The ocean covers about 70 percent of Earth’s surface and holds 96 percent of its water. But because it’s saturated with salt, it isn’t drinkable. Sailors have known this for centuries, and that’s a profound challenge for California, with more than 800 miles of coastline and a history of drought that has persisted for over two decades despite occasional relief from heavy rains.
Remember those rains?
The atmospheric rivers of 2024 in California briefly filled reservoirs and restored snowpack, but drought has already returned to parts of the state, underscoring the state’s precarious water future and fueling renewed debate over desalination as a long-term water solution.
The Los Angeles Rifer flows high following atmospheric river storms in 2024 (Photo: Erik Olsen)
Several regions facing severe drought have turned to desalination with notable success. Israel now supplies up to 40 percent of its domestic water through desalination and is widely recognized as a global leader in technological innovation. In the Gulf, countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar depend heavily on desalinated water, with the region producing roughly 40 percent of the world’s supply of desal. Saudi Arabia’s Ras Al-Khair plant, for example, is the largest hybrid desalination facility in the world. Australia has also invested heavily, with Adelaide’s desalination plant able to provide up to half of the city’s water and ramping up to full capacity during the 2024–2025 drought.
By contrast, California, the world’s fourth-largest economy, continues to struggle with recurring droughts despite some relief from those recent rains.
Many new projects are underway to recycle and store water, but desalination remains an important option that could play a larger role in how California manages supplies for its residents and farmers. For now, the state has only a handful of desalination plants, with just two operating at significant scale, leaving California far behind global leaders.
The Piggyback Yard rail site in Los Angeles, long used for freight operations, is now at the center of a proposal to transform the space into a massive stormwater capture and storage project. (Photo: Erik Olsen)
California will keep bouncing between wet and dry years, and that reality has pushed seawater and brackish-water desalination from a thought experiment into a real, if specialized, tool. It’s a big deal: The promise is reliable “drought-proof” supply. The tradeoffs are clear: high costs, heavy energy demands, and the challenge of careful siting. California has pushed the frontier of desalination technology, but it remains far from being an integral or dependable part of the state’s supply. Many observers doubt it ever will be.
But let’s take a look at where we are.
Desalination is already part of daily life in a few places. The 50-million-gallon-per-day Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant supplies roughly a tenth of the San Diego region’s potable demand, making it the largest seawater desalination facility in the United States. Water from Carlsbad is reliable during drought, but that reliability carries a premium: Recent public figures put its delivered cost in the low-to-mid $3,000s per acre-foot, higher than most imported supplies when those are plentiful. Even advocates frame the key tradeoff as price and energy intensity in exchange for certainty.
Rules matter as much as membranes. Since 2015, California has required new ocean desal plants to use the best available site, design, technology, and mitigation measures to minimize marine life mortality at intakes and to limit brine impacts at outfalls. These standards make facilities gentler on the ocean and they shape where plants can be built and what they cost. But it’s complicated.
The permitting bar is real, some say too onerous. In May 2022 the California Coastal Commission unanimously denied the proposed Huntington Beach seawater desalination plant after staff raised concerns about high costs, harm to marine life from an open-ocean intake, exposure to sea-level rise, and a lack of demonstrated local demand. That decision did not end desalination, but it clarified where and how it can pencil out. The same year, the Commission unanimously approved the smaller Doheny project in Dana Point because it uses subsurface intake wells and showed stronger local need and siting.
The Seawater Desalination Test Facility in Port Hueneme, Ventura. (Photo: John Chacon / California Department of Water Resources)
Doheny is frequently described as a late-2020s project, but its official timeline has slipped as partners and financing have taken longer to come together. That’s so California. The South Coast Water District has projected completion and operations in 2029, with key procurement milestones running through 2025. Given California’s regulatory climate, I’d say these dates are optimistic rather than bankable.
Elsewhere on the coast, the California American Water project for the Monterey Peninsula cleared a major hurdle in November 2022. Designed to add about 4.8 million gallons per day and pair with recycled water to replace over-pumping groundwater (a huge issue), it underscored desal’s role where other options are limited. In August 2025, the CPUC projected a 2050 supply deficit of 815 million gallons per year and cleared the way for construction to begin by year’s end. So, yeah. We’ll see.
Project site map of the Doheny Ocean Desalination Project (South Coast Water District)
Desalination is not only ocean-sourced. Several California systems quietly run on brackish water, which is less salty and cheaper to treat than seawater. Antioch’s brackish plant on the San Joaquin River is designed for about 6 million gallons per day to buffer the city against salinity spikes during drought. It was slated to come online this year, but operations have yet to begin (at least, I could not find any new info to this effect). Up the coast, Fort Bragg installed a small reverse-osmosis system in 2021 to deal with high-tide salt intrusion in the Noyo River during critically low flows, and it has piloted wave-powered desal buoys for emergency resilience.
Santa Barbara’s Charles E. Meyer plant was reactivated in 2017 after years in standby and now functions as a reliability supply the city can dial into. In 2024 it contributed a meaningful slice of deliveries.
These are targeted, local solutions, not silver bullets, and that is the point.
Energy remains the biggest driver of desalination costs. Even with modern technology cutting usage to 2.5 to 4 kilowatt-hours per cubic meter, desal still requires far more power and therefore higher expense than water recycling or imported supplies. Beyond cost, desalination also brings added challenges, from greenhouse gas emissions tied to electricity use to the disposal of concentrated brine back into the ocean.
Santa Barbara’s Charles E. Meyer plant (City of Santa Barbara)
But the reality today is that the biggest additions to statewide water supply are coming from large-scale potable reuse, aka recycling. San Diego’s Pure Water program begins adding purified water to the drinking system in 2026 and scales toward about 83 million gallons per day by 2035. Metropolitan Water District’s Pure Water Southern California is planning up to roughly 150 million gallons per day at full build-out. These projects do not replace desal everywhere, but they change the calculus in big metro areas by creating local, drought-resilient supplies with generally lower energy and environmental footprints.
With most desalination projects carrying steep costs, success may hinge on innovation. Several new approaches now being tested in California waters are showing early promise. In 2025, OceanWell began testing underwater desalination pods in a reservoir near Malibu. These cylindrical units are designed to test how membranes perform when microorganisms are present in the water, since bacteria and algae can grow on the surfaces and form biofilms that clog the system.
A drawing of OceanWell’s underwater desalination pod system (OceanWell)
The longer-term vision is “water farms” made up of subsea pods tethered 1,300 feet down, where natural hydrostatic pressure does much of the work. Each pod could produce up to a million gallons of fresh water per day with roughly 40 percent less energy than a conventional onshore plant. Because the brine would be released gradually at depth, the approach could also reduce ecological impacts. OceanWell has said its first commercial-scale project, called Water Farm 1, could be operating by 2030 if tests and permitting go as planned. It’s interesting, for sure, but in the end, we’re talking long-shot here.
Big picture, desalination works best as a specialty tool—it’s not the answer everywhere, but it can be a game-changer in the right spots. Think coastal towns with little groundwater, islands or peninsulas with fragile aquifers, or inland areas that get hit with salty water now and then. California’s rules now push projects toward gentler ocean intakes and better brine disposal, but the real strategy is a mix: conservation, stormwater capture, groundwater banking, recycled water, and just the right amount of desal. Those huge atmospheric river storms are not predictable. Who knows if we’ll get another next year or the year after that? The next drought will come, and the communities that invested in a full toolkit will be the ones that hold up the best.
Hey readers — we’re working on ways to keep California Curated going, and one new effort is our Etsy shop. It’s filled with science-inspired fish and bird designs that make great gifts for friends, family, or even yourself. Check it out and help support our work!
