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THE BAY OF MORRO BAY Today’s article is about the beautiful Morro Bay and the marine creatures, including sea lions, seals, and otters, that reside in the bay. We will also be discussing the programs that are preserving the bay. Morro Bay is a salt-water bay approximately 6.4 kilometers, or 3.1719 miles long, and is connected to the rest of the Pacific Ocean by a narrow entrance, less than ¼ of a mile wide, near a 600-foot-tall rock called Morro Rock. A town, also called Morro Bay, is on the bay’s shore.  The bay is 13.1 miles from San Luis Obispo, and201.7 miles from Los Angeles. Morro Bay is on the Central area of California’s coast, and is defined on the map by the California Bight. The bay can be as deep as 21.1 feet deep and as shallow as 2.7 feet deep. The bay has clean air quality and almost no air pollution.  The estuaries nearby the bay play a large part in the ecosystem of the bay.  Unfortunately, they may be having a negative effect on the sea life there now. As mentioned in this website’s Cloudy Bubble Snail Article, fresh water from the local estuaries has started flowing out in much larger quantities than before. This is suffocating sea life thatcan’t filter fresh water, and also offsetting the salinity in the water which is harming more creatures. Due to sedimentation, the bay has lost more than a quarter of its volume over the last 100 years. The eelgrass in Morro Bay is disappearing.  The eelgrass helped the cloudy bubble snails. Lack of eelgrass means that more small channels coming out of the bay will probably be created. Due to the presence of a coldwater current off the California coast, Morro Bay is sometimes closed to swimmers. Parts of Morro Baymay also be closed to swimmers due to the fact that much sea life lives there, and they are closed in an effort to not disturb or destroy their environment. A Program That Is Conserving The Wild Life Of Morro Bay Is: The Morro Bay Estuary Program.   The Morro Bay Estuary Program The Morro Bay Estuary Program is a vital program for restoration of the eel grass in Morro Bay.  Tries to make awareness of the creatures living there.  You can watch sea otters and they can watch you. Many areas of Morro Bay have been degraded and vandalized, but the Morro Bay Estuary Program is doing its best to return it to its natural state of being.  The Morro Bay Estuary Program organizing hundreds of volunteers also helps to keep track of the numbers of the aquatic species in the bay, and thus the bay’s health. It has restored numerous areas of Morro Bay and has been incredibly helpful to the aquaculture of Morro Bay. One of Morro Bay’s mysteries is that residents over the years have complained about their water tasting and smelling odd.  This may because the Morro Bay Power Plant is polluting the water, but nobody knows for sure.  The reason for the water smelling odd makes no sense.   Morro Bay’s air quality is surprisingly good as not much air pollution happens in the area.   Unfortunately, Morro Bay has many endangered animals due to their habitats being destroyed.  One of the cuter endangered species of the Morro Bay area is the Morro Bay Kangaroo Rat.` This article is dedicated to our sponsors, contributors, and partners.  Our thanks to them and their generosity.​ Ideas for Further Research If climate change of some type is inevitable (As it might be), then how is can we mitigate its negative effects on Morro Bay? Conclusion Although Morro Bay is a relatively sheltered area in a well-populated state, Morro Bay is a wonderful place to see animals such as wild sea lions and seals, and otters.  Morro Bay is also changing, and there is much about the bay that we either do not currently know, or that has changed in response to changing conditions.  We must continue to investigate the bay and monitor it, to manage it in the best way for the sake of the area’s human and other inhabitants.   References https://www.iqair.com/us/usa/california/morro-bay New Strategic Partners Reel Guppy Outdoors New Patreon Contributors Ms Ochoa

Announcement We are proud to announce ThePersaudCatalog.com ’s new Patreon page!   The page can be found at https://www.patreon.com/thepersaudcatalog and subscribers will get benefits such as patrons-only articles and information, sections dedicated to themselves and other patrons, and 3-day early access to many articles. Introduction Today’s article will be about…The Cloudy Bubble Snail! These bubbly creatures like to glide and hang out in Morro Bay, CA.  The Cloudy Bubble Snail, with the scientific name of Bulla Gouldiana , also sometimes known as Bulla Nebulosa , is a beautiful snail living in shallow waters (less than 40 feet deep) off North and South America’s Pacific coasts from Morro Bay to Ecuador. They live on the bottom of Morro Bay or the sandy bottoms of the Pacific Ocean. The cloudy bubble snail’s scientific family name is: Bullidae. They, like all snails, are from the class “gastropoda”, or gastropods.  The Cloudy Bubble Snail’s “bubble” is an extremely calcified exterior shell.  These cloudlike creatures are semi-transparent and paper-thin.  Their extremely calcified shells allow them to withstand the harsh environment and currents in Morro Bay. The cloudy bubble snail populations in Morro Bay are also vulnerable to sudden influxes of fresh water from the mainland. In the recent past, influxes of fresh water into areas of Morro Bay have temporarily pushed out the salt water in that area, causing the cloudy bubble snails in that area to die because they cannot filter fresh water.  Morro Bay can reach from 3 feet to 23 feet in depth.  It has a relatively narrow mouth that opens onto the open ocean. The rest of Morro Bay is a long estuary that extends inland from the mouth, and extends past a penninsula.  Morro Bay’s shape means that a large amount of fresh water coming from the mainland may not be able to mix with salt water quickly, because the amount of salt water that can enter or leave Morro Bay is constricted by the Bay’s narrow mouth.  Therefore the salinity or water chemistry of the area where the fresh water entered the bay may be disrupted, which might harm marine creatures there.  These marine creatures can include cloudy bubble snails and their predators.   It is the author’s belief that during 2017, when large influxes of fresh water came by from the hills nearby into the bay, one of the cloudy bubble snails’ predators populations shrank tremendously, causing a “bubble snail boom” in Morro Bay. Cloudy Bubble Snails can sometimes reach lengths of about 55 millimeters (mm) long, which is about the distance between the two lines below.  |                              | Cloudy Bubble Snails are mostly nocturnal creatures.  From my calculations, Bulla Gouldiana commonly likes eel grass as its environment.  They have managed to survive in areas of Morro Bay that do not have eel grass.  However, eel grass and other aquatic grasses slow down currents near the sea bed, which can help protect individual cloudy bubble snails in the eel grass, and certainly protect their eggs.   During the sunlight hours, cloudy bubble snails burrow through the sand with underground tunnels that collapse behind them.  They leave mucus trails through the tunnels. They primarily feed off of green algae.  Their shells are tucked into their semi-transparent bodies, almost obstructing them and becoming absorbed into it, thus forming a bubble. During their mating seasons, Bulla Gouldiana, and most others known in their class, gather in large groups to breed.  Bubble snails’ mating season is in the summertime.  They are polyamorous and mate with multiple partners each season.  Bubble snails are also hermaphroditic.  When two snails mate, each gives sperm to the other one.  Each one contains up to 25 eggs, which develop into veliger larvae.  When they mate, they leave their eggs in vegetation such as eel grass, and their egg cases are noodle-shaped.  The mollusk shell of the bubble snails can have their growth rate accelerated or slowed down by the temperature of the water. The eyes and optic systems of a cloudy bubble snail have been studied a lot by researchers, and have important to researchers trying to understand the way the snail can tell time and decide when night has arrived so the snail can come out and eat.  The cloudy bubble snail’s eyes have their own molecular circadian rhythm timers. The author found no indication that cloudy bubble snails can be kept in aquariums, but any aquarium where they are kept would have to be a saltwater aquarium, because they are saltwater snails. It is unclear whether bubble snails are poisonous or not.  It is also unclear whether they can be eaten by humans (Not that the author would necessarily advocate this even if it were possible). The cloudy bubble snail’s main consumer and threat in California is the California aglaja, Navanax Inermis , a large predatory sea slug species, which likes to consume them.  The California aglaja can reach 400% of the length of the Bulla Gouldiana.  A picture of the California aglaja is below. The author found no information about cloudy bubble snails’ lifespan, or how climate change has affected or will affect them.  People should do further research into these two topics, and also research into how cloudy bubble snails’ survival at different stages of their life cycle is affected by changes in climate and other conditions.  We must also research how climate change affects other species that also influence the cloudy bubble snail.  For example, there is reason to believe that climate change is negatively affecting eel grass species that cloudy bubble snails like.   