A Call for Ocean Restoration To Bring Back the Cooling Clouds, Rain, Water, Fish, and Wildlife!

California’s Twin Crises: Collapse of Plants at Sea and Raging Wildfires

California is in the grip of its most devastating wildfire seasons on record. In just the past few years, more than 10 million acres have burned, entire towns have been lost, and smoke has darkened skies across the continent. The economic toll runs into the tens of billions annually, with thousands displaced each summer and fall.

Yet as with Iberia, the root causes of California’s worsening wildfire and drought crisis may not lie only in the forests and dry brush. The collapse of California’s coastal ocean pastures—plankton blooms that once flourished offshore—now emerges as a critical, overlooked driver.

As these ocean pastures fade, they no longer produce the marine aerosols and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) that seed California’s protective fogs and cooling cloud decks. At the same time, their decline has triggered ecological disaster in the fisheries that once defined California’s coast: the sardines of Monterey Bay, the anchovies of Southern California, the salmon of the Sacramento and Klamath, and the long-lost tuna fleets of Los Angeles.

The story of fire and fish in California is, like Iberia, one story: the vanishing of the plankton pastures that sustain clouds, water, and life.

A Legacy Lost: Los Angeles, the Tuna Capital of the World

Few Californians remember that up until the late 1950s and early 1960s, Los Angeles was the tuna capital of the world. Its tuna canneries employed tens of thousands of workers and delivered what would amount to $10 billion annually in today’s dollars to the state’s economy. The tuna was so central to Los Angeles’ identity that the city’s official flag still carries an image of a tuna, a living reminder of a time when California’s ocean pastures were thriving and productive.

Today, that once-mighty tuna industry has effectively no workers. The collapse of the ocean pastures that fed the sardines, anchovies, and tuna fleets erased not only jobs but a cultural and economic pillar of California life.

The Lost Connection: Ocean Pastures, Clouds, Rain, Fish, and Fire

Healthy plankton blooms generate dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and other biogenic aerosols that rise into the atmosphere, forming the fogs and low stratus decks that once cooled California’s coastline. These clouds not only moderate coastal heat but also transport moisture inland, delivering vital summer rainfall to the Sierra Nevada and Central Valley.

As these blooms collapse, the protective clouds thin, heat intensifies, and rainfall wanes—creating tinderbox landscapes primed for catastrophic fire. Simultaneously, the fish that depend on these blooms—sardines, anchovies, salmon, and tuna—have plummeted.

The same missing plankton that no longer form clouds also no longer feed the fish.

Why California’s Fires Burn Hotter as Its Fisheries Collapse

The science is clear: diminished ocean plankton means diminished clouds, diminished rain, and diminished fish. California’s climate records reveal that coastal fog frequency has declined by 33% since 1950, with summer stratus clouds off Southern California down by as much as 50%. These clouds once reflected sunlight and kept temperatures cooler; without them, land surfaces bake, soil dries, and forests burn more readily.

Meanwhile, salmon returns to the Sacramento and Klamath rivers have collapsed by over 80% since the 1980s, forcing fishery closures that cost thousands of jobs. Anchovy and sardine populations fluctuate wildly but remain a fraction of their historic abundance. Tuna fleets are gone altogether.

The parallel collapse of clouds, rain, and fish shows a single systemic driver: the weakening of California’s offshore plankton pastures.

No Land Solution Alone: Restoration Must Begin Offshore

California has invested billions in firefighting, forest thinning, and prescribed burns, yet wildfires continue to worsen. Similarly, billions have been spent on river hatcheries, dam removals, and fish passage projects, yet fisheries collapse accelerates. These land-based measures, though important, cannot alone restore the rainmaking and fish-feeding systems whose origins lie offshore.

The urgent solution is nature-based ocean pasture restoration. By replenishing essential mineral dust to California’s offshore waters, we can rapidly revive plankton blooms. These blooms will once again produce the cloud-nucleating aerosols that restore fogs and cooling clouds, while simultaneously feeding the sardines, anchovies, salmon, and tuna at the base of California’s food web.

OPR California: A 2026 Business Commitment

As the world leader in ocean restoration, my business proposition is clear and immediate:

In 2026, OPR California will go to work restoring California’s ocean pastures to historic health and productivity.

This is not a distant promise but a concrete business commitment to deliver large-scale restoration of plankton blooms offshore California—reviving fish populations, replenishing clouds and rainfall, and securing water, food, and climate resilience for the state.

A Financially Self-Sustaining Path: Carbon Credits, Water, and Wildlife

California holds a unique advantage: it operates the most advanced climate carbon-credit market in the United States. Ocean pasture restoration offers not just ecological benefits but immediate, measurable climate and biodiversity value:

• Carbon capture: Revived plankton blooms will directly absorb and sequester tens of millions of tonnes of CO₂ annually, verified and certified under rigorous protocols.
• Albedo enhancement: The additional cloud cover generated by healthy blooms provides a second, equally verifiable climate benefit by reflecting solar radiation—effectively doubling the creditable mitigation.
• Water system benefits: The replenished clouds and rains will deliver vast volumes of freshwater to California’s watersheds. This rain is invaluable for hydroelectric generation, domestic water supplies, and agricultural irrigation, underpinning the state’s energy, food, and water security.
• Wildlife revival: Restored ocean pastures will dramatically improve marine biodiversity—reviving plankton, fish, plankton-feeding whales, seabirds, and the broader marine food web. Today seabird populations have declined by ~70% since 1950, and whales remain at a fraction of historic numbers. Without plankton, they vanish; with restored pastures, they return.

Together, these effects mean OPR California can operate as a financially self-sustaining enterprise—funded through carbon credits and water valuation—without drawing on limited state tax revenues, while delivering ecosystem renewal from plankton to whales, birds, forests, and farms.

Proven Science, Immediate Impact

Large-scale pilot projects in the Pacific have already demonstrated that restoring plankton pastures can produce near-immediate increases in marine cloud cover, rainfall, fish abundance, and biodiversity. California’s unique upwelling system, which historically produced some of the richest fisheries in the world, is perfectly suited to benefit from such restoration.

The feedback loop can be reversed: more plankton → more clouds → cooler, wetter summers → reduced fire risk → healthier forests and fisheries → more secure water supplies → revived wildlife and ecosystems.

The Perfect Policy Match for California

California is a climate leader, with billions committed annually to decarbonization, wildfire resilience, ecosystem restoration, and water security. Yet until now, almost nothing has been invested in restoring the ocean ecosystems that directly control the state’s climate, fisheries, water cycle, and biodiversity.

By aligning ocean pasture restoration with existing state programs and California’s cap-and-trade system, the state can deliver a globally pioneering climate solution: one that generates certified credits, secures water and energy systems, revives wildlife, and reduces wildfire devastation—all in one.

A Final Call to Action

California stands at a historic crossroads. Its fires worsen, its fisheries collapse, its water becomes more precarious, and its wildlife continues to vanish. The missing ingredient is the restoration of the offshore ocean pastures that once fed clouds, cooled the land, sustained fish, filled reservoirs, employed tens of thousands, and supported marine life.

The path forward is clear and evidence-based: restore the ocean pastures → restore the clouds → restore the rains → restore the fish → restore the water → restore the wildlife → restore California’s prosperity.

With OPR California launching in 2026, and with California’s carbon-credit market providing the financial engine, this restoration can be immediate, self-sustaining, and transformative.

Just as Los Angeles once proudly bore the tuna on its flag as a symbol of ocean abundance and economic strength, California can once again lead the world in proving that resilience begins offshore—by restoring the plankton pastures that connect climate, fish, forests, water, wildlife, and people.