It’s time for California to put people back in the deep. A human-occupied submersible belongs in California waters, and we’ve waited long enough.
For decades, the state had a strong human-occupied submersible presence, from Navy test craft in San Diego to long-serving civilian science HOVs like the Delta. Those vehicles have been retired or relocated, leaving the West Coast without a single home-based, active human-occupied research submersible (I am not counting OceanGate’s Titan sub for numerous reasons, like the fact it was based in Seattle, but foremost is it was not “classed,” nor was it created for scientific use). Restoring that capability would not only honor California’s legacy of ocean exploration but also put the state back at the forefront of direct human observation in the deep sea. The time has come.
Side note: I’ve had the rare privilege of diving beneath the waves in a submersible three times in three different subs, including one descent to more than 2,000 feet with scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Without exaggeration, it stands among the greatest experiences of my life.
The United States once had a small fleet of working research HOVs. Today it has essentially one deep-diving scientific HOV in regular service: Alvin, operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) for the National Deep Submergence Facility. Alvin is magnificent, now upgraded to reach 6,500 meters, but it is based on the Atlantic (in Massachusetts) and scheduled years in advance at immense cost.
The human-occupied submersible Alvin surfaces during the 2004 “Mountains in the Sea” Expedition, returning from a dive to explore deep seamount habitats teeming with corals, sponges, and other rarely seen marine life. (Photo: NOAA, Public Domain)
It helps to remember how we got here. The Navy placed Alvin in service in 1964, a Cold War investment that later became a pillar of basic research, investigating hydrothermal vents, shipwrecks and underwater volcanoes, among many, many other accomplishments. Over six decades of safe operations, Alvin has logged thousands of dives and undergone multiple retrofits, each expanding its depth range. Now rated to 6,500 meters, it can reach 98 percent of the ocean floor. WHOI’s partnership model with the Navy and universities shows exactly how public investment and science can reinforce each other. But Alvin is based on the East Coast: all that capability, history, and expertise is thousands of miles away. California needs its own Alvin. Or something even better…and perhaps cheaper. Though by cheaper I do not mean less safe.
For a time, California actually had multiple HOVs. The Navy fielded sister craft to Alvin, including Turtle and Sea Cliff. Both Turtle and Sea Cliff spent their careers with Submarine Development Group ONE in San Diego. Turtle was retired in the late 1990s, and Sea Cliff, launched in 1968 and later upgraded for greater depths, also left service by the end of that decade, ending the Navy’s home-ported HOV presence on the West Coast.
On the Atlantic side, Harbor Branch’s two Johnson Sea Link HOVs supported science and search-and-recovery work for decades before the program ended in 2011 due to funding constraints and shifting research priorities. I’ve interviewed renowned marine biologist Edith Widder several times, and she often speaks about how pivotal her dives in the Johnson Sea Link submersibles were to her career studying animal bioluminescence.
“Submersibles are essential for exploring the planet’s largest and least understood habitat, ” Widder told me. “A human-occupied, untethered submersible offers an unmatched window into ocean life, far surpassing what remotely operated vehicles can provide. ROVs, with their noisy thrusters and blazing lights, often scare away marine animals, and even the most advanced cameras still can’t match the sensitivity of the fully dark-adapted human eye for observing bioluminescence.”
In the central Pacific, the University of Hawaiʻi’s HURL operated Pisces IV and V for much of the 2000s and 2010s, then suspended operations amid funding and ship transitions. Through attrition and budget choices, the working U.S. fleet shrank from a handful to essentially one deep-diving research HOV today.
Manned submersibles are costly to build and operate, and they demand specialized crews, maintenance, and support ships or platforms. It’s easy to list reasons why California shouldn’t invest in a new generation of human-occupied subs. But that mindset has kept us out of the deep for far too long. It’s time to turn the conversation around and recognize why having one here would be a transformative asset for science, education, and exploration.
The Seacliff and Turtle submersibles (Photo: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command photo. Public Domain)
California’s own human-occupied sub legacy is short, but notable. In addition to the Navy submersibles noted above, the Delta submersible, a compact, ABS-class HOV rated to about 1,200 feet, operated from Ventura and later Moss Landing, supporting dozens of fishery and habitat studies from the Southern California Bight to central California. Built by Delta Oceanographics in Torrance, Delta dives in the mid-1990s produced baseline data that still underpin rockfish management, MPA assessments, and predictive habitat maps. The sub’s ability to place scientists directly on the seafloor allowed for nuanced observations of species behavior, habitat complexity, and human impacts that remote tools often miss. Many of these datasets remain among the most detailed visual records of California’s deeper reef ecosystems.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) operates a world-class research fleet with a robust remotely operated vehicle (ROV) program, but no human-occupied vehicle—a strategic decision the institute made years ago in favor of robotics over direct human dives. (Photo: Erik Olsen)
In the late 1990s, the program shifted north to Moss Landing, where it was operated in partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and other institutions. At the time, MBARI was still in the early years of exploring human-occupied vehicles, like Bruce Robison’s experience piloting the Deep Rover HOV in Monterey Canyon in 1985. To many at MBARI, human occupancy in submersibles began to seem more like a luxury than a necessity. If the goal was to maximize scientific output and engineering innovation, remotely operated vehicles offered longer bottom times, greater payload capacity, and fewer safety constraints. That realization drove MBARI to invest heavily in ROV technology, setting the stage for a long-term move away from human-occupied systems.
Which leads us to the present moment: California’s spectacular coast faces mounting environmental threats, just as public interest in ocean science wanes. And yet, we have no human-occupied research submersible, no way for scientists or the public to directly experience the deep ocean that shapes our state’s future.
The Delta submersible, once a workhorse of California’s deep-sea research with over 5,800 dives, operated from Ventura and later Moss Landing between the 1980s and 2000s. Sold in 2011 in a non-functional state, it remains out of service—symbolizing the end of the state’s home-ported human-occupied submersible era.
Look, robots are incredible. MBARI’s ROVs and AUVs set global standards, and they should continue to be funded and expanded. But if you talk to veteran deep-sea biologists and geologists, they will tell you that being inside the environment changes the science.
Dr. Adam Soule, chief scientist for Deep Submergence at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) agrees, “Having a human presence in the deep sea is irreplaceable. The ability for humans to quickly and efficiently process the inherently 3D world around them allows for really efficient operations and excellent sampling potential. Besides, there is no better experience for inspiring young scientists and for ensuring that any scientist can get the most out of unmanned systems than immersing themselves in the environment.”
Some of our most prominent voices are also speaking out about the need to explore the ocean. I recently produced an hour-long episode of the PBS science program NOVA and one episode was about the new generation of submersibles being built right now by companies like Florida-based Triton Submarines. I had the privilege of talking to filmmaker and ocean explorer James Cameron, who was adamant that human participation in ocean exploration is critical to sustaining public interest and political will.
“The more you understand the ocean, the more you love the ocean, the more you’re fascinated by it, and the more you’ll fight to protect it,” Cameron told me.
The author with James Cameron in front of his submersible the Deepsea Challenger. (Erik Olsen)
Human eyes and brains pick up weak bioluminescence out of the corner of vision, pivot to follow a squid that just appeared at the edge of a light cone, or decide in the moment to pause and watch a behavior a diving team has never seen before. NOAA’s own materials explain the basic value of HOVs this way: you put scientists directly into the natural deep-ocean environment, which can improve environmental evaluation and sensory surveillance. Presence is a measurement instrument.
