This book is designed to offer a glimpse into the battles we have faced in attempting to conserve the best of our coastal heritage in both California and Baja California. My aim is to document the campaigns that I have been involved with to preserve the last willd coastline and marine wildlife of the Californias and to provide a look at the roots of the binational coastal culture of the Californias.

I have not written a neutral academic monograph on coastal management. Rather I provide a passionate and unapologetic defense of our coastal heritage of the Californias. Many of these stories were written in the midst of campaigning to provide a sense of urgency to the public about the fate of our coast. Few people realize how close we came to losing important pieces of the coastline of the Californias to badly planned and doomed to fail development.

I also wanted to portray the reality of the areas that I work and the people who I have worked with and who influenced my own activism including TJ punks, Mexican wrestlers and the surfers who pioneered big waves at the Tijuana Sloughs.

This is meant to be a fun book for anyone who loves the coast–especially those of us with lives dedicated to the sea in California and Baja California.