The Brief

The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach released its first-ever report card this week detailing the health of 30 species of SoCal marine life. The vibe is more elementary school progress report than college-dooming letter grades — green sea turtles and giant sea bass are making satisfactory progress. White abalone and ochre sea stars need improvement.

Overall, 18 species had populations that were either rising — including the giant sea bass, green sea turtle, and southern sea otter — or were stable with fluctuations — including the western snowy plover, California brown pelican, and Eastern North Pacific gray whale.

Species on the decline — 12 of them — include the harbor seal and several species of sea stars and abalone.

You can peruse the whole report card here.

Abalone at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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Two iconic SoCal critters: one success, one struggle

Giant sea bass, which live about as long as humans, were nearly fished to extinction decades ago. But the species has been on a slow but steady path to recovery, thanks to regulations protecting the giants from fishing and recovery programs. Fun fact: The Aquarium of the Pacific was the first aquarium to successfully breed and raise the fish in captivity and release them into the wild.

White abalone, with its pearly shell, was once an important food for native people in coastal California. But in the first half of the 1900s, white abalone and other abalone species were decimated by overharvesting. Not-so-fun fact: White abalone was the first invertebrate listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, in 2001.

The Aquarium of the Pacific has been breeding abalone for several decades. Since 2019, they’ve released 16,000 of the critters back into coastal waters, said Nate Jaros, vice president of animal care at the aquarium.

But it hasn’t been enough to bring the species back from the brink of extinction.

“ When you're releasing abalone, they kind of have to go through a gauntlet of predators — octopus, sheephead, lobsters are all abalone predators. So when you put small abalone out, they're vulnerable,” Jaros said.

The aquarium is now working with outside partners to scale up their white abalone breeding program. “We want to put enough out that they can fill the habitat and then start to reproduce,” he said.

Aquarium visitors learn about ochre sea stars and other species that live in the coastal waters of Southern California.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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What’s the point of the report card?

Even conservation biologists have a hard time measuring changes in biodiversity as a whole, said Aquarium CEO Peter Kareiva. The report card measures the status of key species that make up the marine ecosystem along the coast so that scientists and the public can go back — for example, after the recent devastating fires pouring toxic runoff into the ocean — and see how those species fared after the fire.

The report card also allows the aquarium to evaluate whether its recovery programs are working.

Kareiva also hopes the report card will help people understand the state of ocean biodiversity in a more concrete way.

“ If I told you there had been a 10% decline in California marine biodiversity, you would intellectually know that was bad, but I'm not sure you would get passionate about it,” Kareiva said. “But if I told you that all of the sea otters along California had disappeared, you'd be angry, you'd rally, you'd be passionate about it, and you'd feel a real sense of loss.”

How was the data collected?

Dozens of researchers, organizations, and government agencies contributed to the report card. The data is collected from field work, remote sensing and long-term monitoring programs — and the information about each species was peer reviewed by outside experts.

What can you do to help? 

The Aquarium of the Pacific has many volunteer programs and other ways to help SoCal sea life. Get started here.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who rose to prominence as one of President Donald Trump's biggest defenders and recently became one of his biggest critics, is leaving Congress.

Greene's announcement late Friday that she would resign effective Jan. 5, 2026, is the latest escalation of months of clashes with the president over his second term agenda — including the release of the Epstein files.

"Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States, whom I fought for," Greene wrote in a lengthy statement shared online.

The third-term Congresswoman also said it would not be fair to her northwest Georgia district, one of the most conservative in the country, to have them "endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the president we all fought for," while noting that "Republicans will likely lose the midterms."

Greene is one of a record 40 House members and 10 senators who have indicated they do not plan to return to their seats after the 2026 election, joining a number of lawmakers who are retiring or running for a different office.
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Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman filed a motion Friday in Superior Court to dismiss manslaughter charges against two Torrance police officers who fatally shot a Black man in possession of an air rifle in 2018.

Hochman argued in court documents that prosecutors can’t meet the legal standard of proof needed for the officers to be convicted of a crime.

The court has not yet ruled on the matter.

The details

Officers Matthew Concannon and Anthony Chavez were indicted in 2023 in connection with the killing of Christopher Deandre Mitchell, 23, who was suspected of stealing a car.