California is exactly where that presence would pay off. Think about Davidson Seamount, an underwater mountain larger than many national parks, added to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary because of its ancient coral gardens and extraordinary biodiversity. We know this place mostly through ROVs, and we should keep using them, but a California HOV could carry sanctuary scientists, MBARI biologists, and students from Hopkins Marine Station or Scripps into those coral forests to make fine-scale observations, sample with delicacy, and come home with stories that move the public. Put a student in that viewport and you create a career. Put a donor there and you create a program.
A time-lapse camera designed by MBARI engineers allowed researchers to observe activity at the Octopus Garden between research expeditions. (Photo: MBARI)
Cold seeps and methane ecology are another natural fit. Off Southern California and along the borderlands there are active methane seep fields with complex microbial and animal communities. Recent work near seeps has even turned up newly described sea spiders associated with methane-oxidizing bacteria, a striking reminder that the deep Pacific still surprises us. An HOV complements ROV sampling by letting observers linger, follow odor plumes by sight and instrument, and make rapid, in-situ decisions about fragile communities that are easy to miss on video. That kind of fine-grained exploration connects directly to California’s climate priorities, since methane processes in the ocean intersect with carbon budgets.
There are practical use cases all over the coast. A California HOV could support geohazard work on active faults and slope failures that threaten seafloor cables and coastal infrastructure. It could conduct pre- and post-event surveys at oil-and-gas seep sites in the Santa Barbara Channel to ground-truth airborne methane measurements. It could document deep-water MPA effectiveness where visual census by divers is impossible. It could make repeated visits to whale falls, oxygen minimum zone interfaces, or sponge grounds to study change across seasons.
An autonomous underwater craft used to map DDT barrels on the seafloor off California. (Photo: Scripps Institution of Oceanography at U.C. San Diego)
It could also play a crucial role in high-profile discoveries like the recent ROV surveys that revealed thousands of corroding barrels linked to mid-20th-century DDT dumping off Southern California. Those missions produced stark imagery of the problem, but a human-occupied dive would have allowed scientists to make on-the-spot decisions about barrel sampling, trace-chemical measurements, and sediment core collection, as well as to inspect surrounding habitats for contamination impacts in real time. The immediacy of human observation could help shape quicker, more targeted responses to environmental threats of this scale.
And it’s not just the seafloor that matters. Some of the most biologically important parts of the ocean lie well above the bottom. The ocean’s twilight zone, roughly 200 to 1,000 meters deep, is a vast, dimly lit layer that contains one of the planet’s largest reservoirs of life by biomass. (My dive with WHOI was done to study the ocean’s twilight zone). Every day, trillions of organisms participate in the planet’s largest migration, the diel vertical migration, moving up toward the surface at night to feed and returning to depth by day. This zone drives global carbon cycling, supports commercial fish stocks, and is home to remarkable gelatinous animals, squid, and deepwater fishes that are rarely seen in situ.
Launching the Triton 3300/3 (Photo: Erik Olsen)
The Triton 3300/3’s 1,000-meter depth rating (I’ve been in one twice) puts the entire twilight zone within reach, enabling direct observation of these daily movements, predator-prey interactions, and delicate species that often disintegrate into goo in nets. Human presence here allows scientists to make real-time decisions to follow unusual aggregations, sample with precision, and record high-quality imagery that captures how this midwater world works, something uncrewed systems alone rarely match.
It could even serve as a classroom at depth for carefully designed outreach dives, giving educators footage and first-person accounts that no livestream can quite match. Each of these missions is stronger with people on site, conferring, pointing, deciding, and noticing.
While Monterey Bay would be a natural fit because of MBARI, Hopkins, and the sanctuary’s deepwater treasures, Southern California could be just as compelling. Catalina Island, with its proximity to submarine canyons, coral gardens, and cold seeps of the Southern California Bight, offers rich science targets and the existing facilities of USC’s Wrigley Marine Science Center. Los Angeles or Long Beach would add the advantage of major port infrastructure and a vast urban audience, making it easier to combine high-impact research with public tours, donor events, and media outreach. And San Diego with its deep naval history, active maritime industry, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and proximity to both U.S. and Mexican waters, could serve as a southern hub for exploration and rapid response to discoveries or environmental events. These regions could even share the vehicle seasonally: Monterey in summer for sanctuary work, Catalina/LA or San Diego in winter for Southern California Bight missions, spreading both benefits and funding responsibility.
The author in front of the Triton 3300/3 in the Bahamas (Photo: Erik Olsen)
For budgeting, a proven benchmark is the Triton 3300/3, a three-person, 1,000-meter (3,300-foot) human-occupied vehicle used widely in science and filming. New units are quoted in the four to five million dollar range, with recent builds coming in around $4–4.75 million depending on specifications. Beyond the vehicle, launch and recovery systems such as a 25–30-ton A-frame or LARS and the deck integration required for a suitable support ship can run into the high six to low seven figures. Modern acrylic-sphere subs like the Triton are designed for predictable, minimized scheduled maintenance, but budgets still need to account for annual surveys, battery service, insurance, and ongoing crew training. Taken together, a California-based HOV program could be launched for an initial capital investment of roughly $6–7 million, with operating budgets scaled to the number of missions each year. So, not cheap. But doable for someone of means and purpose and curiosity. See below.
Who would benefit if California restored this capability? Everyone who already works here. MBARI operates a world-class fleet of ROVs and AUVs but has no resident HOV. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Hopkins Marine Station, and USC’s Wrigley Marine Science Center train generations of ocean scientists who rarely get the option to do HOV work without flying across the country and waiting for a slot. NOAA and the sanctuaries need efficient ways to inspect resources and respond to events. A west-coast human-occupied research submersible based in Monterey Bay, Catalina, Los Angeles, or San Diego would plug into ship time on vessels already here, coordinate with ROV teams for hybrid dives, and cut mobilization costs for Pacific missions.
A new Triton 660 AVA submersible slips into the turquoise waters of the Bahamas, beginning its first voyage. Built for dives to 660 feet (200 meters), it offers passengers a front-row seat to reefs, shipwrecks, and marine life far beyond normal scuba limits, making it an ideal draw for high-end tourism. (Photo: Erik Olsen)
What would it take? A benefactor and a compact partnership. California has the donors (hello, curious billionaires!), companies, and public-private institutions to do this right. A philanthropic lead gift could underwrite acquisition of a proven, classed HOV and its support systems, while MBARI, Scripps, or USC could provide engineering, pilots, and safety culture within the UNOLS standards that govern HOV operations. No OceanGates. Alvin’s long record shows the model. Add a state match for workforce and student access, and a sanctuary partnership to guarantee annual science priorities, and you have a durable program that serves research, stewardship, and public engagement.
Skeptics will say that robots already do the job. They do a lot of it. They do not do all of it. If the U.S. is content to have only one deep research HOV based on the opposite coast, we will forego the unique perspectives and serendipity that only people bring, and we will keep telling California students to wait their turn or watch the ROV feed from their laptops or phones. California can do better. We did, for years, when the Delta sub spent long seasons quietly counting fish and mapping habitats off Ventura and the Channel Islands. Then that capability faded. If we rebuild it here, we restore a missing rung on the ladder from tidepools to trenches, and we align the state’s science, climate, and education missions with a tool that is both a laboratory and a conversion experience.
The author at more than 2000 feet beneath the surface of the ocean. (Photo: Erik Olsen)
Start with a compact, 1,000-meter-class HOV that can work daily in most of California’s shelf and slope habitats. Pair it with our ROVs for tandem missions and cinematography of the sub and its occupants in action. Commit a share of dives to student and educator participation, recorded and repackaged for museums and broadcast. Reserve another share for rapid-response science at seeps, landslides, unusual biological events, or contamination crises like the DDT dumpsite. Build a donor program around named expeditions to Davidson Seamount, Catalina’s coral gardens, and the Channel Islands. Then, if the community wants to go deeper, plan toward a second vehicle or an upgrade path. The science is waiting. The coast is ready. And the case is clear. California should restore its human-occupied submersible fleet.
