This is a website about algal blooms in coastal environments. Inspired by similar blogs by researchers in various scientific domains, I’m starting a discussion that deals with the state of California’s ocean environment from my perspective as a biological oceanographer specializing in phytoplankton ecology and harmful algal blooms. I should have started this blog over the past summer when the West Coast was experiencing an unprecedented harmful algal bloom of the toxic diatom Pseudo-nitzschia that extended from Santa Barbara to Alaska and at least 100 km offshore. My motivation now is to give a retrospective on the massive bloom of 2015, its current status, and how that has led to the delay of the recreational and commercial Dungeness and rock crab season.