In late April, 2023 I was fortunate to have been able to take a cruise onboard the National Geographic Quest ship, which visited 3 of the 5 islands that comprise Channel Islands National Park off of the shore of Southern California: Anacapa, Santa Cruz, and Santa Rosa. A visit was also made to Santa Catalina Island on the last day, which is not part of the national park system although it is also protected under a conservancy organization.

The cruise departed the port of Long Beach, California on the evening of Monday, April 24, 2023 and returned on the morning of Friday, April 28. Three days were spent exploring aspects of four islands in the interim. This post focuses mainly upon Anacapa Island, which was the first stop of the trip on Tuesday, April 25.

This was the view that greeted me as I awoke on our first morning, anchored after an overnight journey from Long Beach to our first stop: East Anacapa Island, with its signature lighthouse, national park staff buildings (formerly built by the Coast Guard and subsequently shared with the NPS since 1970), and the iconic sea arch at the easternmost tip of the easternmost island in the group.

A zoomed-in view not long after sunrise from my cabin window shows thousands of seabirds, mostly cormorants and some brown pelicans, still resting on the steep slopes and cliffs of East Anacapa Island. Within an hour or two about 80% of these birds had left, gone to find fish far out at sea, using the daylight hours to do their hunting.

This view from the bow deck of the Quest shows a gigantic shipping container offshore. The huge letters on the side of the ship identify it as the Evergreen, one of the series of famous cargo vessels (mostly beginning with the word “Ever-“) used to ship thousands of tons of consumer goods from China to the nearby Port of Long Beach, located only about 70 miles away.

A “Welcome Aboard” pirate flag greets passengers at the bow of the National Geographic Quest cruise vessel, owned by the National Geographic Society and leased out periodically to Lindblad Expeditions nature tours. The buildings on East Anacapa are still owned by the US Coast Guard, but are currently operated jointly by them and the Channel Islands NP unit of the National Park Service, which houses a handful of staff and welcomes visitors to the islands during the daytime. West Anacapa Island, the largest of the three, looms in the distance to the right of the image; Middle Anacapa is not visible from this angle and is roughly the same size as East Anacapa.

After breakfast and an orientation talk on how we are to get into the Zodiac boats to get to Anacapa, guests gather in the Mud Room at the stern of the ship. We did this twice a day for three days on this cruise, visiting various destinations in the Channel Islands archipelago.

Once aboard the small and mobile Zodiac boats used to ferry us from the main ship to the islands, we took a few minute long journey from the Quest to various piers and/or beaches.

My friend Ken and I joined four other people in our particular party, and a grand total of about 70 other passengers (and at least 25 to 30 Quest crew members and staff) for this cruise encompassing parts of 5 days and four nights. There are 8 Channel Islands total, and we visited 4 of them: Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and Catalina.

The large sea arch at the eastern end of East Anacapa is one of the most recognizable symbols of the Channel Islands group. Despite their apparent sturdiness, rock arches are fundamentally temporary in nature and eventually collapse due to the forces of erosion and gravity. While they might last for as much as tens of thousands of years, this is rather short when you are talking about geological time frames. In thinking about the differences between sea arches and land arches, I suspect that sea arches form and die much more quickly due to the pounding forces of waves and storms. Land arches most likely develop a lot more slowly and live for longer since there are no strong water wave forces acting upon them, eroding them quickly and causing collapses sooner.

Anacapa Island is one of the most heavily used islands in the United States for nesting seabird colonies. The relatively small size of the Anacapa group (not quite 700 acres between all 3 islands, or only 1.1 square miles) paired with a lack of fresh water means that larger land mammals cannot readily survive upon them, which means no competition or predation pressure, making the islands a safe place to rear chicks. As a result of large populations of seabirds living here, much of the island is covered in white guano, aka bird droppings. These thick guano deposits can pose challenges for plant life since it is saline and high in nitrates and other salts. During winter rains, liquefied guano drains down the cliffs in small waterfalls. Eventually the nutrients in the guano enters the ocean, where it helps nourish abundant marine life such as dense kelp forests and hundreds of species of fish, which in turn draw larger animals such as seals, porpoises, whales, and large sharks including the famous great white shark.

