By ZEKE BARLOW, Scripps Howard News Service

The souvenirs that Jeff Ernst and his shipmates brought home after more than a month at sea aren't exactly the typical tourist stuff.

One brought home a discarded toilet seat, while Ernst settled on a few trashed buoys and life rings. And while they aren't the usual trinkets, the items speak volumes as to why Ernst was sailing around the Pacific Ocean this fall:

Bill Patzert calls it the "great wet hope."
"You say 'El Nino' and everyone's eyes light up," said Patzert, a climatologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

For years, Google Earth users could zoom in on their houses while clicking away on their home computers.
Now, you can scuba dive off the Channel Islands or follow a sea lion's journey as it swims from rookeries on San Nicholas Island in search of a meal.

Over the past few weeks, brown pelicans have been showing up disoriented and malnourished on busy freeways, neighborhood backyards and even a Costco parking lot miles from the ocean -- and those are the lucky ones.

FILLMORE, Calif. -- Every Thursday, Bill Langford heads to the grassy hills above Fillmore, Calif., pulls out his spotting scope and spends eight hours monitoring each flick and flitter of a pair of California condors raising a young chick.

Ever since Scott Mortensen lived in the wild hills of New Zealand, the same land in which Mount Everest pioneer Sir Edmund Hillary grew up and honed his skills, Mortensen dreamed of trying to climb the world's tallest peak.

VENTURA, Calif. -- The researcher lowered her scientific experiment into Westlake Lake, north of Los Angeles, hoping this would be the cure to the problem that has the potential to cripple California's water supply.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- It started as a one-time protest, a way to express outrage for a war and to honor those who died fighting it. No one thought it would go on this long.But as interest grew, one Sunday turned into two, then a month, and a year. The names of the fallen kept coming. Staff Sgt. Richard A. Burdick. Sgt. Uday Singh. Capt. Ernesto M. Blanco.

Ray Sauvajot stood on the hillside between the Los Padres and Santa Monica mountain ranges, gazing at the vast expanse between the two. Beneath him thousands of houses and roads crisscrossed the verdant hills and valleys that are home to mountain lions and coyotes, bobcats and mule deer.

Recreational fisherman are testing the waters with the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary staff to see if they'd be receptive to artificial reefs in the sanctuary, with the hope of increasing fish populations.