8 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 2 58 



of a few small rock platforms and unconsolidated cobbles. Its im- 

 poverished and monotonous amphipodan fauna reflects this situation. 



The La Jolla locality is situated on a long, virtually straight coast 

 extending between the town and Pacific Beach a dozen or more 

 kilometers to the south. It has a few small reentrants and a few mas- 

 sive rocks affording partial protection to floras, but it is primarily 

 a sloping platform of unconsolidated and fixed lithodes of cobble 

 to boulder size. The algal flora appeared to be in good condition 

 during the years 1947 to 1960 but during the collecting period re- 

 ported herein the flora was wilted, desiccated, and bleached. Probably 

 this situation was the result of a series of low tides coinciding with 

 warm to hot, very dry climatic conditions. The presence of numerous 

 amateurs (perhaps in the thousands per week) turning over rocks 

 but failing to reset them in their original positions also may have 

 contributed to the floral damage. In comparison to collections made 

 in earlier years, the body sizes of the Amphipoda were notably smaller 

 in the 1963 survey. 



Locality summary. — The following paragraphs, tables, and ap- 

 pendices may demonstrate that, of those sites analyzed herein, only 

 the amphipodan fauna of Corona del Mar is presently suitable as a 

 descriptive base for interprovincial comparisons. The descriptive 

 base is a list of species from the area. The Corona del Mar fauna may 

 be representative of the northeastern Pacific warm-temperate region 

 because it may contain a large percentage of those species endemic to 

 the province. Additional names from La Jolla might be added to the 

 list but that locality as a whole appears to be less diverse in units of 

 substrate and flora than that at Corona del Mar. The locality at Pt. 

 Fermin is affected adversely by an outfall. The sites at Pt. Dume and 

 Goleta are impoverished and support several obviously cold-temperate 

 taxa. None of the herein-studied localities north of Pt. Conception is 

 suitable as a descriptive base for the cold-temperate region or even 

 for the Montereyan subprovince. Hazard Canyon reef is a somewhat 

 impoverished area, that fauna at Carmel Point is poorly diverse, and 

 the extremely rich Cayucan site is not only close to Pt. Conception 

 but supports an extraordinary mixture of clearly southern and clearly 

 northern species. Indeed, several southern species occurring at Cayucos 

 have not been collected from Corona del Mar. Whether the occurrence 

 of southern species in high frequencies at Cayucos is the result of 

 thermal changes during the years 1957-60 or whether the species in- 

 habit a steady-state fauna thermally maintained by an eddy of the 

 north flowing inshore Davidson current are factors to be investigated. 

 No suitable collections of fauna from Cayucos and no inshore thermal 

 records in years prior to the sea warming of the late 1950's are in 

 existence as far as is known to the writer. According to offshore ther- 



