Previous research concerning the effects of the 1983 California El Nino on living radiolarians in the plankton and the recognition of El Nino events in sediments is proposed to be continued in an attempt to recognize that 1983 event, documented in the plankton, in the sediments from three anaerobic southern California basins. Radiolarians from plankton tows taken during the initiation, peak, and waning of the 1983 El Nino displayed a sequence of radiolarian characteristics of each phase of that El Nino (initiation, peak, and waning). Preliminary investigations of box-core material collected from the Santa Barbara Basin in the summer of 1985 suggest that this same sequence may be preserved in the surficial sediment of that basin. A new method of freezing that surficial and shallow sediment immediately after coring has allowed collection of the most complete intact sedimentary record from the three southern California anaerobic basins (Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, and San Pedro). The PIs propose to carefully subsample these frozen sediments in an attempt to; (1) recognize the 1983 event in each basin, (2) compare the known radiolarian sequence from the 1983 plankton tows with the sequences from each basin, and (3) compare the event and sequence of each basin. This new technique will make it possible to examine the geologic record for the frequency and history of the large El Nino climate events off California.
