach, officials said Saturday. The bodies of Gillian Harrigan and her mother, Marcia, were found Thursday on the rocky shoreline near California 1. Officials did not disclose causes of death. Autopsies are scheduled for Wednesday. The shoreline north of Pico Creek where they were found is not a popular site for beach- goers.

Once it was a hostel for stewardesses and pilots , but now Honolulu's newest hotel is positioning itself as an alternative to Oahu 's beachfront, family-filled resorts. The Shoreline Hotel Waikiki is the newest property of boutique hotelier Joie de Vivre , the San Francisco-based company that operates more than 30 fiercely individual hotels, many in California. The Shoreline is its second property off the U.S. mainland, along with the Coconut Waikiki Hotel , about three blocks away.

Lake Isabella could fill and overflow late in the spring, officials warned. Kern River Watermaster Chuck Williams said he expects Lake Isabella to fill to capacity sometime between May 20 and June 10, because of the melting snow in the High Sierra. He said if the lake fills, some excess water may have to be sent over the spillways, which could cause flooding along the shoreline.

Contra Costa County pier Point Pinole Pier Overview: The allure is the walk through the grassy parklands of the Point Pinole Regional Shoreline to get to the 1,250-foot concrete pier. The views are not impressive — San Francisco isn't visible from this vantage point — but the solitude makes it special. Background: Beginning in the 1880s, several companies used the spot for manufacturing gunpowder and dynamite. The original pier (its pilings can be seen at the foot of the current pier, which was built in 1977)

A swimming pool company president was charged with second-degree manslaughter in connection with the drowning of a 6-year-old boy whose arm was trapped by the suction of a powerful drain pump. Shoreline Pools President David Lionetti, 53, of Stamford, was released on $25,000 bond. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Re "Beach-Erosion Funds Float Away," April 29: I read in dismay that the president's proposed budget does not include critically needed funds to protect and preserve Orange County's shoreline. Surfside Colony, which is part of the city of Seal Beach and is the starting point for much of the sand between Seal Beach and Newport Beach, suffers from perilous erosion. At the present, some homes in Surfside have less that 15 feet between them and the pounding surf of the Pacific Ocean.

The Coast Guard commandant Monday approved Exxon's plan to scrub at least 305 miles of shoreline fouled by America's worst oil spill, but he demanded that the company also target oil-tainted beaches outside Prince William Sound. Adm. Paul Yost also expressed reservations that Exxon's draft plan was too optimistic. The plan, released Monday, calls for Exxon to hire 4,000 people to clean most of the soiled shoreline by the third week in August. The cleanup can be be completed by August if a hot-water cleaning method that can damage beach life is used aggressively, or by mid-September if environmentally safer methods play a larger role, the plan says.

Exxon will hire 4,000 people to scrub 305 miles of shoreline fouled by America's worst oil spill and says the job can be finished by the third week in August, according to a plan obtained Monday. The cleanup can be be completed by August if a "steam-cleaning" method is used aggressively, or by mid-September if environmentally safer methods play a larger role, says the plan obtained by Associated Press. Those projections were disputed by a state environmentalist, who said after reviewing the plan that only about 150 miles could be cleaned before winter.

We've been inundated by commercials for Proposition P. Occidental Petroleum proponents have shockingly misrepresented their case, verbally and visually. First, they label their oil drilling project the "Palisades Inland Energy Project," with emphasis on the Inland . To buttress that falsehood, they use every trick in the television bag. They never allow the camera to show the beach, which is right across Pacific Coast Highway from their project. Very skillful. Nor do they, of course, show the ocean.

For the past 27 years or so, Mission Bay Park, a former swampland turned aquatic resort, has been the pride and joy of San Diego's summer attractions. About 14 million visitors each year bask in its 4,600 acres of land and water; about 2,500 boaters now have their skiffs and yachts stationed in its marinas. But Mother Nature has not been impressed. Storms, high tides, powerful waves from winds and boats and the continuous lapping of water against land have significantly eroded the bay's shoreline.

How was that little vacation you took? You remember. It cost you almost nothing, it burned some calories (or, after that ice cream cone, added a few) and briefly immersed you in quintessential California. It was that walk on a pier, those structures that stretch out like a gateway into the Pacific. Perhaps we don't think about them much, but they're part of what has made California California: Piers (or wharfs as they were called in the mid-19th century) once were the primary way of moving food, cargo and travelers on and off sailing vessels.

