The Santa Barbara Scientist Who Found Poison in the Pacific

The Santa Barbara Scientist
Who Found Poison
in the Pacific

David Valentine Discusses Discovering
DDT Dumping Ground in Waters off Catalina Island
and Charting New Course at UCSB

by Callie Fausey | August 31, 2023

A DISTURBING DISCOVERY: In 2011, UCSB scientist David Valentine discovered a massive DDT dumping ground in the waters off Catalina Island. Today, as he prepares to launch a new marine science major at the university this fall, he says he’s still “trying to understand what happened and where it’s all going.” | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

Pure DDT — the toxic insecticide banned in the U.S. in 1972 (but still in use in other parts of the world) — is poisoning the marine environment off the Los Angeles coastline near Catalina Island. The harmful chemical has blanketed the seafloor since hundreds of tons of DDT were dumped into the water more than 50 years ago.

UC Santa Barbara scientist David Valentine is the one who discovered the startlingly high concentrations of DDT 3,000 feet below the water’s surface, surrounding an underwater graveyard of leaking barrels filled with unknown chemical substances.

He says that it’s “goo-ifying the junk” of male sea lions (as well as destroying their spines, riddling them with tumors, and killing their kidneys) because of the nightmarish combination of herpes and toxic chemicals such as DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls).