Surfers packed the parking lot on a recent evening at the popular beach sites Old Man’s, Four Doors, The Point and Dog Patch.
As they drove toward San Onofre State Beach, they passed orange fencing, shielding dried-out vernal pools that serve as home to fairy shrimp, inch-long crustaceans that have been little more than a myth to surfers and longtime beach-goers in Southern California.
Jeremy Peters of Rancho Santa Margarita has surfed these beaches for 20 years. He remembers hearing about the fairy shrimp long ago.
“I didn’t believe it,” he said. “How is there a shrimp living on dry land? I think it’s a good thing to keep them alive.”
RELATED: Graphic: How the fairy shrimp can live on dry land
They’re real, all right, and coastal development has wiped out nearly 90 percent of the habitat in Southern California and Baja, leading the roughly 1-inch-long crustacean to be listed as endangered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Beginning this month, officials at Camp Pendleton, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and California State Parks will begin a multimillion-dollar plan to restore about 15 acres of fairy shrimp habitat on a bluff overlooking the popular surf spots.
The San Onofre bluff had been degraded by decades-long recreational vehicle traffic and was being used as a staging area for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Restoration there increases the size and quality of the habitat.
Fairy shrimp preservation is important to the overall ecosystem, experts say. The shrimp eat algae and zooplankton in the pools, capturing and concentrating the nutritional value of these lower-level food-chain organisms. The shrimp in turn provide a food resource for organisms higher on the food-chain, such as the spade foot toad and its larvae, as well as birds. In consuming algae, they also prevent its overgrowth. Too much algae depletes oxygen.
RESTORING THE POOLS
Camp Pendleton ecologist Deborah Bieber, along with experts from U.S. Fish and Wildlife, identified 80 vernal pools on the seaside bluff, where fairy shrimp eggs incubate.
A quarter of the pools in the project were selected for restoration as a way to make up for construction projects on the base. The remaining 60 pools will be restored by base personnel to offset possible future base building.
Base biologists have identified 39 pools inhabited with San Diego fairy shrimp eggs, seven pools with Lindahl’s fairy shrimp (not an endangered species) and 34 empty pools.
The eggs will be collected and stored during restoration. A small layer of soil and plant seed will be removed from the pools. Some of the pools will be made a little deeper and wider to provide better catch basins for rainwater. Pools vary in size from 2 to 20 feet across. Non-native plants upland of the pools also will be removed.
Officials expect it to take about three months to complete the recontouring process in the area’s first phase, close to the state park’s entrance.
DELICATE LIFE CYCLE
While the eggs are tough – able to resist fire, they can lie dormant in dried-out vernal pools for 10 years – the fairy shrimp lead delicate and precarious lives.
After they hatch in shallow vernal pools during the rainy season, they’re lucky to make it into adulthood. Hundreds of baby fairy shrimp die when the pools dry out before the teeny crustaceans become adults. Those that survive must reproduce before dying by the end of the rainy season.
In that time they mate and lay more eggs – or cysts, as they’re also called. Their quick life cycle is an adaptation to the extreme irregularity of the pools’ filling. When pools fill and shrimp hatch out, depredation may be intense, but since many pools fill at once, there can be a very rapid and widespread abundance of fairy shrimp, which overwhelms the ability of potential predators such as birds and amphibians, to eat the shrimp.
The pools form each winter when dry depressions fill with rainwater. Then the cycle begins again. During drought years, the off-white- and clear-colored, pebble-like eggs lie dormant.
RESTORATION REQUIRES PRECISION
The land planned for restoration was once used as part of the state park but was taken back by the base on a lease modification when the land was selected for restoration.
“You want this gently rolling topography so that when rain falls it will fill the pools,” said Peter Beck, a biologist with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who helped coordinate the restoration plan. “You want connectivity between the pools.”
Fill dirt in the vernal pools has to gently be removed without disturbing the structures underneath. Plants in the pools that create a safe habitat for the fairy shrimp must be underwater for many months and continue to thrive in drought-like conditions.
The shrimp were probably always on the bluff and managed to survive despite all of the abuse at the site. This species does not move between sites on its own.
The bluff area and park sit on land belonging to the Marine base. The state park uses the land under a 50-year lease with the Department of the Navy that expires in 2021.
The work will temporarily restrict public access by shutting down an overlook trail along the bluff. That trail will be resurfaced with a walkway and will create improved access that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Educational signage will later be posted along the trail to advise visitors about the fairy shrimp habitat.
A water line supplying the state park’s showers and bathrooms will be capped during the restoration project. State park officials will lay an alternate pipe along the roadway to redistribute water to those facilities. Construction of the pipe may affect some water use at the park facilities.
MARINES SAVE ENDANGERED SPECIES
Most of Camp Pendleton’s 125,000-acre base and 171/2 miles of shoreline are used for training. Habitat restoration efforts combined with environmental training and intense monitoring by biologists have resulted in strong comebacks for several of the 18 threatened or endangered species that share the base.
With an annual budget of $6 million, a staff of 100 biologists, geographers, hazardous waste experts and statisticians devise and launch campaigns to rid streams of invasive plants, steer tanks and troops away from wildlife corridors and protect endangered species on the base.
“They’ve upped their game in conservation,” said Beck, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist. “They’re working on improving willows and cottonwoods in their riparian habitat. Since 1990, they’ve removed almost all of their non-native plants.”
The California least tern and the Western Snowy Plover – two federally listed beach bird species – have dramatically improved their numbers and seem to enjoy the conditions in which the Marines keep their beaches, Beck added.
The base holds one-fourth of the state’s endangered California least terns. The number of endangered least Bell’s vireos has risen from 50 birds in 1980 to more than 1,000 territorial pairs.
One of the last known nesting areas of the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher lies just south of Camp Pendleton’s air station.
RETURNING NATURE TO THE BEACH
Eric Schelmety was stoked about the fairy shrimp restoration. The 42-year-old Los Angeles surfer had stopped off at the beach to check out the break. He was coming back from a surfing trip to Baja.
“I think the whole park should be as close to natural as it can be,” he said. “I’m in L.A. where everything is concrete. I think it’s totally worth it.”
Schelmety, an emergency room trauma nurse, comes down to Old Man’s several times a month and isn’t worried about a possible interruption in water restrooms and showers.
“Not many surfers mind a little sand,” he said. “A lot of surfers carry buckets with them to step in and wash off their feet.”
Contact the writer: 949-492-5152 or eritchie@ocregister.com or Twitter: @lagunaini
