Giant Coreopsis blooming on an Anacapa hillside.

For my entire life prior to 2003, whenever I looked off the southern California coast, I would see the distant Channel Islands silhouetted on the horizon, thinking to myself, “I really got to get out there some day…”  But most of my life, they were just another place I had yet to visit in my home state of California (I lived in Cali for more than two decades).

Then one day in the fall of 2003, I got a call (or was it an email?) from someone named Greg McCormack (who has become a great friend now), inviting me to apply for a grant to participate in a program called LiMPETS, which was for Marine Biology instructors who wished to incorporate field experiences in to their classes.  Sounded good to me!  And it even included an all-expense-paid trip down to Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands National Park!  Well, I received the grant and the next thing I know I am down in So-Cal hanging out in the gorgeous Santa Barbara Mountains with Greg and a slew of other Marine Biology teachers from the around the west coast. 

We spent our Channel Islands time on the spectacular and remote island known as Anacapa.  We learned the LiMPETS protocol and spent some time exploring and photographing the island ecosystem.  While I was not there for all that long, I did capture enough of the region’s ecology to present a three hour lecture in one of my “World’s Wildest Places” classes. 

Please take a look at our North America Image Galleries!

California Scenes Image Gallery

Take a look at some of the images that I captured while there on lovely Anacapa Island!