The ”tolerance” range for a marine species, for a characteristic like temperature is the range in which that  marine species can survive.  The “optimal” range for a marine species, for a characteristic like temperature is the range which that marine species most prefers.  Ocean temperatures may be changing so that parts of the ocean that were formerly within the “optimal” temperature range for eelgrass for most of the year, and the ”tolerance” range for eelgrass for all of the year, might now be out of the “tolerance” range for part of it.  This would be enough to kill eelgrass in areas that are out of the tolerance range for part of the year, because eelgrass, being a plant, cannot move.   The cloudy bubble snail is one species in a group, bubble snails, that are distributed throughout the world in coastal areas.  New bubble snail species are still being discovered. Ideas for Further Research How long do cloudy bubble snails live, and what factors affect their lifespan? How is the survival of cloudy bubble snails at different stages of their life cycle affected by water conditions? Are cloudy bubble snails poisonous? How does a decrease in eelgrass affect cloudy bubble snails? Ideas for Further Public Action Limit freshwater discharge into bays and other confined ocean areas in general, especially Morro Bay, to make sure that the saltwater organisms living there are not “swamped” by freshwater.  Research each confined ocean area to find a limit for the amount of freshwater that can be discharged there. Conclusion New bubble snail species are being discovered all the time, and we have much to learn about this interesting and slimy species, and about how they interact with other species.   References Block et. al., Biological Clocks in the Retina: Cellular Mechanisms of Biological Timekeeping , International Review of Cytology, Vol. 146, p. 83-146. Walter et. al., Large-Scale Erosion Driven By Intertidal Eelgrass Loss in an Estuarine Environment , Estuarine, Coastal, and Shelf Science, July 2020. https://www.mbnep.org/2017/12/21/bulla-snails-morro-bay-ruesink/ https://under-morro-bay.ucsd.edu/invertebrates/california-bubble-snail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PP6XiJEyWY Inaturalist.org https://thereaderwiki.com/en/Navanax_inermis https://ia.cpuc.ca.gov/Environment/info/esa/divest-pge-one/chapters/chap4_4.htm#:~:text=The%20Morro%20Bay%20Power%20Plant%20has%20four%20effluent,4%20northeast%20of%20Morro%20Rock%20into%20Estero%20Bay .​ https://www.uib.no/en/news/87789/everything-you-want-know-about-bubble-shells-are-afraid-as​`

For today’s article, we will be talking about the history of Santa Catalina Island, and how it has affected the aquaculture there. Catalina has many secrets that we will never discover. What a lovely island. The Tongva Era-Catalina Exports to the Mainland Catalina Island was discovered by the Native Americans sometime before 7000 B.C. The Native American inhabitants, most likely the Tongva, had 2,500 people on Catalina Island by 2000 B.C., without modern technology, without much of a “tourist trade”, and without even metal. By comparison, about 4,000 people live there now. The first culture on Catalina Island that we can name was the Tongva, who traded with the mainland and had several villages on the island. They farmed a lot of the native plants, and had a bustling village at Emerald Bay. They gathered the abalonesthat were then common on the island and ate lots of abalone. They gathered the abalone shells into garbage dumps, not all of which we have found. They therefore used the marine resource of the shellfish, especially abalone, that are found on Catalina Island. The Tongva on Catalina Island also hunted and ate otters, seals, and other marine animals which they considered a marine resource at that time. The island also appeared to have ceremonial significance to people living on the mainland, so the Tongva living on the island may have had some kind of “tourist trade” with the Native Americans on the mainland. The Tongva also mined soapstone on Catalina and used large canoes to ship it to the mainland and to the natives of the other nearby islands. They therefore used another of Catalina’s marine resources: The capacity of the ocean surrounding Catalina to serve as a transportation medium. There’s more exploration to do on Catalina. We have mostly learned about the Tongva from their garbage dumps, and it is estimated that only half of their garbage dumps have been found. Other Tongva artifacts also probably remain buried on Catalina Island. We also don’t know a lot about the culture of the Native Americans on Catalina, or about what happened to them during the time from the first Spanish exploration of the island (1542) to the time that the Spanish began establishing missions in California (about 1775), or whether the Tongva were the original Native American group on the island or replaced some other Native