I love reading New York Times obituaries, not because of any morbid fascination with death, but because they offer a window into extraordinary lives that might otherwise go unnoticed. These tributes often highlight people whose work had real impact, even if their names were never widely known. Unlike the celebrity coverage that fills so much of the media, these obituaries can be quietly riveting, full of depth, insight, and genuine accomplishment.
For two years I managed the New York Times video obituary series called Last Word. We interviewed people of high accomplishment who had made a difference in the world BEFORE they died, thus giving them a chance, at a latter age (in our case 75 was the youngest, but more often people would be in their 80s) to tell their own stories about their lives. They signed an agreement acknowledging that the interview would not be shown until after their death. Hence the series title: Last Word. Anyway, when I ran the program, I produced video obituaries for people as varied as Neil Simon, Hugh Hefner, Sandra Day O’Connor, Philip Roth, Edward Albee, and my favorite, the great Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. Spending time and learning about their lives in their own words was a joy.
All of that is to say that obituaries often reveal the lives and accomplishments of people who have changed the world. These are stories that might never be told so thoughtfully or thoroughly anywhere else.
California Institute of Technology (Photo: Erik Olsen)
Which bring us to a quiet lab at Caltech in 1958, where two young biologists performed what some still call “the most beautiful experiment in biology”. Their names were Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl, and what they uncovered helped confirm the foundational model of modern genetics. With a simple centrifuge, a dash of heavy nitrogen, and a bold hypothesis, they confirmed how DNA, life’s instruction manual, copies itself. And all of it took place right here in California at one of the world’s preeminent scientific institutions: the California Institute of Technology or CalTech, in Pasadena. The state is blessed to have so many great scientific minds and institutions where people work intensely, often in obscurity, to uncover the secrets of life and the universe.
Franklin Stahl died recently at his home in Oregon, where he had spent much of his career teaching and researching genetics. The New York Times obituary offered a thoughtful account of his life and work, capturing his contributions to science with typical respect. But after reading it, I realized I still didn’t fully grasp the experiment that made him famous, the Meselson-Stahl experiment, the one he conducted with Matthew Meselson at Caltech. It was mentioned, of course, but not explained in a way that brought its brilliance to life. So I decided to dig a little deeper.
Franklin Stahl in an undated photo. (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library and Archives)
The Meselson-Stahl experiment didn’t just prove a point. It told a story about how knowledge is built: carefully, creatively, and with a precision that leaves no room for doubt. It became a model for how science can answer big questions with simple, clean logic and careful experimentation. And it all happened in California.
Let’s back up: When Watson and Crick proposed their now-famous double helix structure of DNA in 1953 (with significant, poorly recognized help from Rosalind Franklin), they also suggested a theory about how it might replicate. Their idea was that DNA separates into two strands, and each strand acts as a template to build a new one. That would mean each new DNA molecule is made of one old strand and one new. It was called the semi-conservative model. But there were other theories too. One proposed that the entire double helix stayed together and served as a model for building an entirely new molecule, leaving the original untouched. Another suggested that DNA might break apart and reassemble in fragments, mixing old and new in chunks. These were all plausible ideas. But only one could be true.
Watson and Crick with their model of the DNA molecule (Photo: A Barrington Brown/Gonville & Caius College/Science Photo Library)
To find out, Meselson and Stahl grew E. coli bacteria in a medium containing heavy nitrogen (nitrogen is a key component of DNA), a stable isotope that made the DNA denser than normal. After several generations, all the bacterial DNA was fully “heavy.” Then they transferred the bacteria into a medium with normal nitrogen and let them divide. After one generation, they spun the DNA in a centrifuge that separated it by weight. If DNA copied itself conservatively, the centrifuge would show two bands: one heavy, one light. If it was semi-conservative, it would show a single band at an intermediate weight. When they performed the experiment, the result was clear. There was only one band, right between the two expected extremes. One generation later, the DNA split into two bands: one light, one intermediate. The semi-conservative model was correct.
Their results were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 1958 and sent shockwaves through the biological sciences.
Meselson and Stahl experiment in diagram.
To me, the experiment brought to mind the work of Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk who, in the mid-1800s, quietly conducted his experiments in the garden of a monastery in Brno, now part of the Czech Republic. By breeding pea plants and meticulously tracking their traits over generations, Mendel discovered the basic principles of heredity, dominant and recessive traits, segregation, and independent assortment, decades before the word “gene” even existed. Like Mendel’s experiments, the Meselson-Stahl study was striking in its simplicity and clarity. Mendel revealed the rules; Meselson and Stahl uncovered the mechanism.
There’s a fantastic video where the two men discuss the experiment that is worth watching. It was produced produced by iBiology, part of the nonprofit Science Communication Lab in Berkeley. In it Meselson remembered how the intellectual climate of CalTech at the time was one of taking bold steps, not with the idea of making a profit, but for the sheer joy of discovery: “We could do whatever we wanted,” he says. “It was very unusual for such young guys to do such an important experiment.”
California Institute of Technology (Photo: Erik Olsen)
Most people think of Caltech as a temple of physics. It’s where Einstein lectured, where the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was born (CalTech still runs it), and where the gravitational waves that rippled through spacetime were detected. But Caltech has a quieter legacy in biology. Its biologists were among the first to take on the structure and function of molecules inside cells. The institute helped shape molecular biology as a new discipline at a time when biology was still often considered a descriptive science. Long before Silicon Valley made biotech a household term, breakthroughs in genetics and neurobiology were already happening in Southern California.
The Meselson-Stahl experiment is still taught in biology classrooms (my high school age daughter knew of it) because of how perfectly it answered the question it set out to ask. It was elegant, efficient, and unmistakably clear. And it showed how a well-constructed experiment can illuminate a fundamental truth. Their discovery laid the groundwork for everything from cancer research to forensic DNA analysis to CRISPR gene editing. Any time a scientist edits a gene or maps a mutation, they are relying on that basic understanding of how DNA replicates.
In a time when science often feels far too complex, messy, or inaccessible, the Meselson-Stahl experiment is a reminder that some of the most important discoveries are also the simplest. Think Occam’s Razor. Two young scientists, some nitrogen, a centrifuge, a clever idea, and a result that changed biology forever.
Images from the most powerful astronomical discovery machine ever created, and built in California
A breathtaking zoomed-in glimpse of the cosmos: this first image from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory reveals a deep field crowded with galaxies, offering just a taste of the observatory’s power to map the universe in unprecedented detail. (Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)
I woke up this morning to watch a much-anticipated press conference about the release of the first images from the Vera Rubin Telescope and Observatory. It left me flabbergasted: not just for what we saw today, but for what is still to come. The images weren’t just beautiful; they hinted at a decade of discovery that could reshape what we know about the cosmos.I just finished watching and have to catch my breath. What lies ahead is very, very exciting.
The first images released today mark the observatory’s “first light,” the ceremonial debut of a new telescope. These images are the result of decades of effort by a vast and diverse global team who together helped build one of the most advanced scientific instruments ever constructed. In the presser, Željko Ivezić, Director of the Rubin Observatory and the guy who revealed the first images, called it “the greatest astronomical discovery machine ever built.”
