The Edge

The Pressured Past and Precarious Future of California's Coast

Kim Steinhardt, Gary Griggs

• Publisher: Craven Street Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781610353199
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecosystems & Habitats
• Index: Biological Sciences

The Pacific coast is the most iconic region of California and one of the most fascinating and rapidly changing places in the world. Densely populated, urbanized, and industrialized -- but also home to wilderness with complex, fragile ecosystems -- the coast is the place where humanity and nature coexist in a precarious balance that is never perfectly stable.

1

COASTAL KID

Steinhardt

Icy water and stinging spray flooded the slippery decks, making my attempt to maneuver forward to the bow so I could free a jammed jib sail an experience in understanding what lifelines are really all about—something to hold on to for dear life.

Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!” Even as a 10-year-old boy, I was well aware that my dad’s calling out those words of last resort into the mic of a ship-to-shore radio meant we were losing our struggle with the raucous Pacific Ocean. This was rapidly turning into one of those classic life-defining moments, and my relationship with nature would never really be quite the same afterward.

Growing up on the water’s edge in Northern California had given me a youthful fascination with the ocean, a love of the broad sweep of its beauty and power. To that sense would now be added genuine fear and a different kind of respect, a more mature awe.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the situation deteriorated from what had started as a much-anticipated family sailing adventure in a borrowed boat. We were on the gentle swells of the great blue ocean not far off the Southern California coast near Oceanside.

It changed quickly into an uncomfortably wet and cold, increasingly tough sailing experience brought on by an unforeseen squall that threw gusts of wind upward of 50 miles per hour. That wind whipped up 15-, 20-, and even spectacular 30-foot waves, transforming the water. A bright, friendly blue turned into furiously spraying deep green, with gray and white crests, in the sudden shadows of dark overcast.

Fig. 1.1. Sailing on San Francisco Bay always offered an abundance of adventures to a family growing up at the shoreline.

Unusual, to be sure, but still nothing to dampen the spirit of a family used to the wind-driven roughness of many sailing days, mostly on San Francisco Bay or the ocean just outside the Golden Gate (Figure 1.1). It wasn’t the first time my fingers were numb from the cold and wetness of handling icy, salt-soaked lines and frozen gear alongside my older sister Barbara and my younger brother Jeff. We made a pretty tight crew, especially for our ages. And especially when conditions became demanding, which for us they seemed to do with unusual regularity in what passed as a “recreational” activity. We had been taught to sail at a very young age, spending a lot of time on the water.

But on this day, the weather and darkening, angry sky weren’t our only concerns. The bow was rising 15 or 20 feet in the howling wind, only to crash back down in slow motion into the giant swells. Icy water and stinging spray flooded the slippery decks, making my attempt to maneuver forward to the bow so I could free a jammed jib sail an experience in understanding what lifelines are really all about—something to hold on to for dear life.

While I was awkwardly reaching out to free the jib with one hand while clinging to the lifeline with the other, an unfamiliar thunderclap interrupted the shattering of the waves. The boat jolted. We suddenly lost our steering.

We didn’t know it at that instant, but the sound came from beneath the water’s surface, where a large section of an unseen, stray, downed U.S. Navy target plane had collided with our sailboat’s rudder, completely destroying that vital piece of the boat. This small aircraft—a 30-foot drone replica of a fighter jet—had apparently been blasted out of the sky during target practice hours earlier. The storm had blown the wreckage outside the U.S. Navy’s restricted hazard zone.

The ocean is like that; it doesn’t adhere well to human efforts to compartmentalize or control it. Everything moves around. For better or for worse, what happens in one place always has an impact beyond the immediate area.

Losing control over the rudder changed things dramatically. Now, rather than merely being inconvenienced and challenged by bad weather, we were disabled, without any way to steer. The winds were forcing us toward shore.

That rocky shore. Those dramatic California rocky cliffs. Those beautiful testimonials to the power of millions of years of colliding tectonic plates, earthquakes, uplift, and erosion. Of new earth emerging from the ocean floor. The results of eons of repeated sea-level rise and retreat, and the legacy of distant glaciers and rivers, all sculpting a spectacular coast.