American group there. From what we know, some Native American artifacts on Catalina Island may be submerged as the sea level rises. The Spanish Era-Invasion, Exploration, and Good Intentions The Native American population on Catalina Island documented by the Spanish missionaries in the late 1700’s seems to have been much smaller than the population recorded there by the first Spanish explorers in 1542. Perhaps many of the Native American inhabitants died of diseases in the intervening 200 years. We know that a measles epidemic caused the population to drop from about 500 in 1803 to 150, or perhaps as low as 50, by 1807, so perhaps previous, unrecorded, epidemics had already reduced the population. The Spanish missionaries found that there was insufficient good food and fresh water for a mission on the island and encouraged many of the remaining Tongva inhabitants to move to the mainland, which further reduced Catalina’s Tongva population. It is interesting to note that though the Spanish thought there was insufficient fresh water for a mission on Catalina Island, there had clearly been enough fresh water for the Native American population there, even when it was much larger in 1542. This points to the Spanish missions probably using water differently from the Tongva and possibly having more intensive water use requirements. By the early 1800’s, pirates were active off the coast of California, and they may have used Catalina Island as a base, or to bury treasure (Though to the author’s knowledge there is no proof they buried treasure there). A pirate expedition from Argentina did sack Monterey and attack San Juan Capistrano on the mainland. The Mexican Era-A Wild Frontier Mexico revolted against Spanish rule in the early 1800’s and gained independence from Spain in 1821. California, which had been part of the Spanish Empire’s sparsely inhabited northern frontier, was now part of Mexico’s sparsely inhabited northern frontier. A much-reduced Tongva presence continued on Catalina Island throughout the Mexican period, but the population was now probably less than 1/15 what it had been before European contact began in 1542. Smugglers also made use of the island, which was now mostly uninhabited, to hide cargoes and avoid paying Mexican import taxes. There could be buried treasure on Catalina Island from smugglers who never came to pick up their cargoes. A few Americans also began to live on the island. They also hunted otters, seals, and other marine animals, which they considered to be a marine resource. The remaining Tongva on the island continued to use some of the same marine resources the Tongva population had used before, and likely adopted additional technologies from Mexico and the U.S. The American Era Catalina’s Golden Ruse Catalina Island had very few inhabitants when the U.S.A. acquired California in 1848, but American businessmen soon began to acquire the island and try to use it to make a profit. Catalina’s golden ruse was a ploy by Bouchette to get money in exchange for gold on Catalina. However, there was no gold and there likely never was any gold. He soon died thereafter. During the first 30 or so years of American control of Catalina Island, the entire island would often be bought or sold by individuals or companies. There were very few inhabitants. The U.S. Army, fearful that the sparsely inhabited island could be used as a Confederate privateer base, ordered everyone off the island and built a barracks on the island during the U.S. Civil War, 1861-65, but the barracks was abandoned after the war ended. Entrepreneurs Try New Ways of Making Money From Catalina Island Various developers tried to develop Catalina as a tourist spot, but they often failed for the next 50-60 years, often due to circumstances out of their control such as natural disasters. Meanwhile squatters immigrated to the island. George Shatto started the town of Avalon in about 1887 and made some improvements. Shatto unfortunately defaulted on his loan and lost control of the town around 1892. The Banning brothers then bought Shatto’s interest in Catalina Island for $128,740. The Banning brothers gained control of Avalon and further improved it. They also started the Catalina Island Company. Meanwhile, Avalon grew to perhaps 6,000 peopleand by 1903 gained many modern (for the time) conveniences, such as cars and wireless telegraphy. However, a disastrous fire destroyed half the buildings in Avalon, and then World War I caused a slowdown in tourism. The Banning Brothers were forced to sell their interest in the Catalina Island Company and the town of Avalon. George Shatto, the Banning brothers, and others tried to use the marine resource of Catalina’s climate and position next to the ocean. Shatto and the Banning brothers had a good idea, as later history shows, but ran out of capital before they could execute the idea. Development