This image combines 678 separate images taken by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in just over seven hours of observing time. Combining many images in this way clearly reveals otherwise faint or invisible details, such as the clouds of gas and dust that comprise the Trifid nebula (top) and the Lagoon nebula, which are several thousand light-years away from Earth. (Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)
The images shown today are a mere hors d’oeuvre of what’s to come, and you could tell by the enthusiasm and giddiness of the scientists involved how excited they are about what lies ahead. Here’s a clip of Željko Ivezić as the presser ended. It made me laugh.
So, that first image you can see above. Check out the detail. What would normally be perceived as black, empty space to us star-gazing earthlings shows anything but. It shows that in each tiny patch of sky, if you look deep enough, galaxies and stars are out there blazing. If you know the famous Hubble Deep Field image, later expanded by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, you may already be aware that there is no such thing as empty sky. The universe contains so much stuff, it is truly impossible for our brains (or at least my brain) to comprehend. Vera Rubin will improve our understanding of what’s out there and what we’ve seen before by orders of magnitude.
This image captures a small section of NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s view of the Virgo Cluster, revealing both the grand scale and the faint details of this dynamic region of the cosmos. Bright stars from our own Milky Way shine in the foreground, while a sea of distant reddish galaxies speckle the background. (Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)
I’ve been following the Rubin Observatory for years, ever since I first spoke with engineers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory about the digital camera they were building for a potential story for an episode of the PBS show NOVA that I produced (sadly, the production timeline ultimately didn’t work out). SLAC is one of California’s leading scientific institutions, known for groundbreaking work across fields from particle physics to astrophysics. (We wrote about it a while back.)
The night sky seen from inside the Vera Rubin Observatory (Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)
Now fully assembled atop Chile’s Cerro Pachón, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is beginning its incredible and ambitious mission. Today’s presser focused on unveiling the first images captured by its groundbreaking camera, offering an early glimpse of the observatory’s vast potential. At the heart of the facility is SLAC’s creation: the world’s largest digital camera, a 3.2-gigapixel behemoth developed by the U.S. Department of Energy.
This extraordinary instrument is the central engine of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a decade-long sky survey designed to study dark energy, dark matter, and the changing night sky with unprecedented precision and frequency. We are essentially creating a decade-long time-lapse of the universe in detail that has never been captured before, revealing the dynamic cosmos in ways previously impossible. Over the course of ten years, it will catalog 37 billion individual astronomical objects, returning to observe each one every three nights to monitor changes, movements, and events across the sky. I want to learn more about how Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are being brought to bear to help scientists understand what they are seeing.
The camera, over 5 feet tall and weighing about three tons, took more than a decade to build. Its focal plane is 64 cm wide-roughly the size of a small coffee table-and consists of 189 custom-designed charge-coupled devices (CCDs) stitched together in a highly precise mosaic. These sensors operate at cryogenic temperatures to reduce noise and can detect the faintest cosmic light, comparable to spotting a candle from thousands of miles away.
The LSST Camera was moved from the summit clean room and attached to the camera rotator for the first time in February 2025. (Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/DOE/NSF/AURA)
Rubin’s camera captures a massive 3.5-degree field of view-more than most telescopes can map in a single shot. That’s about seven times the area of the full moon. Each image takes just 15 seconds to capture and only two seconds to download. A single Rubin image contains roughly as much data as all the words The New York Times has published since 1851. The observatory will generate about 20 terabytes of raw data every night, which will be transmitted via a high-speed 600 Gbps link to processing centers in California, France, and the UK. The data will then be routed through SLAC’s U.S. Data Facility for full analysis.
The complete focal plane of the future LSST Camera is more than 2 feet wide and contains 189 individual sensors that will produce 3,200-megapixel images. Crews at SLAC have now taken the first images with it. Explore them in full resolution using the links at the bottom of the press release. (Credit: Jacqueline Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
The images produced will be staggering in both detail and scale. Each exposure will be sharp enough to reveal distant galaxies, supernovae, near-Earth asteroids, and other transient cosmic phenomena in real time. By revisiting the same patches of sky repeatedly, the Rubin Observatory will produce an evolving map of the dynamic universe-something no previous observatory has achieved at this scale.
What sets Rubin apart from even the giants like Hubble or James Webb is its speed, scope, and focus on change over time. Where Hubble peers deeply at narrow regions of space and Webb focuses on the early universe in infrared, Rubin will cast a wide and persistent net, watching the night sky for what moves, vanishes, appears, or explodes. It’s designed not just to look, but to watch. Just imaging the kind of stuff we will see!
The LSST Camera’s imaging sensors are grouped into units called “rafts.” Twenty-one square rafts, each with nine sensors, will capture science images, while four smaller rafts with three sensors each handle focus and telescope alignment. (Credit: Farrin Abbott/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
This means discoveries won’t just be about what is out there, but what happens out there. Astronomers expect Rubin to vastly expand our knowledge of dark matter by observing how mass distorts space through gravitational lensing. It will also help map dark energy by charting the expansion of the universe with unprecedented precision. Meanwhile, its real-time scanning will act as a planetary defense system, spotting potentially hazardous asteroids headed toward Earth.
But the magic lies in the possibility of the unexpected. Rubin may detect rare cosmic collisions, unknown types of supernovae, or entirely new classes of astronomical phenomena. Over ten years, it’s expected to generate more than 60 petabytes of data-more than any other optical astronomy project to date. Scientists across the globe are already preparing for the data deluge, building machine learning tools to help sift through the torrent of discovery.
And none of it would be possible without SLAC’s camera. A triumph of optics, engineering, and digital sensor technology, the camera is arguably one of the most complex and capable scientific instruments ever built. I don’t care if you’re a Canon or a Sony person, this is way beyond all that. It’s a monument to what happens when curiosity meets collaboration, with California’s innovation engine powering the view.
As first light filters through the Rubin Observatory’s massive mirror and into SLAC’s camera, we are entering a new era of astronomy-one where the universe is not just observed, but filmed, in exquisite, evolving detail. This camera won’t just capture stars. It will reveal how the universe dances.
I recently took two scuba diving trips out to the Channel Islands to investigate and help remove ghost lobster traps: abandoned or lost gear that poses a serious threat to marine life. While out there, I also had a chance to explore the marine protected areas surrounding Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands, getting a firsthand look at how these underwater reserves are helping to restore ocean health and marine life (another story on that coming). Diving in the Channel Islands is a great way for certified divers to experience the incredible biodiversity of California’s coastal waters, even if the water is cold as hell.
The Channel Islands are actually relatively close to the California mainland, just 12 miles from Ventura in the case of Anacapa. But the wild and windswept chain feels like a world apart. On a clear day, you can see them from Ventura or Santa Barbara, but oddly, few people actually visit. Compared to other national parks, they remain relatively unknown, which only adds to their quiet allure. Sometimes called the “Galápagos of North America,” these eight islands are a refuge for wildlife and a place where evolution unfolds before your eyes.
U.S. Park Service rangers patrol the marine protected area off of Anacapa Island in California’s Channel Islands (Photo: Erik Olsen)
(Here’s a cool bit of history: there are eight Channel Islands today, but 20,000 years ago, during the last ice age when sea levels were much lower, four of them—San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, and Anacapa—were connected as a single landmass called Santarosae.)
For scientists and nature lovers, the Channel Islands are more than just scenic, they’re a natural laboratory. Each island has its own shape, size, and ecological personality, shaped by millions of years of isolation. That makes them an ideal setting for the study of island biogeography, the branch of biology that looks at how species evolve and interact in isolated environments. What happens here offers insight into how life changes and adapts not just on islands, but across the planet.
