Not far from Santa Catalina Island, in an ocean shared by divers and
fishermen, kelp forests and whales, David Valentine decoded unusual
signals underwater that gave him chills.

The UC Santa Barbara scientist was supposed to be studying methane seeps
that day, but with a deep-sea robot on loan and a few hours to spare, now
was the chance to confirm an environmental abuse that others in the past
could not. He was chasing a hunch, and sure enough, initial sonar scans
pinged back a pattern of dots that popped up on the map like a trail of
breadcrumbs.

The robot made its way 3,000 feet down to the bottom, beaming bright
lights and a camera as it slowly skimmed the seafloor. At this depth and
darkness, the uncharted topography felt as eerie as driving through a vast
desert at night.

And that�s when the barrels came into view.

Barrels filled with toxic chemicals banned decades ago.

Leaking.

And littered across the ocean floor.

�Holy crap. This is real,� Valentine said. �This stuff really is down
there.

�It has been sitting here this whole time, right off our shore.�

Tales of this buried secret bubbling under the sea had haunted Valentine
for years: a largely unknown chapter in the most infamous case of
environmental destruction off the coast of Los Angeles � one lasting
decades, costing tens of millions of dollars, frustrating generations of
scientists. The fouling of the ocean was so reckless, some said, it seemed
unimaginable.

As many as half a million of these barrels could still be underwater right
now, according to interviews and a Times review of historical records,
manifests and undigitized research. From 1947 to 1982, the nation�s
largest manufacturer of DDT � a pesticide so powerful that it poisoned
birds and fish � was based in Los Angeles.

An epic Superfund battle later exposed the company�s disposal of toxic
waste through sewage pipes that poured into the ocean � but all the DDT
that was barged out to sea drew comparatively little attention.

Shipping logs show that every month in the years after World War II,
thousands of barrels of acid sludge laced with this synthetic chemical
were boated out to a site near Catalina and dumped into the deep ocean �
so vast that, according to common wisdom at the time, it would dilute even
the most dangerous poisons.

Regulators reported in the 1980s that the men in charge of getting rid of
the DDT waste sometimes took shortcuts and just dumped it closer to shore.
And when the barrels were too buoyant to sink on their own, one report
said, the crews simply punctured them.

The ocean buried the evidence for generations, but modern technology can
take scientists to new depths. In 2011 and 2013, Valentine and his
research team were able to identify about 60 barrels and collect a few
samples during brief forays at the end of other research missions.

One sediment sample showed DDT concentrations 40 times greater than the
highest contamination recorded at the Superfund site � a federally
designated area of hazardous waste that officials had contained to
shallower waters near Palos Verdes.

A map of the coast off Los Angeles, showing the DDT barrel dumpsite
between the mainland and Santa Catalina Island and the superfund site off
the Palos Verdes Penninsula.
Palos Verdes

Peninsula

Santa Monica

Basin

SUPERFUND

SITE

San Pedro

Basin

DDT BARREL

DUMPSITE

Santa

Catalina

Island

20 MILES

The world today wrestles with microplastics, bisphenol A (BPA), per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and other toxics so unnatural they don�t
seem to ever go away. But DDT � the all-but-indestructible compound
dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, which first stunned and jolted the public
into environmental action � persists as an unsolved and largely forgotten
problem.

Signs warning of tainted fish to this day still cover local piers. Recent
studies show our immune systems may be compromised. A new generation of
women � exposed to DDT from their mothers, who were exposed by their
mothers � grapples with the still-mysterious risks of breast cancer.

The contamination in sea lions and dolphins continues to stump scientists,
and the near extinction of falcons and bald eagles shows how poisoning one
corner of the world can ripple across the whole ecosystem.

Decades of bureaucracy and competing environmental issues have diverted
the public�s attention. Valentine hoped digging up physical evidence from
the seafloor would get more people to care, but calls and emails to
numerous officials since his discovery have gone nowhere.