and Conservation In 1919 William Wrigley, Jr. bought the Banning brothers’ interest in Catalina Island, and bought other interests in the island until he owned most of it, either directly or through the Catalina Island Company. Wrigley continued to develop Avalonand Catalina’s infrastructure, and also showed an interest in the island’s natural environment. Catalina’s tourist trade expanded, but was again interrupted by World War II when tourist traffic to the island was temporarily stopped. Luckily, Wrigley and his descendants had sufficient capital to weather this storm and continue their operations on the island after the war ended. In the 1970’s, the Wrigley family donated most of Catalina Island to the Catalina Island Trust, which focuses on conservation, and which kept most the island free from development. This has good points and bad points. Most of the island is in a natural state, and its relative lack of pollution and development mean there is more opportunity to develop aquaculture facilities offshore. Some of Catalina’s ocean resources are thus protected, and Catalina’s unique species are protected. Arguably, the “quality” of living near the ocean for those people who reside on Catalina is also protected. However, housing prices on Catalina Island remain very high, partlybecause there is little land for housing. Therefore, another of Catalina’s ocean resources (The number of potential oceanfront property lots) is underutilized, because the Wrigley Family and Catalina Island Trust chose to protect different ocean resources. Catalina now has a thriving economy, driven largely by tourism. Several universities have also set up research facilities on the island, and the Catalina Island Conservancy runs an active research program into the island’s ecology which, includes both professional staff and volunteers. Catalina and the waters surrounding Catalina have been moderately used for drug trafficking. The lack of development on most of the island has created opportunities for drug traffickers to hide and possibly bury caches. The tourist trade in Avalon has also unfortunately led to Avalon Harbor being highly polluted. In modern times, there is no remaining commercial abalone harvest on Catalina Island, because there are simply too few abalone to be harvested. The modern U.S. (correctly in the author’s view) also no longer permits killing of most otters and seals. Catalina’s aquaculture resources are used for many things. One of those things is the Catalina Sea Ranch, the first off-shore sea ranch in federal waters. They culture, among other species, Mytilus Galloprovincialis , the giant rock scallop, Crassodoma Gigantea , the purple sea urchin, and the California spiny lobster. The Catalina Sea Ranch is located 6 miles off California. It has reduced a global seafood shortage. It has 100 acres of area for growing aquatic organisms. If the Tongva on Catalina ate abalone, which they got from Catalina, and there are not enough abalone on Catalina Island to be harvested now, perhaps abalone can be grow naturally or be farmed there in the future. In the author’s view, the government should aid in provide financing for abalone farming there, Since abalone farming is capital-intensive. Conclusion The different nations that have controlled Catalina Island at different times have focused on different resources. For an ocean resource to be developed to the point where it is profitable and/or self-sustaining, favorable financial treatment from the government, such as low-interest loans, grants, or favorable tax treatment may be needed, to make sure that the entity developing the resource does not “run out of money”, and is not forced to close because of some unforeseen emergency. The experience of the entrepreneurs who tried to develop Catalina Island shows this. The U.S. Civil War caused an “emergency” for those entrepreneurs living on Catalina because they were forced off the island, and World War I forced the Banning brothers to sell their interests in Catalina Island, but the Wrigley family had sufficient resources to continue their businesses’ operations on Catalina Island through World War II, and they continued developing the island thereafter. Catalina Island’s aquaculture resources can also be developed further. References Early Women Scientists of Los Angeles Harbor , Bull. Southern California Acad. Sci. 115(2), 2016, pp. 98–111. https://www.visitcatalinaisland.com/about-the-island/history/ https://www.lovecatalina.com/island-info/island-history/ https://catalinasearanch.com/ History of Santa Catalina Island , M. Burton Williamson, Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California and of the Pioneers of Los Angeles County, 1903, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1903) pp. 14-31. Two Years Before the Mast , Richard Henry Dana Jr., Harper and Brothers, 1840. The Burning of Monterey: The 1818 Attack on California by the Privateer Bouchard , Peter Uhrowczik, Cyril Books, 2001. https://www.islapedia.com/index.php?title=Santa_Catalina_Island_Company https://dornsife-wrigley.usc.edu/ https://www.catalinaconservancy.org/ https://www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/pdfs/response/abalone.pdf

