LA Beaches pretty clean

Note: this is a field posting from a Mobil device, please excuse errors.  This post will be cleaned up this evening.

  

We have been getting to our more routine survey sites in Los Angeles County over the past few days.  We have seen no evidence of more recent tarring.  Generally the beaches in LA look good, although there has been a moderate amount of tR incorporated into the subsurface sand matrix due to mechanical grooming/raking of the sand, wave action, and our recent strong winds.

Malibu is quite clean with respect to tar, although there is a swimming advisory due to FIB in the lagoon (as often happens in summer).

 
Santa Monica is superficially clean, but there appears to be a good amount of larger (quarter to fist-sized) tR balls just subsurface on the upper reaches of the primary beach face.  I do not think this is a human or ecological threat per se, but the tar is certainly not “gone” as you might think after a cursory inspection.

This is the amount of tar from two 0.5 x 0.5 m quadrat near the wrack line at Santa Monica Beach.  A third quadrat had no tar: