August 21, 2017 — There’s an invasion plaguing the coastal waters of Southern California.
Waves of tiny interlopers spark havoc at fisheries, clog municipal water pipes and frustrate boaters who must dislodge buckets of sea crud.
They’ve altered our coastal regions’ ecosystems, endangered native fish and birthed such nasty problems as “swimmer’s itch.”
Accelerated in recent decades by international trade, invasive sea creatures have hitchhiked here in and alongside massive cargo vessels from around the globe.
Local officials admit they often don’t know enough about these oft-destructive invaders to halt their environmental takeovers or truly know to what extent the strategies they’ve launched against them are actually working.
But experts from such prestigious organizations as the Smithsonian Environment Research Center have vowed to gather the intelligence needed to rescue native species by studying the incoming hordes, comparing the myriad areas they’ve infiltrated and assessing whether anti-invasive methods and regulations already in place are effective.
“We still don’t know enough about these species,” said Brianna Tracy, a research biologist for the center, which has launched four years of monitoring of the waters along the nation’s largest seaport, the twin Long Beach and Los Angeles cargo complexes.