Today’s article is about the Gulf of Santa Catalina, the marine life there, and how our knowledge of the marine life in the Gulf of Santa Catalina shows the need and opportunity to further study the world’s marine communities. The Gulf of Santa Catalina is a 100-square-mile area off the coast of southern California, located next to parts of the Los Angeles and San Diego metropolitan areas. The gulf’s western border is approximately defined by the Southern California Bight, an area of the Californian and Mexican coast, and the gulf’s western border is defined by an undersea area called Thirtymile Bank, and by Santa Catalina Island (Catalina Island) . Catalina Island is a 75-square-mile island, 22 miles from the mainland. It has two towns, Avalon (Pop. 4,096) to the South and Two Harbors (Pop. About 200) to the North. About 75% of Catalina Island is open land owned by the Catalina Island Conservancy. Even though the Gulf of Catalina borders on large cities and is often traversed by tourists, there is still a lot that we don’t know about the marine life and marine environment in the Gulf of Catalina. We have not done complete surveys of the species living in most parts of the Gulf. Big gaps also exist in what we think we know about the marine life in the Gulf. We do not know, for example, how climate change has affected, or will affect, which species live in the Gulf, or how much time they spend there. We also do not know how the changes that humans have made to mainland southern California’s landscapes and ecology, and to the ecology of other parts of the ocean, have affected the Gulf. Catalina Island was formed from geological activity millions of years ago, but unlike most islands in the Pacific Ocean, Catalina Island was tilting downwards, not upwards. Catalina Island has ancient beaches far beneath the surf that we seek nowadays. Catalina Island used to have steep cliffs stepping up and back from the sea, but those are long gone, hidden far beneath the waves. Catalina Island is slowly tilting and sinking. The more the ocean rises, the more of Catalina Island is submerged. The fact that the parts of the ocean closest to Catalina Island contain submerged parts of the island affects the types of marine life that can reside in the Gulf of Catalina, and the “opportunities”, available to that marine life, including available nutrients, but also including other conditions like watercirculation, available sunlight, and temperatures. Off the coast of Two Harbors, angel sharks have been spotted. A specific type of angel shark lives near Catalina Island. Catalina Island’s waters also have invasive species such as the seaweed Sargassum horneri . If you go to the beach along Catalina Island you will most likely see Sargassum horneri adorning the shoreline at Santa Catalina. This shows how the distribution of species in the ocean continues to change. Human intervention is part of this, but not the only part. Blue Cavern Point Reserve, on Catalina Island was created near some caves. Not very much is known about Blue Cavern Point due to its depth and tumultuous terrain. In Blue Cavern Reserve, Looby, a U.S.C. undergraduate at the time, and Ginsburg, a U.S.C. professor found and made an inventory of all of the creatures that pass through or inhabit the conservation area year-round. Their study started in 2015, and they launched the study because nobody had previously catalogued all the species living in the Blue Cavern Point Reserve. They made numerous trips to the Blue Cavern Point Reserve to locate specimens, and also used other techniques, such as combing through old journals. Looby and Ginsburg’s study shows that systematic catalogues of the species living in other areas of the Gulf of Catalina, are also needed, because we do not necessarily know what species live in other areas of the Gulf of Catalina. The Gulf of Catalina is a beautiful place to go snorkeling in, but astonishingly, parts of the Gulf of Catalina between Catalina Island and the mainland can reach up to 3,000 feet deep. The Gulf of Catalina has abundant sea life, which flourishes with nutrients that arrive there. Some of this sea lifeincludes kelp, spider crabs, yellowtail, octopi, and other creatures. However, we do not have knowledge of the habits of most of them, or how they respond to changes in environmental conditions. Animals migrate in and out of the Catalina Gulf constantly. We don’t exactly know all of the species that pass through the Gulf of Catalina, when they inhabit the Gulf, or why they