As the officers approached the car, they saw what was later revealed to be an air rifle between Mitchell’s legs. When Mitchell appeared to reach for the rifle,the officers opened fire, according to police.

The backstory

Former District Attorney Jackie Lacey declined to file charges against the officers in 2019, saying they reasonably believed Mitchell had a gun. Her successor George Gascón, elected in 2020 on a platform of police accountability, assigned a special prosecutor to review the case. The special prosecutor sought the criminal indictment.

When Hochman took office in 2024, he appointed a new special prosecutor, who recommended the charges be dropped.

“We cannot move forward in good faith with prosecuting these two officers because we cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt with admissible evidence that the officers unreasonably believed they were in imminent danger when they saw what looked like a sawed-off shotgun or rifle between Mr. Mitchell’s legs and his hands moved toward the weapon just before the officers shot,” the statement read.

The courts

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta did not immediately make a ruling Friday on the motion to dismiss the charges, saying the state Supreme Court is also considering the case.

The state Supreme Court is considering an appeal filed by one of the officer’s attorneys after Ohta rejected an earlier motion to dismiss by the defense.

As the Palisades Fire was still burning in January, residents saw an eye-grabbing headline: the Santa Ynez reservoir, perched directly above the Palisades, was offline for repairs and empty.

The reservoir’s closure frustrated residents and spurred Gov. Gavin Newsom to announce a state investigation into whether the reservoir being full of water would have made a difference fighting the deadly fire.

After months of analysis, California agencies including the state’s EPA, Cal Fire and the Department of Water Resources issued a report confirming the explanations given by local officials and experts in the aftermath of the fire: the water supply was too slow, not too low — and even a functioning reservoir likely wouldn’t have done much in the face of an unprecedented natural disaster.

Why the hydrants stopped working

The report found that not even a full reservoir positioned uphill from the Palisades Fire could have maintained water pressure and stopped the unprecedented disaster.

“The water system lost pressure, not due to a lack of water supply in the system, but because of an insufficient flow rate,” the report states.

A reservoir perched at a high elevation, such as the Santa Ynez, can serve an important role in maintaining water pressure for hydrants throughout the system. As water gets used downhill, water from the reservoir flows to pressure towers. Because of gravity and limitation on flow rates, the pressure towers can't be refilled at the same pace as they are drained. Meanwhile, the reservoir dries up.

In the case of the Palisades Fire, the report states, a full reservoir would have helped keep water pressure up for only a short time.

The report noted that the exact data on the demand on the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s system was missing.

However, investigators found that based on experiences with other fires, the high demand across the system meant it was “unlikely that [the reservoir] could have helped maintain pressure for very long.”

The system’s design

The report found that the closure of the Santa Ynez Reservoir was in line with the primary purpose of L.A.’s water infrastructure: maintaining a clean drinking water supply. The reservoir repairs were prompted by a damaged cover. The repairs, the report notes, were required by federal and state laws on drinking water safety.

More broadly, municipal water systems like L.A.’s weren’t built to fight wildfires, as LAist reported in January.

“This report confirms what we and others have been saying more broadly regarding water system expectations and capabilities, but does so completely independently and with new details specific to the L.A. fires,” Greg Pierce, the director of UCLA’s Human Right to Water Solutions Lab, said in an email to LAist.

What’s next

The report makes two major recommendations: continue to follow the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan, and make sure firefighters in the state are positioned for year-round fires.

The state stopped short of recommending any changes to L.A.’s municipal infrastructure. Water experts like Pierce say massive amounts of water and a very expensive redesign of L.A.’s water system would be needed to keep fire hydrants working during large urban conflagrations.

For their part, researchers and others have been looking into other solutions, including putting more utility lines underground and redistributing water across the system.

The report about the reservoir comes on the heels of a separate report from the Fire Safety Research Institute about the timeline leading up to and during the January firestorm. That report, which was commissioned by the California governor's office, contains a detailed account of the Palisades and Eaton fires' progressions and emergency services' responses on Jan. 7 and 8.

As for the Santa Ynez Reservoir, the repairs to fix its broken cover and make it usable again are slated to begin in June and finish by May 2027.