For a guy who spends his days amongst sharks and starfish, Jose Bacallao is pretty good at talking with people.
Bacallao serves as senior aquarist and operations manager for Heal the Bay’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium. The Hermosa resident often finds himself in Palos Verdes, harvesting algae and native aquatic species to provide optimal nutrition for the aquarium’s range of wildlife. He designs the facility’s diverse exhibits and is in charge of animal care.
Great passion for animals sometimes manifests as social disconnect — Jane Goodall preferring the company of chimps to humans. But for Bacallao, animals are a way to make the broader environmental goals of Heal the Bay more approachable to the area’s gill-less residents.
“I love working with animals because it’s an instant connection with nature,” Bacallao said.
“We’re teaching people about nature, local wildlife. And really, we’re exposing them to Heal the Bay, enhancing our message and the work we do.”
Bacallao’s work with Heal the Bay has informed and deepened a connection to the Santa Monica Bay forged out of spending his adolescence in the area and using its beaches for surfing. But over the past few years, as he has become more involved in local politics, including the opposition to oil drilling in Hermosa Beach, he has become a walking rebuke to the idea that environmentalism means forcing people to do things they don’t like.
“There are so many people living in L.A., even in the Beach Cities, that don’t really get invested in this incredible resource we have. Not everybody swims or surfs or dives,” Bacallao said. “But there’s so much beauty here. And a lot of us at Heal the Bay believe that the best way to get people to protect the bay is to make them fall in love with it.”
Measure for Measure
Before “oil drilling” was a phrase on anyone’s lips, Kevin Sousa had seen Jose Bacallao out in the surf. Each could be periodically found in the water, about six blocks west of the city yard that would serve as the proposed location for an extraction platform.
But the two officially met in the early days of the campaign against Measure O, the unsuccessful 2015 ballot measure that would have lifted Hermosa’s ban on oil drilling in the tidelands. Sousa, one of the leaders of Stop Hermosa Beach Oil, said Bacallao’s involvement was critical for the way that it linked the local land use issue with the bigger world of environmental nonprofits.
“Jose took it from a Hermosa Beach issue to a [Santa Monica] Bay issue,” Sousa said.
Like many in the city, Measure O marked Bacallao’s deepest dive into the world of politics so far. Prior to that, he and his wife Katrina stayed informed and had attended anti-war rallies, but the anti-oil effort marked a whole new level of involvement.
The cause became entwined with his personal life. Sousa recalls that Bacallao’s home became a regular gathering place for anti-oil strategy sessions. He and his wife cooked food for activists, and Bacallao’s children became fixtures at city council meetings.
Having brought the organization he worked for aboard, Bacallao found his own reasons for opposing oil — namely, his love of the lifestyle Hermosa Beach provides. Bacallao’s ceaseless stoke comes across as a refreshing humbleness in a time when skyrocketing home values drive an I-earned-it-now-leave-me-alone mentality.
“I’m lucky to live here; we’re all lucky to live here. My neighbor down the street says it all the time: ‘Man, we live in paradise,’” he said. “That’s why we do what we do; we want others to recognize how good we have it.”
Bacallao said the emphasis on quality of life over property rights enabled the stop-oil coalition to transcend NIMBY-ism and hold the moral high ground against E&B Natural Resources. Though occasionally marked by divisive rhetoric, the campaign against Measure O united a large group of residents who might otherwise have remained strangers. In the process, the city has gone through a kind of environmental Great Awakening.
“I was at the meeting a few weeks ago when the city council voted to unanimously oppose the desal[ination] plant,” Bacallao said. “I turned to Craig [Cadwallader] and I said, the best thing to ever happen to this community was E&B.”
Looking forward
The Santa Monica Bay is now far cleaner than it was three decades ago. Thanks in part to organizations like Heal the Bay, water quality has improved greatly in the region, and species not seen in decades are reemerging. Shark sightings by surfers are way up. Bacallao recently returned from Catalina, where he spotted a Bonaparte’s Gull, a small bird that had been rare south of the Canadian border.
But despite improvement, Bacallao remains vigilant. Heal the Bay is closely monitoring plans for a potential desalination plant by the West Basin Municipal Water District. (Hermosa and Manhattan Beach have come out against the plan, and Redondo may take up the issue next month.) He is happy about the single-use plastic bag ban Hermosa recently implemented, but would like to see the city incentivize businesses to go further.
It’s a process that has become easier, Bacallao said, as the coalition energized by the defeat of Measure O has flexed its political might. Bacallao campaigned in support of council members Justin Massey and Jeff Duclos last fall. And in last month’s special election he supported Stacey Armato, who helped found the community organizing group Keep Hermosa Hermosa and worked with Bacallao in the fight against oil.
Armato said that Bacallao combines an expert’s environmental insight with an activist’s persistence. She pointed to Bacallao’s early and repeated warnings about far-reaching effects of the Santa Barbara oil spill last summer.
“He’s very attuned to how one thing can cause a ripple effect. He sees the implications in these small decisions that really aren’t so small,” Armato said.
Bacallao, then, is a believer in the classic environmental mantra of “Think globally, act locally.” (When asked what piece of advice he would give to people to improve the environment, he said “Be a good neighbor.”) Bacallao says he recognizes how easy it is to get discouraged when dealing with government officials at the state and local levels, but believes people often underestimate their own power in local affairs.
“I like to talk to our neighbors, and encourage them to write letters,” Bacallao said. “‘Hey, write to [Mayor Pro tem] Hany [Fangary], write to [Mayor] Carolyn [Petty], tell them how you feel about this. It’s important for government to reach out to us, but it’s also important for us as citizens to stay engaged.”