I did some reading up on Anacapa Island online and found that despite the small size of the three islets that comprise its total surface area, that sheep were grazed upon the islands between the mid-late 1800s and 1930s, and that invasive black rats, European rabbits, and feral cats were introduced by humans as well. These exotic species had a devastating negative impact upon the original plants and animals on Anacapa and severely reduced populations of almost every native creature. It’s quite possible that certain plants were even made extinct before being known to science. Eradication campaigns were eventually started, with sheep being removed by 1938 and rabbits being gone by 1960. The rats were the hardest critters to eradicate, but they were successfully eliminated from Anacapa by 2003. Once the rats in particular were gone, nesting success rates on several rare pelagic birds, such as murrelets and auklets, went up enormously since rats had been preying upon the eggs and chicks of over 90% of nests for those species.

The Channel Islands also host large numbers of pinnipeds, including California sea lions, harbor seals, and elephant seals. Some beaches in certain coves shelter hundreds of these animals at a time, while small resting colonies dot the shoreline just about anywhere you look. Marine pinnipeds had been heavily hunted for their fur and blubber and were nearly eliminated from accessible waters by the early 1900s. With strict protections since then, fortunately, many seals and sea lions have staged a big comeback and are no longer threatened in many locales.

East Anacapa Island also contains several sea stacks in addition to the famous arch. It’s likely that some of these pillars of vertical rock were once part of sea arches themselves, but they collapsed into the ocean long ago. In the future more arches and stacks may well be carved out of the current island cliffs.

Our ship, the National Geographic Quest, anchors offshore of East Anacapa Island, framed nicely by the arch. One of our ship’s Zodiac craft cruises by in the window as well.

Working our way around the east end of the island back towards the north shore, it was time for our land hike to commence. Due to steep cliffs lining the entirety of East Anacapa, the only landing place to get onto the shore is at this pier constructed on the cliffs. In order to get to the top of the cliffs, you need to ascend over 150 stairs before it levels off onto the plateau portion that tops the island.

Before you start climbing the stairs that scale the cliff face, however, you must first climb anywhere from 12 to 15 rungs on a ladder. The number varies a bit based upon the tides, with low tide meaning a few extra rungs to negotiate. Once up the ladder, there is a sizable landing platform to stand on and gather your belongings together before you continue up the stairs and onto the island plateau.

Ken goes up the ladder as Quest naturalist Kimberley Baldwin looks on, ready to lend a hand if necessary. This is by far the most difficult landing upon any of the 4 islands we visited, since the other piers were shorter and with fewer ladder rungs and no extra stairs to climb. Swells in the ocean can make stepping off of the moving boat and onto the ladder a bit nerve-wracking for some people, but nearly every one of our 75+ cruise participants did do it.

While our Zodiac-borne groups from the Quest were entering and exiting the island in stages, a second day-tripping ship arrived from the California mainland. Island Packers is the primary company that has the concession from the National Park Service to ferry guests from Ventura and Long Beach to various Channel Islands on a day to day basis. Overnight, multi-day cruises such as that Lindblad/National Geographic one I was on also have licenses to visit the islands, but are generally more seasonal and periodic rather than daily.

Here’s a view of some of the 156 or so stairs used to access Anacapa Island, overlooking the cove we enter to make landfall.

Upon reaching the top of the flights of stairs, one of the first flowering plants to greet us was this seaside daisy, Erigeron glaucus. Found along the coastal regions of California and Oregon, the Channel Islands populations are at the southern limits of their natural range. The birds are Western gulls, Larus occidentalis – more on those shortly.

Seaside daisy (also called seaside fleabane and seaside aster, Erigeron glaucus) is a semi-succulent perennial that favors cool, coastal environments. They are widely cultivated in similar habitats nowadays for their long bloom season, and their tolerance of salinity and chilly, damp situations. Our ship the National Geographic Quest is anchored in the distance with one of the six ship Zodiacs floating behind the stern.

The first birds you generally see when landing upon East Anacapa are western gulls, Larus occidentalis. Roughly 10,000 pairs of them nest upon Anacapa’s 3 islands, representing the second largest breeding colony of this species, with the largest being about 12,000 pairs on the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco. Within the other Channel Islands, another large colony of about 7,000 pairs is found on Santa Barbara Island to the south of Anacapa.

Western gulls are fairly large birds, measuring roughly 2 feet/60 cm from bill tip to tail tip, and they generally weigh between 2 and 3 pounds/1 to 1.5 kg) at adulthood. Their range is the Pacific coast of North America between south-central Baja California, Mexico and southern British Columbia, Canada. Unlike certain other gulls, these are mainly a marine species and are seldom found very far inland or away from saltwater.

Western gulls nest between April and July, with eggs hatching mainly in May and the chicks fledging by late July. Breeding pairs stake out territory on the island’s flatter top at Anacapa and defend this terrain from incursion by other gulls. They prefer to nest in vegetation where they cannot readily see other gulls, although this is not a strict requirement for breeding success.

