Tuesday December 9, 2025
NOAA —
If you’ve stood on the bluffs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and gazed out at the Pacific, you might never guess at the transformation happening beneath the waves. In 2020, as part of an effort to restore an area impacted by historical chemical pollution, divers and scientists lowered more than 70,000 tons of rock onto the ocean floor in carefully engineered mounds. Their goal: restore the rocky reef habitat that fish, kelp, and countless marine creatures need to survive, in an area long-contaminated with DDT and other toxins, and buried by sediment.
Today, that effort is paying off in ways that even the scientists didn’t fully expect.