inhabit the Gulf. There are many undiscovered species that live in the Gulf of Catalina. The sheer depth and size of the Gulf of Catalina means that undiscovered species are likely to live there. We also probably do not know how the species living there interact with each other, or with their environment. Natural climate change has always affected the ocean, and today, global warming is changing our oceans at a faster rate, and much of the sea life that we could have seen about 5-10 years ago has migrated. Much of the sea floor of the Gulf of Catalina is unexplored and uncharted. Many shipwrecks lie in the gulf. Unfortunately, we know little to nothing about the exact location of most of these. We know little to nothing about their location, and we don’t know most of their stories either. Looby and Ginsburg’s study was astonishing, but new technologies can help researchers to get a more thorough picture of the species distribution in an area, including species that are rare in the area, by monitoring the area continually with cameras. Looby and Ginsburg’s method can be improved upon through use of additional technologies, such as installation of undersea cameras that can monitor parts of the Gulf for a long period. These cameras can monitor how marine species interact with each other, and with the rest of their environment, over a long period, and can also monitor whether some species appear in parts of the Gulf for part of the year, and then move elsewhere for the rest of the year. This will provide a fuller picture of the Gulf’s biodiversity and how it is changing in response to climate change and other factors. There is a need for multiple research projects further studying the marine life in the Gulf of Catalina, and also studying the habits of the species there, over time, and how they are affected by changes in climate and other conditions such as salinity, water currents, and presence of nutrients . One of the metropolitan areas along the Gulf of Catalina is Los Angeles, California (Pop: More than 15,000,000). Los Angeles produces lots of waste, especially plastic and cigarette butts. These unfortunately affect the Gulf of Catalina and Catalina Island’s waters. The Gulf of Catalina’s waters are currently being polluted in other ways by California’s coastal cities. Not only that, but in previous decades we threw many barrels of DDT and DDT products into the Gulf of Catalina, terrorizing the environment and hurting the ecosystem. The effects of this pollution are currently unclear, and might change over time, but must be monitored. By scanning the Gulf of Catalina’s floor with cameras, we may be able to find the DDT barrels, and hopefully remove them. We may also better understand how the DDT and other pollution affects marine life in the Gulf of Catalina by deploying cameras in the Gulf, especially in locations near the pollution dumping sites, and monitoring the footage the cameras produce over a long period of time. Conclusion The Gulf of Catalina is home to many interesting creatures and many interesting chemicals. Researchers are always working their hardest to better our knowledge of this interesting gulf in the Pacific Ocean. However, there is much that humanity still does not know about the Gulf of Catalina, and we should continue studying the Gulf, and use new methods to study it, to protect the species there and to use any opportunities for humanity that might be present in the Gulf of Catalina. References: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0022-1112.2006.00886.x https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2016.01679/full https://aquaticmammalsjournal.org/share/AquaticMammalsIssueArchives/1995/AquaticMammals_21-03/21-03_Shane.pdf https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1iJA9XS0WGYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA175&dq=%22catalina+island%22&ots=7V_vcCzb88&sig=8wZm8WbFCpigt0Qhrc7yDkD5UCg#v=onepage&q=%22catalina%20island%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=7HUgAAAAMAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA567&dq=%22catalina+island%22&ots=--zQDZPlfE&sig=lUxQikxiSR3gO7C5-34Ab1y7Bn8#v=onepage&q=%22catalina%20island%22&f=false https://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v595/p71-88/ https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10123367 https://news.stanford.edu/2018/11/20/catalina-island-sinking-tilting/ https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/3519/inventory-life-catalina-blue-cavern-point/ https://www.usgs.gov/maps/isopach-map-showing-quaternary-deposits-gulf-santa-catalina-area-california https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/3519/inventory-life-catalina-blue-cavern-point/ Life History Traits of the Invasive Seaweed Sargassum Horneri at Santa Catalina Island, California , Aquatic Invasions (2018) Volume 13, Issue 3: 339–350.