Sea lions on the Channel Islands (NPS)
Island biogeography is anchored in the theory proposed by E.O. Wilson and Robert MacArthur in the 1960s. Their theory, focusing on the balance between immigration and extinction of species on islands, is brilliantly exemplified in the Channel Islands.
The Channel Islands’ rich mosaic of habitats, from windswept cliffs and rocky shores to chaparral-covered hillsides and dense offshore kelp forests, provides an ideal setting for studying how species adapt to varied and changing conditions. Each island functions like a separate ecological experiment, shaped by isolation, resource limits, and time. Evolution has had free rein here, tweaking species in subtle ways and, occasionally, producing striking changes.
One of the most significant studies conducted in the Channel Islands focused on the island fox (Urocyon littoralis), a species found nowhere else on Earth. Research led by the late evolutionary biologist Robert Wayne at UCLA and others showed that the fox populations on each of the six islands they inhabit have evolved in isolation, with distinct genetic lineages and physical traits. This makes them a remarkable example of rapid evolution and adaptive divergence, core processes in island biogeography.
Genetic analyses revealed that each island’s fox population carries unique genetic markers, shaped by long-term separation and adaptation to local environments. These differences aren’t just genetic, they’re physical and behavioral too. Foxes on smaller islands, for instance, tend to be smaller in body size, likely an evolutionary response to limited resources, a phenomenon known as insular dwarfism. Variations in diet, foraging behavior, and even coat coloration have been documented, offering scientists an unparalleled opportunity to study evolutionary processes in a real-world, relatively contained setting.
Excavation of pygmy mammoth bones on the Channel Islands (Photo: National Park Service)
This phenomenon of insular dwarfism isn’t unique to the island fox. One of the most striking examples from the Channel Islands is the pygmy mammoth (Mammuthus exilis), whose fossilized remains were discovered on Santa Rosa Island. Evolving from the much larger Columbian mammoth, these ancient giants shrank to about half their original size after becoming isolated on the islands during the last Ice Age. Limited food, reduced predation, and restricted space drove their dramatic transformation, a powerful illustration of how isolation and environmental pressures can reshape even the largest of species.
Furthermore, the Channel Islands have been instrumental in studying plant species’ colonization and adaptation. Due to their isolation, the islands host a variety of endemic plant species. Research by Kaius Helenurm, including genetic studies on species such as the Santa Cruz Island buckwheat (Eriogonum arborescens) and island mallow (Malva assurgentiflora), has shown how these plants have adapted to the islands’ unique environmental pressures and limited gene flow.
Island mallow (Malva assurgentiflora), a vibrant flowering plant found only on the Channel Islands, thrives in the harsh coastal environment—its striking blooms a testament to the power of isolation and adaptation. (Photo: Curtis Clark)
The islands have been a scientific boon to researchers over the decades because they are not only home to many diverse and endemic species, but their proximity to the urban centers and the universities of California make them amazingly accessible. It’s been suggested that if Darwin had landed on the Channel Islands, he arguably could have come up with the theory of natural selection off of California, rather than happening upon the Galapagos. A 2019 book about the islands, titled North America’s Galapagos: The Historic Channel Islands Biological Surveyrecounts the story of a group of researchers, naturalists, adventurers, cooks, and scientifically curious teenagers who came together on the islands in the late 1930s to embark upon a series of ambitious scientific expeditions never before attempted.
The Channel Islands are renowned for their high levels of endemism — species that are found nowhere else in the world. This is a hallmark of island biogeography, as isolated landmasses often lead to the development of unique species. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was one of the first extensive efforts to describe this phenomenon. For example, as mentioned above, the Channel Islands are home to the island fox (Urocyon littoralis), a small carnivore found only here. Each island has its own subspecies of the fox, differing slightly in size and genetics, a striking example of adaptive radiation, where a single species gives rise to multiple different forms in response to isolation and environmental pressures. That said, the foxes are also incredibly cute, but can be rather annoying if you are camping on the islands because they will ransack your food stores if you do not keep them tightly closed.
Island Fox on Santa Cruz Island (photo: Erik Olsen)
Bird life on the Channel Islands also reveals remarkable diversity and endemism. Much like the finches of the Galápagos, these islands are home to distinct avian species shaped by isolation and adaptation. The Santa Cruz Island Scrub Jay, for instance, is noticeably larger and more vividly colored than its mainland relatives, a reflection of its unique island habitat. Also, jays in pine forests tend to have longer, shallower bills, while those in oak woodlands have shorter, deeper bills. Evolutionary adaptations right out of the Darwinian playbook. Likewise, the San Clemente House Finch has evolved traits suited to its specific environment, illustrating how even common species can diverge dramatically when given time and separation.
The Island Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma insularis), found only on Santa Cruz Island, is larger and more vividly colored than its mainland cousin—an unmistakable symbol of how isolation shapes evolution. (Photo: National Park Service)
The impacts of invasive species on island ecosystems, another critical aspect of island biogeography, are also evident in the Channel Islands. The islands have been an superb laboratory for the practice of conservation and human-driven species recovery. For example, efforts to remove invasive species, like pigs and rats, and the subsequent recovery of native species, like the island fox, provide real-time insights into ecological restoration and the resilience of island ecosystems.
These efforts at conservation and species recovery extend beyond the island fox. In 1997, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service identified that 13 plant species native to the northern Channel Islands in California were in dire need of protection under the Endangered Species Act. This need arose due to several decades of habitat degradation, primarily attributed to extensive sheep grazing. These conservation efforts have yielded good news. For instance, the island bedstraw (Galium buxifolium) expanded from 19 known sites with approximately 500–600 individuals in 1997 to 42 sites with over 15,700 individuals. Similarly, the Santa Cruz Island dudleya (Dudleya nesiotica) population stabilized at around 120,000 plants. As a result of these recoveries, both species were removed from the federal endangered species list in 2023, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act.
Santa Cruz Island Dudleya (Photo: National Park Service)
Conservation efforts at the Channel Islands extend beneath the waves, where marine protected areas (MPAs) have played a crucial role in restoring the rich biodiversity of the underwater world. I’ve seen the rich abundance of sea life firsthand on several dives at the Channel Islands, where the biodiversity feels noticeably greater than at many mainland dive sites in Southern California.
The Channel Islands Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), established in 2003, were among the first of their kind in California. The MPAs around Anacapa, Santa Cruz, and other islands act as refuges where fishing and other extractive activities are limited or prohibited, allowing marine ecosystems to recover and thrive. Over the past two decades, scientists have documented increases in the size and abundance of key species such as kelp bass, lobsters, and sheephead, alongside the resurgence of lush kelp forests that anchor a vibrant web of marine life. These protections have not only benefited wildlife but have also created living laboratories for researchers to study ecological resilience, predator-prey dynamics, and the long-term impacts of marine conservation, all taking place in the context of island biogeography.
Kelp bass in the kelp forest at the Channel Islands (Photo: Erik Olsen)
What makes all of this possible is the remarkable decision to keep these islands protected and undeveloped. Unlike much of the California coast, the Channel Islands were set aside, managed by the National Park Service and NOAA as both a national park and a marine sanctuary. These protections have preserved not just the landscapes, but the evolutionary stories still unfolding in real time. It’s a rare and precious thing to have a living laboratory of biodiversity right in our backyard, and a powerful reminder of why preserving wild places matters.
Ghost lobster trap off Santa Cruz Island in California’s Channel Islands (Photo: Erik Olsen)
Lobster is delicious. Let’s just get that out of the way. Yes, I’m sure there are some who either don’t enjoy the taste of this prolific crustacean, or who are allergic, but for my part, lobster (with a small vial of melted butter) is ambrosia from the sea.
