Ever wondered what your favorite California beach looked like 32 years ago? Well, now you can search through thousands of aerial photographs of California's 1,100-mile stretch of coast online at www.californiacoastline.org.
You can see what the coast looked like before the Ritz-Carlton came to Half Moon Bay in 2001, or what the road to Mavericks looked like before the triple-fin surfboard came onto the scene.
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Director of the Sierra Club's Coastal Program Mark Massara is thrilled about the project and excited to utilize it for his coastal advocacy work. "For my use," he said, "it is phenomenal!
"There are so many places you can see on this Web site where you can't even go just hiking."
Massara says the project documents the "relentless pace of development" on California's coast. "We're trying to ensure that no new coastal development is approved" without due process and environmental review, he said.
Kenneth and Gabrielle Adelman photographed the entire coast between 2002 and 2004, resulting in more than 12,000 distinct photographs of California's coast as part of the California Coastal Records Project. The Adelman photos were originally launched on the site in 2002, where Gary Griggs, director of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, saw the photos and contacted the Adelmans to try to include more than 5,800 aerial slides he had that showed the coast in 1972.
Soon, the Adelmans and Griggs joined forces and organized the photos on the Web site to provide a clear comparison of the coast.
"The (Web site) and photographs have become an extremely useful tool for our coastal research on a wide range of issues from coastal erosion and cliff failure, to the distribution of seawalls and other coastal armoring. Nowhere did this sort of statewide, up-to-date, high-quality information exist in an easily available and conveniently accessible format," Griggs said.
"We believe that if people witness the coastal resources we have lost in the intervening 30 years since the Coastal Act was passed, that they will work even harder to protect those that remain. As a result, we remain committed to bringing these images to the public," Gabrielle Adelman said.
"Coastal development has permanently altered the nature of our coast in less than a single generation," Massara said. The Ritz-Carlton development on the southern coast of Half Moon Bay is a case-in-point, he added. "Here we have a perfect example of what was once an undeveloped coastal bluff with a public access way to the beach. Thirty years later, we have an exclusive resort and golf course, the removal of a public access way, and an illegal seawall."
While Massara is excited about this project, he isn't yet convinced that coastal development will slow anytime soon. "I wouldn't say that we're doing better. The situation is dire because there's so little open coastline left. At this point I hate to give anything up," he said.
The Web site is gaining popularity as it continues to grow. It has logged more than 2.4 million visitors since it was launched in October 2002.
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