The search for debris from the Japanese tsunami - already making landfall in Canada, Alaska and the Pacific Northwest - has begun in earnest in Southern California. Staffers for the environmental group Heal the Bay began systematic surveys Friday of the Los Angeles County coastline, searching for objects that may have been dragged to sea by tsunami waves that devastated Japan more than a year ago. But if the first day of patrolling the kelp-strewn cobblestones of Malaga Cove was any indication, the debris that has drifted across the Pacific to the West Coast - and so far has included a soccer ball, a motorcycle and a 66-foot-long dock - has yet to hit Southern California.

A spectacular stretch of Northern California coastline that includes ocean-side bluffs, beaches, rolling hills and redwood groves will be permanently protected from development under a landmark deal approved by the state Coastal Commission. Nearly 10 square miles of untouched shoreline, wooded glens, streams and farmland in northern Santa Cruz County, extending several miles inland, will be transferred to the state and federal governments, which will operate it as open space and preserve portions for agriculture.

As a child crossing the English Channel with his family to immigrate to America, Peter M. Douglas was mesmerized by the churning seas and his first sighting of a whale, an experience that he said forged an "intangible, unbreakable, lifelong bond" with the ocean that deepened as he grew up in Southern California. That fondness for the ocean would later lead him to become one of the fiercest and most controversial guardians of the state's 1,100-mile-long coastline who battled to preserve its natural beauty and public access to its beaches.

For years, San Francisco's Ocean Beach has been under assault by such powerful surf that a fierce winter storm can scour away 25 feet of bluff in just days. The startling pace of the erosion near the San Francisco Zoo has compelled the city to spend $5 million to shore up the crumbling bluffs. The strategy has been simple: drop huge rocks and mounds of sand to protect the nearby Great Highway and the sewer pipes underneath from being destroyed by the crashing waves. But as the enormous rocks have piled up, adding to a jumble of concrete — chunks of curb and bits and pieces of gutters — from parking lots that have tumbled onto the shore, so too have the demands that the city get rid of it all and let the coastline retreat naturally.

Sometimes I tell outsiders that all Minnesotans are issued a lake cabin at birth. Not true, but we do come rather close: I once read that 25% of the population has access to a private cabin, either through direct ownership, generous relatives or good friends. My family has been in that lucky percentage for more than 70 years, thanks to a log cabin my father designed and my grandfather built in 1938 on Round Lake in the Gull Lake chain. (It isn't really round, but Dented Oval Lake would sound silly.)

I read with interest the letter (Southeast/Long Beach sections, June 20) severely criticizing me for resisting certain demands of the lesbian and gay community and those seeking to restrict U.S. Navy activities in Long Beach Harbor. As for the Lesbian and Gay Pride Festival and Parade, I oppose any organization taking over our newest shoreline park during the warm-weather season, charging $5 admission for entrance to a facility that already belongs to the public, and selling alcoholic beverages.

Although the Disney Development Co. has chosen not to proceed with DisneySea in Long Beach (Times, Dec. 13), I do hope that the "movers and shakers" in this city will not focus too long on the negative aspects of this decision. Rather, what needs to happen is a refocusing on the many other possibilities for our city--a city that has the need and the potential to revitalize not only its downtown and shoreline areas, but its east and west sides, central and northern boundaries. As vice chair of the Disney Citizens Advisory Committee, I would hope that the mayor and City Council, which appointed this 55-member committee, would not simply disband this group.

After a long car ride, my wife and I stopped at Lovers Point Park in Pacific Grove to let our 4-year-old daughter, Ediza, release some energy. Its beach is popular with kids who like to ride boogie boards and check out hermit crabs in the tide pools. Ediza chased seagulls and collected seashells. We eventually made our way to Veteran's Memorial Park in Monterey, where a friend had set up her 1984 Volkswagen camper van - named Brownie - for us to sleep in. The park, about a mile uphill from Old Monterey and the Fisherman's Wharf area, feels like a forested oasis with 40 campsites available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Riding the wind and ocean currents, hordes of blue, alien-like creatures have descended upon South Florida's shoreline, entangling beachgoers in poisonous tentacles and delivering painful stings by the hundreds. Each invader, in fact, isn't an "it" but a "they" ? a colony of organisms that combine to create a single entity, the Portuguese man-of-war. The seafaring wanderer with the neon-blue gas bag and tentacles as long as 30 feet seems more suited to a sci-fi horror flick than a sunny tourist beach.