Rallying for the deep ocean is not easy, Valentine acknowledged, even
though we rely on the health of these waters far more than we know: �The
fact that there could be half a million barrels down there � we owe it to
ourselves to figure out what happened, what�s actually down there and how
much it�s all spreading.�

David Valentine poses for a photo on the beach as a wave splashes in the
foreground
David Valentine, a professor of geochemistry and microbiology at UC Santa
Barbara, had wondered for years whether the DDT waste barrels actually
existed 3,000 feet under the sea. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Once hailed as a major scientific achievement, DDT combated both malaria
and typhus during World War II. It was so potent that a single application
could protect a soldier for months. The U.S. Army�s chief of preventive
medicine, Brig. Gen. James Simmons, famously praised the chemical as �the
war�s greatest contribution to the future health of the world.�

Manufacturers rushed to supply the postwar demand � including Montrose
Chemical Corp. of California, which opened its plant near Torrance in
1947. The chemical industry was celebrated at the time for boosting the
nation into greater prosperity and preventing crop failures across the
globe. The United States used as much as 80 million pounds of DDT in one
year.

a truck sprays ddt near unconcerned beachgoers on Long Island in 1945
a plane dusts a flock of 1,200 sheep with a cloud of DDT powder
DDT was once considered a wonder pesticide, combatting malaria and
preventing crop failures across the world. Top, a truck sprays DDT in 1945
to eliminate mosquitoes on Jones Beach on Long Island. Bottom, a plane
dusts DDT powder on a flock of sheep in Medford, Ore., in 1948. (Keystone-
France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images; Associated Press)
But there were two edges to this sword. A top U.S. Department of
Agriculture scientist had urged the military not to allow DDT insecticides
for commercial use without further research, worried about �the effect
they may have on soils and on the whole balance of nature.�

Even Swiss chemist Paul Hermann M�ller, who won a Nobel Prize in 1948 for
discovering DDT as a pesticide, cautioned that he himself did not fully
understand how the chemical interacted with the living world. Decades of
painstaking study still lay ahead for biologists, he said.

Rachel Carson, a marine biologist, heeded these words in 1962 and ignited
a movement against what she called �the reckless and irresponsible
poisoning of the world that man shares with all other creatures.�

Her revolutionary book �Silent Spring� evoked the sudden silence of
songbirds missing in the skies � alerting unknowing people to the dangers
of long-term exposure, even in tiny doses, to a chemical that they could
not physically avoid.

DDT is so stable it can take generations to break down. It doesn�t really
dissolve in water but stores easily in fat. Compounding these problems is
what scientists today call �biomagnification�: the toxin accumulating in
the tissues of animals in greater and greater concentrations as it moves
up the food chain.

Consider phytoplankton, the microscopic algae that are the base for almost
all food webs in the ocean.

DDT-contaminated phytoplankton get eaten by zooplankton, which fish and
whales consume by the thousands.

In 1969, shipments of jack mackerel from Southern California were recalled
because DDT levels were as high as 10 parts per million, or ppm � double
what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considered safe for consumption
at that time.

Tumors started appearing on bottom-feeding fish like white croaker.

In that same year, California brown pelicans, which eat the fish, laid
eggs on Anacapa Island with chemicals broken down from DDT averaging 1,200
ppm.

Scientists discovered that the chemicals led to eggshells so thin that the
chicks would die. Bald eagles had also vanished from the Channel Islands,
along with peregrine falcons and the brown pelicans.

Similarly, sea lions with more than 1,000 ppm in their blubber were giving
birth to pups prematurely. Bottlenose dolphins had concentrations as high
as 2,000 ppm.

Montrose executives aggressively defended DDT through the 1960s as the
public reckoned with these alarming new concerns about food chains and
poisoned ecosystems.

They said in letters and editorials that DDT played a vital role in
society when properly used and was not a serious threat to human health.
They accused environmentalists of scare tactics and misleading information
and touted the company�s reputation of making the best DDT in the world �
a technical grade sold to other firms that would then dilute it into
specific insecticides.