While this looks a bit like a painting due to low resolution, this is a digitally-zoomed photo of two western gulls copulating. I also took a 22 second video of this event but am not uploading it here since I am sure readers will get the picture.

Western gulls usually lay either 2 or 3 eggs in a given nesting season, but most typically only one chick survives to adulthood. Eggs are incubated for about 4 weeks, and chicks are capable of walking clumsily within a day or two and exploring the parent’s home territory. Sometimes wandering chicks can be killed by neighboring gull pairs, but adoption of stray chicks is also known to happen by pairs that haven’t successfully laid an egg. Additionally, since female western gulls are more abundant than males are, two females are known to pair bond and raise chicks as well.

Another prominent feature of western gull anatomy is the red spot on the lower mandible of the bird’s yellow bill. This is called a gonys spot, and it serves an interesting function in reproduction. When young chicks see the red gonys spot, they are stimulated to peck at it, which in turn stimulates the adult bird (both males and females) to regurgitate food for the chicks to consume that they were carrying in their stomachs. This behavior has obvious advantages in terms of survival of the species.

A number of different gull species have this gonys spot, although not all of them are red. Studies have shown that it is the contrast in color between the main bill and the spot that is triggering of this survival pecking and subsequent regurgitating response, more than the color itself. A puppet bird head waved in front of young gull chicks that has a white bill and a black spot, or a blue bill and a yellow spot, were also effective at triggering the pecking behavior in chicks. Now obviously the spots cannot radically change colors in living birds, but it was an interesting bit of ornithological research nonetheless.

I believe the yellow flowers are goldfields (Lasthenia californica) and they were abundant on Anacapa Island after a significantly wetter than average winter in California in 2022-2023. Goldfields are widespread in the state and can cover thousands of acres in multiple habitats. While I have taken thousands of wildflower photographs over the past 50 years, I’ve never seen a mass display of color paired with birds to this extent before, especially not such large and prominent white ones. It was a memorable day for sure!

Not all of Anacapa Island is covered in native vegetation; in fact a majority of it appears to be highly invaded by one of several types of weedy exotic species, such as this foxtail barley (Hordeum jubatum) a non-native grass which covers much of the plateau atop Anacapa.

While the gulls don’t necessarily appear to be deterred by the dense stands of foxtail barley, and seem to nest happily within it, the grass has clearly taken over a great deal of the available land surface from whatever native plants would once have occupied Anacapa and other islands in the archipelago. According to the NPS there are about 160 native species of plants on Anacapa Island, with two of them being critically endangered, endemic, and barely able to hang on in the face of such competition.

Another invasive plant that was purposely introduced to Anacapa Island in the late 1800s was red ice plant, Malephora crocea, which was planted by the Coast Guard along with sour fig ice plant (Carpobrotus edulis). Both of these creeping coastal succulents are native to South Africa and have proven to be quite problematic in Mediterranean-type climates worldwide, carpeting large areas and excluding native vegetation to the detriment of native animal and insect species. While both of these ice plants can be attractive in certain garden or landscaping settings, their invasiveness means they should generally be avoided. The NPS is waging a campaign to eliminate both species from Anacapa over time, the way that black rats and other undesirable mammals were also removed in favor of the native creatures that have no other home to live in.

Island mallow (Malva assurgentiflora) is endemic to the Channel Islands, where it forms sizable shrubs of 1 to 2 meters tall covered with rosy pinkish-red flowers. Despite the restricted native range, this plant is not uncommon in cultivation now in mainland California gardens and elsewhere. We observed only a couple of them on Anacapa Island but of course our time was limited to less than two hours. Perhaps they are more common elsewhere and on other islands.

Cathedral Cove is visible from an overlook on the northern side of Anacapa.

It’s not quite a mile-long hike from the landing pier to the western end of the eastern island at Inspiration Point. This is the final approach to the overlook, with plenty of gulls standing watch as they do everywhere on Anacapa.

From Inspiration Point you can see both Middle Anacapa and West Anacapa Islands, which are mostly connected in a sense in that only shallow straits separate them. Clearly all three are generally part of the same ridgetop with most of the landmass below the ocean level.

Lots of gulls are observable, both standing and flying, in virtually every scene. They are rather one of the main points of visiting Anacapa, after all.

Most of the cliffs on East Anacapa are about 200 to 250 feet (60 to 70 meters) tall. This view from Inspiration Point looking westwards also takes in Middle and West Anacapa Islands. The sea fog is omnipresent and makes most days largely gray, although frequently it clears off for a few hours in the afternoons to allow for some blue skies and sunlight.

