A major oil spill off the California coast has caused dead birds, fish and oil to wash up on Hunting

[Hekate]

13. I'm a little confused about your location. You "spent a couple of days" at Huntington Beach once...

… but live in Sarasota, which if I’m not mistaken is in Florida?

I live on the Central Coast in California, and have for over 40 years, most of it in Goleta next door to Santa Barbara. It is a very oil-rich region — and was Ground Zero for the creation of Earth Day and the environmental movement due to the utterly disastrous oil spill of 1968. People along the coast in California have strong negative feelings about oil and the power of oil companies. No, surfers cannot go out when there’s been a spill, and neither can tourists. And no, local governments can only do so much. Citizen environmental organizations have been battling the power of Big Oil all along, with particular emphasis on anyone who uses the water.

Interesting thing about oil, though. Even absent modern drilling, certain areas have seeps. On any ordinary day a walk along Goleta Beach leaves you with tar on your feet, and if you swim or surf you have spots of tar on your body. That’s harmless. These are from natural seeps — for thousands of years the Chumash tribes knew it well, and used this material for waterproofing their canoes, among other things.