When one looks out over the coastal sea stacks including the largest of them, Castle Rock, just a mile or so north of 1500 Pebble Beach Drive, one wonders about their formation. You probably have to go back about a million years or so when an oceanic plate dove under an opposing tectonic plate, volcanoes erupted, lava oozed into the trough where the plates mashed to join mud, sand and gravel tumbling in from the continent, mixing with materials scraped off by the merging plates; shiny red and green cherts developed from tiny water critters' exoskeletons, chunks of volcanics broke off and rode in from a thousand miles away and crushing and pressure deformed the whole lot --- it was a mess, and it became the massive Franciscan Formation, a mélange that underlies much of California. The ocean rose and fell hundreds of feet while the formation uplifted, and younger sediments settled on top. Then, much more recently (83,000 years ago), the ocean cut terraces in the up-rising formation, upon which marine sediments accumulated.

The sea stacks seen from 1500 Pebble Beach Drive in Crescent City are part of the mélange: Some are chert, some sandstone, some greenstone and basalts. They have an action-packed past and are now managed by the California Coastal National Monument (CCNM). The national monument, designated by President Clinton on Jan. 11, 2000, encompasses more than 20,000 sea rocks and small islands under BLM jurisdiction along 1,100 miles of California coast and out 12 nautical miles. The monument only covers the portions of these rocks that are above mean high tide, although the BLM notes there are important tidepools connected to many of the rocky tops. The water between the rocks is not part of the monument, and some rocks are left out --- those privately owned or otherwise appropriated, for lighthouses or military purposes, for instance, or those protected under other types of management such as the Farallon Islands, near San Francisco, and Castle Rock near Crescent City, both important seabird rookeries. The rocks in the monument range from a bit more than 10 acres to as small as the size of your computer. The monument designation creates a forum for land and wildlife managers --- especially state fish and game and the state parks and recreation departments, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service --- up and down the coast, along with academic researchers, local governments and others, to combine their knowledge of the sea rocks and foster more research, promote education and better protect the rocks and their inhabitants.

The sea stacks are vital in the protection of California's fragile coastal ecosystem. The thing that people don't fully realize is, everything's connected to something. If we start to move in on habitat that other species are using along the coast, as our population grows and their habitat disappears, these rocks become sanctuaries. Sea lions, for example, need a place to rest, to haul out. And, both the brown pelican and the cormorant, use a lot of energy to fish for their food and need a place to rest. If they are being disturbed all the time, flying from place to place, they tire out. Same with harbor seals that seemingly lounge around. They use a lot of energy feeding themselves, and they need to rest. And these rocks provide the opportunity to rest undisturbed."

As HSU biology professor Rick Golightly puts it, "Some people think they're nothing but a sea stack, but to seabirds they're everything. Seabirds are important, if you want to look at it strictly from an anthropocentric viewpoint. We can watch the seabirds, and see how they're doing, what their production is, and that tells us what the ocean's doing. It's where they're getting their food, and so they're indicators of the health of the ocean."

Mad River Biologists founder and seabird researcher Ron LeValley, who helped shape the biological portion of the CCNM management plan and will continue to work on it, says fishing is generally good around sea rocks where seabirds roost and nest because there's a concentration of nutrients there. But unlike many other places that have been designated national monuments, the value of these sea rocks has mostly been ignored. That is, except by hunters and fishermen of old, who realized the value of pinniped skins and seabird eggs. In the 19th century, traders plundered seabird colonies for eggs and slaughtered seals in droves for their furs, and many species disappeared from the coast. While seabirds and marine mammals are protected now, their habitat is increasingly limited to the offshore rocks because of human development on the shore. The CCNM aims to protect those last refuges. Acting as "gateways," select local communities are the stewards, lending "local flavor" to each portion of the monument.