But beyond its place on the plate, the California spiny lobster plays a vital ecological role: hunting sea urchins, hiding in rocky reefs, and helping to keep kelp forests in balance. Its value extends far beyond what it fetches at market. But beneath the surface, particularly around the Channel Islands lurks a growing problem that doesn’t just threaten lobsters. It threatens the entire marine ecosystem: ghost traps.
Dive ship Spectre off of Anacapa Island in California’s Channel Islands (Photo: Erik Olsen)
In Southern California, lobster fishing is both a cultural tradition and a thriving industry, worth an estimated $44 million annually to California’s economy from commercial landings as well as recreational fishing, tourism, and seafood markets.
In late April, I traveled to the Channel Islands with my colleague Tod Mesirow to see the problem of ghost lobster traps firsthand. We were aboard the Spectre dive ship and pulled out of Ventura Harbor on an overcast morning, the sky a uniform gray that blurred the line between sea and cloud. The swell was gentle, but the air carried a sense of anticipati on. We were invited by the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, which is conducting research and outreach in the area. Our visit took us to Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands, where I would be diving to observe the traps littering the sea floor. Tod, meanwhile, remained topside, capturing footage and speaking with marine scientists. Even before entering the water, we could see the toll: frayed lines tangled in kelp, buoys adrift, and entire areas where dive teams had marked clusters of lost gear.
California spiny lobsters alive when the ghost trap was recovered (Photo: Erik Olsen)
Ghost traps are lobster pots that have been lost or abandoned at sea. Made of durable metal mesh and often outfitted with bait containers and strong ropes, these traps are built to last. And they do. For years. Sometimes decades. The problem is, even when their human operators are long gone, these traps keep fishing.
“It’s not uncommon to find multiple animals dead inside a single trap,” said Douglas McCauley, a marine science professor at UC Santa Barbara and director of the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory who was onboard with us and leading the project. “It’s heartbreaking. These traps are still doing exactly what they were built to do, just without anyone coming back to check them.”
Douglas McCauley, director of the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of California Santa Barbara holding a lobster caught in a ghost trap off the coast of the Channel Islands (Photo: Erik Olsen)
Around the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, where fishing pressure is high and waters can be rough, thousands of traps are lost every season. Currents, storms, or boat propellers can sever buoys from their lines, leaving the traps invisible and unrecoverable. Yet they keep doing what they were designed to do: lure lobsters and other sea creatures inside, where they die and become bait for the next unfortunate animal. It’s a vicious cycle known as “ghost fishing.”
“They call them ghost traps because, like a ghost sailing ship, they keep doing their thing. They keep fishing.” said McCauley.
Statewide, the numbers are staggering. Approximately 6,500 traps are reported lost off the California coast each fishing season, according to The California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The folks at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory said as many as 6,000 may lie off the coast of the Channel Islands alone. Ocean Divers removing marine debris have found traps stacked three and four high in underwater ravines—rusting, tangled, but still deadly. These ghost traps don’t just catch lobsters; they also trap protected species like sheephead, cabezon, octopuses, and even the occasional sea turtle or diving seabird.
Diver and Project Scientist Chase Brewster of the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory collecting data on ghost lobster traps near California’s Channel Islands (Photo: Erik Olsen)
Nowhere is this more evident than around the Channel Islands. These rugged islands are home to some of California’s richest kelp forests and underwater canyons. The islands and their surrounding waters are home to over 2,000 plant and animal species, with 145 of them being unique to the islands and found nowhere else on Earth. In fact, the Channel Islands are often referred to as North America’s Galapagos for the immense diversity of species here.
The islands are also the site of the state’s most productive spiny lobster fisheries. Every fall, hundreds of commercial and recreational fishers flood the area, setting thousands of traps in a race to catch California spiny lobsters (Panulirus interruptus). But rough swells and heavy gear mean traps go missing. Boats sometimes cut the lines of traps, making them near impossible to retrieve from the surface. And because this region is a patchwork of state waters, federal waters, and marine protected areas (MPAs), cleanup and regulation are anything but straightforward.
California Spiny Lobster off Anacapa Island (Photo: Erik Olsen)
The traps are often difficult to locate, partly because of their remote placement and the notoriously rough waters around the Channel Islands. But the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory has a powerful asset: side scan sonar. From the ship, they can scan and map the seafloor, where the ghost traps often appear as dark, rectangular shapes against the sand. Once spotted, the team uses GPS to log their exact location.
“It’s creates a picture made of sound on the seafloor and you see these large lego blocks staring at you in bright yellow on the screen and those are your lobster traps,” sayd McCauley. “There’s nothing else except a ghost trap that looks like that.”
Plunging into the frigid waters off Santa Cruz Island was a jolt to the system. Visibility was limited, just 10 to 15 feet, but I followed two scientists from the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory down to a depth of 45 feet. Their task: to attach a rope to the trap so it could be hauled up by the boat’s winch.
Dive ship Spectre off the coast of Santa Cruz Island in California’s Channel Islands (Photo: Erik Olsen)
The water was thick with suspended particles, the light dimming quickly as we dropped lower. My 7mm wetsuit was just barely enough to stave off the cold. On the seafloor, the ghost trap emerged, a large rectangular cage resting dark and ominous in the sand. And it was teeming with life. Fish darted around its edges, lobsters clambered along the frame, and inside, several animals moved about, trapped and slowly dying. It was easy to see how a single trap could wreak quiet havoc for years.
California law technically requires all lobster traps to include biodegradable “escape panels” with zinc hinges that degrade over time, eventually allowing trapped animals to escape. But enforcement is tricky, and the panels don’t always work as intended. In practice, many traps, especially older or illegally modified ones, keep fishing long after they should have stopped. That’s what we were out here to find.
A baby octopus caught in a ghost trap in the waters off California’s Channel Islands (Photo: Erik Olsen)
Complicating matters is the fact that once a trap goes missing, there’s no easy way to retrieve it. Fishers are not legally allowed to touch traps that aren’t theirs, even if they’re obviously abandoned. And while a few small nonprofits and volunteer dive teams conduct periodic ghost gear removal missions, they can’t keep pace with the scale of the problem.
“At this fishery, we can’t get them all,” says McCauley. “But by going through and getting some species out and getting them back in the water, we’re making a difference. But in the process, we’re coming up with new ideas, new technologies, new research methods, which we think could play a role in and actually stopping this problem in the first instance.”
Once abundant along California’s coast, this large abalone spotted off Santa Cruz Island is a rare sight today—a quiet reminder of how overfishing, disease, and environmental change have decimated their populations. (Photo: Erik Olsen)
Back topside, the recovery team aboard the Spectre used a powerful hydraulic winch to haul the trap onto the deck. After climbing out of the cold water, still shivering, I joined the others to get a closer look. The trap was heavy and foul-smelling, but what stood out most was what was inside: lobsters, maybe ten or more. Some had perished, but many were alive and thrashed their tails when lifted by the scientists. Females could be identified by their broader, flatter tail fins—adapted to hold eggs. The team carefully measured each one before tossing them back into the sea, the lobsters flipping backward through the air and disappearing into the depths.
There were other animals, too. Large, rounded crabs known as Sheep crabs, common to these waters, scuttled at the bottom of the trap. Sea snails were clustered along the mesh, and in one cage, there were dozens of them, clinging and crawling with slow purpose. Even baby octopuses made appearances, slithering out onto the deck like confused aliens. I picked one up gently, marveling at its strange, intelligent eyes and soft, shifting forms, before tossing it back into the sea in hopes it would have another chance at life.
