[From Introduction]

The shelf off Santa Barbara is rather extensive and forms a large embayment open to the west. It is cut from the remainder of the southern California Borderland by the row of Channel Islands to the south and east. The deepest part of this bay, the Santa Barbara Basin is somewhat to the south of the middle of the bay, so that the shelf areas off Santa Barbara are considerably wider than the shelf of the Channel Islands. It is on this wide portion of the shelf that the oil drilling off Santa Barbara has been taking place. Platform A, which started leaking during the last days of January 1969, is roughly in the middle of the widest portion of the shelf.

A large-scale benthic survey was done off the southern California coast by the Allan Hancock Foundation during the years 1956-1960. (Allan Hancock Foundation, 1965) This survey, which was financed through the State of California, concentrated on mapping the different kinds of environments found along the coast. During this survey some very high values of standing crop of macroinvertebrates were reported from the Palos Verdes shelf off Los Angeles and from the shelf off Santa Barbara; up to 2,800 grams per square meter were present off Palos Verdes and better than 2,300 grams per square meter off Santa Barbara. These values are among the highest measured in the marine environment.