January 30, 2025 — The Reuben Lasker was about four miles off the coast of Manhattan Beach when ash began to rain upon the sea — first in delicate flurries, then in noxious clouds.
The fisheries research vessel had set sail days earlier for a coastal survey. It was supposed to be a routine voyage, the kind that the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) program embarks upon four times a year as part of the world’s longest-running marine ecosystem monitoring effort.
But when the Palisades and Eaton fires broke out, scientists aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship inadvertently became the first investigators on the scene of a brewing disaster that could upend life underwater.
The smoke that has choked Los Angeles, the debris piled up along decimated streets, the charred and toxic remnants of thousands of destroyed homes, businesses, cars and electronics — nearly all of it, eventually, will come to rest in the ocean.
There is no precedent for how an urban fire of this magnitude could change the ecosystem that countless species, including our own, rely on for food and sustenance.
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