Ghost lobster trap lies on the seafloor off of Santa Cruz Island in California’s Channel Islands (Photo: Erik Olsen)
By then, the day had brightened and the sun had come out, easing the chill that lingered after the dive. The traps would be taken back to Ventura, where they’d likely be documented and disposed of. But this day wasn’t just about saving individual animals or pulling traps off the seafloor—it was about data. The Benioff team wants to understand just how big of a problem ghost traps really are. It’s not just about the number of traps lost each season, but the broader ecological toll: how many animals get caught, how many die, and how these traps alter the underwater food web. Every recovered trap adds a piece to the puzzle. This trip was about science as much as rescue.
State agencies, including the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), have started pilot programs aimed at tackling ghost gear. In 2023, CDFW launched a limited recovery permit program that allows fishers to collect derelict traps at the end of the season, provided they notify the state. But participation is voluntary and poorly funded.
Elsewhere, states like Maine and Florida have created large-scale, state-funded programs to identify and remove ghost traps, often employing fishers in the off-season. California, despite having the nation’s fourth-largest lobster fishery, has yet to make a similar investment.
Ghost lobster traps recovered from the seafloor off the coast of California’s Channel Islands (Photo: Erik Olsen)
Some solutions are already within reach. Mandating GPS-equipped buoys for commercial traps could help track and retrieve gear before it’s lost. More robust escape hatch designs, made from materials that dissolve in weeks rather than months, would shorten the lifespan of a lost trap. And expanding retrieval programs with funding from fishing license fees or federal grants could make a big dent in ghost gear accumulation.
But even more powerful than regulation may be public awareness. Ghost traps are out of sight, but their damage is far from invisible. Every trap left behind in the Channel Islands’ waters becomes another threat to biodiversity, another source of plastic and metal waste, and another reminder that marine stewardship doesn’t stop when the fishing season ends.
Key to the whole effort is data:
“Every one of the animals that we put back in the water today, we’ll be taking a measure,” says McCauley. “After a little bit of crunching in the lab, we’ll be able to say, oh, actually, you know, every single trap undercuts the fishery by x percent for every single year that we don’t solve the problem.”
Doug McCauley with a lobster trap retrieved from the seafloor off the coast of California’s Channel Islands (Photo: Erik Olsen)
As we headed back toward Ventura, Tod and I talked with Douglas McCauley and Project Scientist Neil Nathan from the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory. The team had collected a total of 13 traps that day alone, and 34 over the several days they’d been out. There was a sense of satisfaction on board, quiet but real. Each trap removed was a small win for the ecosystem, a little less pressure on an already strained marine environment.
“I would call today an incredible success, ” said Neil Nathan. “Feeling great about the number of traps we collected.”
California has long been a leader in ocean conservation. If it wants to stay that way, it needs to take ghost fishing seriously, not just around the Channel Islands, but up and down the coast. After all, we owe it to the lobsters, yes, but also to the underwater forests, reef communities, and countless species whose lives are tangled in the nets we leave behind.
We wrote a piece a while back about the three winters Albert Einstein spent in Pasadena, a little-known chapter in the life of a man who changed how we understand the universe. It was our way of showing how Einstein, often seen as a figure of European academia and global science, formed a real affection for California and for Pasadena in particular. It’s easy to picture him walking the streets here, lost in thought or sharing a laugh with Charlie Chaplin. The idea of those two geniuses, one transforming physics and the other revolutionizing comedy, striking up a friendship is something worth imagining.
But Einstein’s connection to Pasadena didn’t end there. It lives on in a small, nondescript building near the Caltech campus, where a group of researchers continues to study and preserve the legacy he left behind.
The Einstein Papers Project (EPP) at Caltech is one of the most ambitious and influential scientific archival efforts of the modern era. It’s not just about preserving Albert Einstein’s work—it’s about opening a window into the mind of one of the most brilliant thinkers in history. Since the late 1970s, a dedicated team of scholars has been working to collect, translate, and annotate every significant document Einstein left behind. While the project is headquartered at the California Institute of Technology, it collaborates closely with Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which houses the original manuscripts.
Einstein at the Santa Barbara home of Caltech trustee Ben Meyer on Feb. 6, 1933. (The Caltech Archives)
The idea began with Harvard physicist and historian Gerald Holton, who saw early on that Einstein’s vast output—scientific papers, personal letters, philosophical musings—deserved a meticulously curated collection. That vision became the Einstein Papers Project, which has since grown into a decades-long effort to publish The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, now spanning over 15 volumes (and counting). The project’s goal is as bold as Einstein himself: to assemble a comprehensive record of his life and work, from his earliest student notebooks to the letters he wrote in the final years of his life.
Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin during the premiere of the film ‘City Lights’. (Wikipedia)
Rather than being stored in a traditional library, these documents are carefully edited and presented in both print and online editions. And what a treasure trove it is. You’ll find the famous 1905 “miracle year” papers that revolutionized physics, laying the foundation for both quantum mechanics (which Einstein famously derided) and special relativity. You’ll also find handwritten drafts, scribbled calculations, and long chains of correspondence—sometimes with world leaders, sometimes with lifelong friends. These documents don’t just chart the course of scientific discovery; they reveal the very human process behind it: doubt, revision, flashes of inspiration, and stubborn persistence.
At the Mount Wilson Observatory with the Austrian mathematician Walther Mayer, left, and Charles St. John of the observatory staff. (The Caltech Archives)
Some of the most fascinating material involves Einstein’s attempts at a unified field theory, an ambitious effort to merge gravity and electromagnetism into one grand framework. He never quite got there, but his notebooks show a mind constantly working, refining, rethinking—sometimes over decades.
But the project also captures Einstein the person: the political thinker, the pacifist, the refugee, the cultural icon. His letters reflect a deep concern with justice and human rights, from anti-Semitism in Europe to segregation in the United States. He corresponded with Sigmund Freud about the roots of violence, with Mahatma Gandhi about nonviolent resistance, and with presidents and schoolchildren alike. The archive gives us access to the full spectrum of who he was, not just a scientist, but a citizen of the world.
The Einstein Papers Project home near Caltech in Pasadena (Photo: Erik Olsen)
One of the most exciting developments has been the digitization of the archive. Thanks to a collaboration with Princeton University Press, a large portion of the Collected Papers is now freely available online through the Digital Einstein Papers website. Students, teachers, historians, and science nerds around the globe can now browse through Einstein’s original documents, many of them translated and annotated by experts. The most recent release, Volume 17, spans June 1929 to November 1930, capturing Einstein’s life primarily in Berlin as he travels across Europe for scientific conferences and to accept honorary degrees. The volume ends just before his departure for the United States. Princeton has a nice story on the significance of that particular volume by EPP Editor Josh Eisenthal.
The California Institute of Technology, CalTech (Photo: Erik Olsen)
For scholars, the project is a goldmine. It’s not just about Einstein—it’s about the entire intellectual climate of the 20th century. His collaborations and rivalries, his responses to global upheaval, and his reflections on science, faith, and ethics all provide insight into a remarkable era of discovery and change. His writings also show a playful, curious side—his love of music, his wit, and his habit of thinking in visual metaphors.
Caltech’s role in all this goes beyond simple stewardship. The Einstein Papers Project is a reflection of the institute’s broader mission: to explore the frontiers of science and human understanding. For decades, Caltech has been a breeding ground for great minds. As of January 23, 2025, there are 80 Nobel laureates who have been affiliated with Caltech, making it the institution with the highest number of Nobelists per capita in America. By preserving and sharing Einstein’s legacy, Caltech helps keep alive a conversation about curiosity, responsibility, and the enduring power of ideas.