That noisy shore. When you can hear wind at sea, even howling wind, you are not necessarily in peril. But when you can hear wind and the telltale crashing of surf against rocks, you know you are in trouble. And when you hear the crashing of surf in powerful wind that is driving you toward those rocks, plus you have no means to steer, you are in big trouble. Even trying to drop an anchor in our circumstances would not have done any good.

So the Mayday call for help seemed very rational, even if terrifying. My brother and sister and I had each been taught how and when to use those words if the need ever arose. But I don’t think I ever really expected to hear them used in earnest. It probably hit us all that much harder to hear my dad use them, for him to yield to the power of the ocean and acknowledge our helplessness. After all, he was the one who was supposed to have all the answers.

Despite the storm and the accident, we got a lucky break. Our repeated distress calls were eventually answered. By chance, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter was several miles away but, based on the rate at which we were drifting helplessly in the waves, still likely close enough to reach us before we crashed onto the rocks.

Reach us, that is, if it could actually find us in the dimming light, the huge waves, and the chaotic winds. It would also need to manage to hook up and make the tow without the 45-foot steel-hulled cutter slamming into us, bringing both boats down in the storm. Unlike road service, for a rescue at sea there is no convenient side of the road onto which you can pull off to attach tow truck to car.

With mountainous waves and heavy winds at sea, such a rescue must be accomplished by firing a thick towline from a cannon aboard the Coast Guard cutter while it holds off at a safe distance. With any luck, you can receive that shot by grabbing the line once it has flown across your boat’s deck. You then secure sailboat to cutter, get towed safely to shore, and you all live happily ever after—under ideal circumstances.

But from a young boy’s viewpoint, that rescue looked a little more like this: You are terrified, soaked, freezing, on board a boat that is violently pitching and out of control, and inexorably being driven toward deadly rocks of the shoreline with the sound of crashing surf loud in your ears. A U.S. Coast Guard ship appears in the distance. It takes aim and fires a cannon at you. You take cover as you see the muzzle’s flash and almost instantly the rope shoots past you. In our case, the first shot missed the boat and they had to retrieve the line, reload, and fire a second shot. Time is ticking. Rocks are getting closer. Surf is getting louder. The second shot missed again—it’s not ideal circumstances today. Far from—

The third shot worked, and we finally hooked up. Happily, from that point on the adventure wound down safely, although not without the additional navigational difficulty of having to enter the treacherous, narrow entrance to a sheltered harbor while under tow, in the dark, unable to steer, between the two rows of rocks protecting the harbor entrance.

This nerve-racking experience became a lesson in the balance of power between humans and nature. That balance generally tips in favor of nature, by the way. As has been said, nature always bats last.

The next day, when we were safely moored in port, a U.S. Navy helicopter noisily landed on a nearby jetty and a team of Navy divers emerged, dove beneath the boat, and removed all traces of the drone’s pieces that were still engaged in our now-ruined rudder. To say they were tight lipped would be an understatement: there were no greetings, no explanations, and they said almost nothing during the entire cleanup operation. For our young minds it fueled a bit of Roswell/Area 51 mystique about the whole experience, especially given the large area of ocean marked off-limits by the Navy on the nautical charts. Apparently for target practice and other activities.

When I look back at this and some other adventures that fall into the unsettling category of that newly found fear and mature awe, I sometimes wonder how I continued to embrace the sea. But it never felt like the coast was a dangerous place to be, just a place to be always vigilant. “Never turn your back on the waves.” Good advice.

A coastal kid

For years both before and after that experience, I spent nearly every day I could after school walking the San Francisco Bay shoreline, where I grew up. My elementary school was on the water’s edge. My walk to and from school was along the water. Our home was at the edge of a forest on the bay. So I was a shoreline explorer learning about fishing, the sand, the mud, the tides, the rocks, the sounds of the birds and the waves, even the unmistakable smell of the bay. Instead of being a latchkey kid, I was a coastal kid (Figure 1.2).

Fig. 1.2. Learning to fish was just one of many explorations, but fish were not always safe to eat because of high levels of toxicity in polluted bay waters during the 1950s.

And when I was 11, two memorable things washed up on the shore. Each is as clear to me today as on the day I discovered them. One was the carcass of an 18-foot long, 600-pound thresher shark. While I had seen and caught many fish, including lots of striped bass and rockfish, and even accidentally caught and released a small shark or two, I never before had this close a look at such a huge shark. This was long before the campy movie Jaws, and this shark was real, dramatic, and the news spread across the nearby schoolyard and throughout the neighborhood.

My younger brother and I carefully approached and inspected those rows of razor-sharp teeth revealed in the giant jaws. It didn’t escape our notice that this shark had been inhabiting the waters around which we spent so much of our time.

During the 1950s and into the 1960s, industrial chemicals made San Francisco Bay one of the most polluted waterways in the country.

I say around which we spent so much time because even though we spent time near and on the bay waters, we rarely swam in them. In those years, San Francisco Bay was so polluted that swimming was decidedly not among favored or recommended bay activities—although we still spent some time in the water, unintentionally. I have to admit to my share of capsized canoes, sunken rowboats, crashed kayaks, collapsed docks, swimming ashore from stranded vessels, even sibling rivalry pranks and shoreline scuffles ending in splashdown or a mud bath in some cases . . . but no one would ever, deliberately, spend more time than was necessary in that water.

During the 1950s and into the 1960s, the accumulation of industrial chemicals and waste products from the rapid post–World War II growth of the Bay Area community made San Francisco Bay one of the most polluted waterways in the country. Toxic chemicals like mercury reached dangerous levels, and health warnings limiting fish intake were routine, as were warnings regarding shellfish consumption. “No more than one striped bass a month.” “No seafood for children under the age of five.” “Warning: mussel quarantine.”

Only in the 1960s did citizen activism and the imposition of strict environmental regulations begin to reverse the impending ecological disaster and restore some measure of health to the bay. Gradually over more than five decades, the bay waters have returned to a significantly healthier state, even allowing the return of various kinds of plants and creatures that had become scarce, although many serious waterquality concerns remain. Regulation, close monitoring, research, and cooperation remain vital to effectively combat new threats as increased commerce, population growth, and the wastes from evolving technologies keep the health of the bay a work in progress.

That shark left a big impression. Even though I later saw and closely examined a giant whale carcass washed up on an ocean beach along the north coast, and saw other fascinating fish and marine mammals as well, for me at that young age the shark triggered big questions about the nature of our relationship with the ocean.

Today, humans are still sorting that one out with sharks among others, emerging from a preconceived, sharks-as-evil perspective to one that recognizes their important role in the ocean ecosystem. Efforts to end the ill-advised slaughter of an estimated 100 million sharks each year have begun to gain traction throughout much of the world, hopefully with enough time left to avoid the complete loss of these animals. Because sharks are apex predators, their role in balancing and maintaining the ocean food chain is unique and critical.

The other item that washed ashore was a small, half-swamped, gray wooden rowboat. It was clearly abandoned as a wreck by whoever once owned it, leaking and sad. A perfect fixer-upper, as might be said in the real estate business. Fortunately, these finds were months apart, and I don’t think there was any evidence that the shark and the loose skiff were related.

Once my brother and I convinced our parents to let us keep the boat (like bringing home a stray puppy), we set to work fixing it up. When it was repaired—although it never completely stopped leaking—I was free to roam the nearshore waters from a different vantage point and reach new destinations. There were several islands made of fill that had been dredged out of the bay floor to make artificial boat channels. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the fill was also intended to be the modest beginning of a much more ambitious plan, creating a dry land base for a proposed commercial housing development of 2,000 homes to be built on the bay.

For me, it was fertile new territory for exploration. I used to beach the rowboat on these islands and wander the shoreline for hours, looking at the seashells and the birds, studying the strange plants that grew in the intertidal zone, and analyzing the fascinating debris that had washed up...