Coal Oil Point seep field

These perennial and continuous oil and gas seeps have been active on the northern edge of the Santa Barbara Channel for at least 500,000 years.

In 1792, Captain Cook's navigator George Vancouver recorded on passing through the channel:[7] Archaeologists found that the mainland Chumash used asphalt from nearby onshore seeps in beach cliffs to seal their plank canoes and baskets.

In February 2019, a rare hoodwinker sunfish (Mola tecta) washed ashore on Sands Beach in the Coal Oil Point Reserve.

Since the 1990s almost a dozen UCSB researchers along with their graduate students have studied the geology, chemistry, oceanography and ecology of the marine seep system at COP.

Comparing the surveys made in the mid 1990s with the early 1970s data of Fischer and colleagues they determined that seepage near the producing platform Holly had decreased by half.

[6] This observation was supported by gas capture data recorded by two sea floor tent structures[16] that covered one large seepage area.