Goleta Slough
[1] It primarily consists of the filled and unfilled remnants of the historic inner Goleta Bay about 8 miles (13 km) west of Santa Barbara.
The slough empties into the Pacific Ocean through an intermittently closed mouth at Goleta Beach County Park just east of the UCSB campus and Isla Vista.
UCSB, Isla Vista, the City of Goleta and other unincorporated areas of the county, including the landward bluffs of More Mesa, surround and encompass the rest of the slough.
While no longer having a regularly navigable mouth, nor depths in most places suitable for anything except canoes, kayaks, and very small boats, the slough remains a very important area of vital wetlands, salt marsh, and estuarian creeks.
Public utility and transportation corridors traverse the wetlands while airport runways, a sewage treatment plant, a power generation station, and light industrial facilities are constructed on filled portions of the marsh.
In 1928 a landing strip was established in the northeastern portion of the slough, which was expanded in 1942-43 for construction of the Marine Corps Air Station Santa Barbara.
This includes the municipal airport to the north,[4] the sewage treatment plant and the Southern California Gas Company's La Goleta Gas Field to the east, a public beach between the ocean and the slough, the campus of UC Santa Barbara to the south and west, and residential and light industrial operations to the north and west.
A whaling station was established in about 1870, asphaltum mining commenced in the 1890s, development of small farms expanded to cover the entire mesa in the 1920s, and rapid urbanization began in the 1940s.
10 species of fish were identified in a 1993 sampling, dominated by Killifish, Topsmelt, Arrow goby (Clevelandia ios), and Western mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis)*.
November 1993 insect surveys conducted with a fine mesh seine or aquarium dip nets at the mouth and the back portion of the slough yielded 11 species; major taxonomic groups were bugs, damselflies, mayflies, beetles, caddisflies, butterflies and flies.
The 1996 report also identified three special status species from a 1983 survey of the Ecological Reserve: Pallid bat (Antrozous pallidus), American badger (Taxidea taxus), and San Diego black-tailed jackrabbit (L. californicus bennettii).
A 1996 report identified 20 special status species from various surveys (dates not specified): California brown pelican, southern bald eagle, peregrine falcon, snowy plover, common loon, American white pelican, double-crested cormorant, white-faced ibis, fulvous whistling duck, harlequin duck, northern harrier, golden eagle, osprey, long-billed curlew, California gull, elegant tern, and black skimmer.
