Sonoma Coast – Enviro Updates

California bans harvest of red abalone until 2036

December 11, 2025

Claire Barber & Anna Hoch-Kenney, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Just outside Mendocino in the middle of Van Damme Beach, a weathered placard educates bystanders about the region’s red abalone, a once prolific sea snail whose mild taste and iridescent shell attracted throngs of divers up the Northern California coast.

But in November, the beach was quiet aside from small waves lapping against the shoreline and a steady stream of cars racing along Highway 1. Commercial abalone fishing has been illegal for decades, and recreational diving for abalone has been banned since 2018 due to significant population decline. Now all that remains of abalone culture here is the old sign, with its illustrated abalone fading in the sun.

“Abalone diving was part of Northern California culture. It was huge,” said Matt Mattison, a lifelong abalone diver and president of NorCal Underwater Hunters, a spearfishing nonprofit based in the region. “It was a big deal for a lot of families.”

It will be at least 10 more years before Californians get the chance to dive for abalone again. On Thursday, the state’s Fish and Game Commission voted to extend a ban on abalone harvesting in Northern California until 2036, citing continued decline in red abalone populations and ongoing environmental challenges — the longest extension since its initial 2018 closure.

Habitats, Sonoma Coast, WildlifeFish & Game Commission, fisheries, kelp forest, red abalone

Trump administration announces plan for new oil drilling off the coasts of California and Florida

November 20, 2025

Matthew Daly & Matthew Brown, ASSOCIATED PRESS

The offshore drilling proposal drew bipartisan pushback from lawmakers in Florida, where Republican Sen. Rick Scott said the state’s coasts “must remain off the table for oil drilling.”

The Trump administration announced on Thursday new oil drilling off the California and Florida coasts for the first time in decades, advancing a project that critics say could harm coastal communities and ecosystems, as President Donald Trump seeks to expand U.S. oil production.

The oil industry has been seeking access to new offshore areas, including Southern California and off the coast of Florida, as a way to boost U.S. energy security and jobs. The federal government has not allowed drilling in federal waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, which includes offshore Florida and part of offshore Alabama, since 1995, because of concerns about oil spills. California has some offshore oil rigs, but there has been no new leasing in federal waters since the mid-1980s.

Climate Change & Energy, Sonoma Coastfossil fuels industry, ocean pollution, offshore oil drilling

Northern California’s next kelp forests might be growing in a lab

November 15, 2025

Carly Naim, COURTHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

Kelp once formed “underwater rainforests” on the California coast, but these fragile ecosystems have largely disappeared. At a marine lab near the Bay Area, scientists are trying to bring them back.

On a rainy day in September along a craggy slice of California shore, some young bull kelp floated around in a cement tub as if enjoying a bubble bath.

Unlike some of their kin elsewhere at this marine laboratory, ecologists had collected these specimens earlier that day. The scientists working here at UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory hope the kelp will grow, reproduce and eventually spore — an essential step for restoring the kelp forests that once flourished off the coast of Northern California.

This species — Nereocystis luetkeana, commonly known as bull kelp — is the foundational species in kelp forests, an ecosystem that provides habitat and food for countless other marine animals and plants.

An algae, it only lives for a year but can grow up to a foot per day and reach heights of nearly 100 feet. That’s taller than many trees.

Sadly, California’s kelp forests are in what researchers call “massive decline” as climate change disrupts natural processes in the Pacific Ocean. In around the past 10 years, they estimate more than 90% of these ecosystems have disappeared.

Sonoma Coast, WildlifeBodega Marine Laboratory, kelp forest, restoration, sea urchins, warm ocean

Fight over California coast and offshore oil drilling rekindled

October 31, 2025

Austin Murphy, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Richard Charter of Bodega Bay has spent his adult life protecting coasts and oceans, especially from the ravages of energy extraction. When crude oil starts pouring into the sea, his phone tends to go off — as it did around 3 a.m. on an April morning in 2010, following an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

It happened again in the small hours of Oct. 2, 2021, when a plume of oil reached the surface of the Pacific Ocean a few miles off the coast of Huntington Beach. That 25,000-gallon spill, from a ruptured underwater pipeline, fouled 16 miles of Orange County beaches, with oil washing ashore as far south as San Diego.

“I always seem to get the call in the middle of the night,” said Charter, who now works with municipalities up and down the California coast, helping coordinate their response to offshore drilling threats.

That group is on high alert following a recent Houston Chronicle story revealing Trump administration plans to open large swathes of the California coast to offshore drilling.

Climate Change & Energy, Sonoma CoastCordell Bank, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels, National Marine Sanctuary, ocean pollution

Unhealthy levels of domoic acid delay start of recreational Dungeness crab season

October 24, 2025

California Department of Fish & Wildlife

The recreational Dungeness crab season will open beginning November 1, 2025, except in northern California where it has been delayed due to a public health hazard.

State health agencies determined that Dungeness crab in northern California have unhealthy levels of domoic acid and recommended delaying the opening of the recreational fishery in state waters from the California/Oregon border (42° 0.00’ N latitude) south to the Sonoma/Mendocino County line (38° 46.125’ N latitude). Following this recommendation, California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) Director Charlton H. Bonham has delayed the opening of the recreational Dungeness crab fishery in northern California. Recreational take and/or possession of Dungeness crab is prohibited in these closed waters.

Sonoma Coastcrab season, domoic acid, fisheries

Scientists solve mystery of what is killing sea stars

August 4, 2025

Christina Larson, ASSOCIATED PRESS

The cause of sea star wasting disease turns out to be a bacteria called Vibrio pectenicida.

Scientists say they have at last solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars off the Pacific coast of North America in a decade-long epidemic.

Sea stars – often known as starfish – typically have five arms and some species sport up to 24 arms. They range in color from solid orange to tapestries of orange, purple, brown and green.

Starting in 2013, a mysterious sea star wasting disease sparked a mass die-off from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has devastated more than 20 species and continues today. Worst hit was a species called the sunflower sea star, which lost around 90% of its population in the outbreak’s first five years.

“It’s really quite gruesome,” said marine disease ecologist Alyssa Gehman at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia, Canada, who helped pinpoint the cause.

Healthy sea stars have “puffy arms sticking straight out,” she said. But the wasting disease causes them to grow lesions and “then their arms actually fall off.”

The culprit? Bacteria that has also infected shellfish, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Habitats, Sonoma Coastkelp forest, sea stars, sea urchins

Federal funding cuts threaten Bodega Marine Lab’s pioneering program to save rare white abalone

May 22, 2025

Amie Windsor, PRESS DEMOCRAT

A groundbreaking program to rescue endangered white abalone at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Lab is now at risk, as proposed federal budget cuts threaten to end the funding that made the species’ comeback possible.

When Alyssa Frederick and her team at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory went to spawn white abalone on Jan. 7, it was almost as if the sea mollusk knew something was looming on the horizon.

“Usually we put them into the bucket of chemicals and I tell the team, ‘Go take a break, grab a slice of pizza or a cup of tea,’” Frederick, director of the lab said. “And I kid you not, within two minutes, the person watching them said, ‘They’re spawning!’”

It was a rare scene for a marine invertebrate on the brink of extinction starting a quarter century ago.

“They showed up,” Frederick said, radiating pride. “They did the best job.”

Now, efforts to rescue the endangered species are at risk after the Trump administration proposed to cut federal funding for all species recovery grants, which serve as the financial lifeblood for Frederick’s work at the lab.

Sonoma Coast, Wildlifeabalone, Bodega Marine Laboratory, restoration