While beautiful, one can see why the sea cliffs make visiting Anacapa Island difficult. Beaches, if any, are isolated and narrow and don’t offer any route to the upper and flatter portions of the island. This is historically what made it such a great refuge for marine birds and mammals, naturally. Oh, and no surface water either….

Historically speaking, Anacapa Island was once covered by dense stands of giant coreopsis (Leptosyne gigantea, formerly Coreopsis gigantea) but this unique if small ecosystem was severely impacted by the grazing of sheep. Man, humans will try to utilize EVERY speck of land for their own purposes, even small islands like the Anacapa group measuring barely one square mile and fronted by steep sea cliffs. Couldn’t leave it for the birds and seals, nope, had to bring in friggin’ sheep and rats and cats and rabbits and ice plants and foxtail barley too! We humans are no doubt THE most invasive species on earth – there isn’t a single ecosystem, terrestrial or aquatic, that is unaffected by us in our billions. We even invade outer space and aim to invade other planets. We should perhaps learn to take better care of this one….

The giant coreopsis plants offered a very suitable protective habitat for the western gulls to nest in and under, and I’m speculating that gull densities might have been significantly higher before humans and their sheep removed so many of these weird and beautiful succulent shrubs. Fortunately western gulls are fairly adaptable and are capable of adjusting their behavior to accommodate human interference more easily than many other birds might be. I also wonder how the removal of most giant coreopsis might have negatively (or positively?) impacted other seabirds that also still nest on Anacapa.

Giant coreopsis are not highly endangered and are found all along the California coastline, which is good, but there’s something to be said for how they might have functioned in an ecosystem en masse, rather than as more isolated small groups of plants.

One more somewhat surprising denizen of Anacapa Island is the coastal cholla, Cylindropuntia prolifera. Coastal chollas are found on both the mainland and on most of the Channel Islands, and true to name they are capable of forming dense thickets as fragile joints break off and land elsewhere to root and propagate asexually, rather than sexually via seeds. This type of vegetative cloning is found in a number of North American cholla cactus species. Perhaps the most famous are the so-called jumping or teddybear chollas (Cylindropuntia bigelovii and C. fulgida) of the interior Sonoran Desert farther east. But the coastal C. prolifera is clearly a similarly effective species at getting around and surviving the periodic dryness, both normal seasonal and longer-term climatic droughts, that affect these islands.

Another mass-blooming wildflower is this Phacelia species, the identity of which I am not sure. The gulls nest in them just as much as they do in the weedy foxtail barley grasses. The Anacapa lighthouse rises in the distance.

Acres of goldfields (Lasthenia californica) sprawl across the top of East Anacapa as National Park Service buildings stand in the background with the lighthouse. The loud horn on the lighthouse is timed to go off for about 2 seconds every 15 to 20 seconds or so. Visitors are discouraged from getting too close to the lighthouse lest their hearing be damaged, and signs warn against it. Whether the birds observe these suggestions or not is unknown to me at this time.

By the time I was heading back towards the pier to return to the Quest, a group of Spanish-speaking students had appeared. They were pulling weeds, what appears to mainly be the foxtail barley grasses, and making large piles of them in a given zone not far from one of the NPS buildings. I was curious as to what they were trying to accomplish but I didn’t feel it was necessarily appropriate to ask, so I took a photo and walked onwards.

I liked how the western gulls just stood nearby looking on, evidently unflappable despite having wings. A second group of students was located a bit farther along, and these appeared to be digging. Again, I didn’t make any inquiries.

I took a photo of this crane at the top of the stairway leading to the pier below. I imagine that once the crane was assembled and operational, that it made lifting additional supplies and construction materials from boats onto (or off of) the island much simpler.

A view of the landing cove as seen from atop the 156 stairs leading back to the boat loading zone.

Members of the Quest cruise ship assemble on the landing platform before donning their life jackets and preparing to head back to the ship in time for lunch. During our meal we pulled up our anchors and moved about 20 miles westwards, dropping anchor again and disembarking the ship for an afternoon hike on Santa Cruz Island, the second stop on our journey.

Two humpback whales joined us on our short migration from Anacapa to Santa Cruz Island, giving us a few minutes of viewing as they swam parallel to and slightly in front of the Quest as we ventured forth on the rest of our tour of the beautiful Channel Islands National Park. The natural features of Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands will be featured in an upcoming post. Stay tuned for more and thanks for reading!