If you are a predator of any kind, Anacapa is rife with opportunities. The island is wrapped in stands of giant kelp, seventy-foot-tall forests of vines that sway in the current. Like coral reefs, the kelp forests shelter and nurse a mosaic of marine life, from the lowest prey (swimming between the trunks of kelp, I'm surrounded by microscopic shrimp, blizzards of juvenile fish, and squid) up to powerful predators like mako, bull, and even great white sharks (no sign of these intruders, thank goodness).

But there is also no sign of seals or sea lions. Huge rookeries, particularly of the golden-hued California sea lions, are the signature of the Channel Islands. Although there is evidence, especially up and down the mainland coastline, that breeding patterns are at times adversely affected by pollution and development, the overall number of Zalophus californianus is not declining, and at present there are some 150,000 of these sea lions on the islands, or about twenty-five percent of the total world population. It is the presence of so many divers that has scared them off today.

After forty-five minutes, the dark undersea world suddenly lights up. Breaking the surface, I find that the sun has burned away every trace of fog, and just yards away an island has suddenly emerged, an undulating ridge of rock poking from the ocean like the spine of a submerged dinosaur. In truth, Anacapa is three such ridges separated from each other by a few yards of water and lumped together under one name; again, just like the Galápagos, there are so many smaller islands, outcrops, rocks, and islets that no one can quite agree on how many Channel Islands there are.

Underwater, however, it is all one world, and visitors are increasingly ready to appreciate that the magic of these islands lies at or below the waterline. The new marine protected area, the largest of its type off the West Coast, joins similar, even larger reserves created recently in the northern Hawaiian Islands and the Dry Tortugas of the Florida Keys. Unlike those remote spots, however, the Channel Islands are within reach of millions of people and represent a new order for American oceans. California plans to add more such reserves up and down its coastline, but for now the funding has been bogged down by budget woes.

I had slashed open an ankle on one of Anacapa's submerged rocks, and returned that night to Santa Barbara to heal body and soul. In the morning I drove over the Santa Barbara hills, which backstop the city, dropping down into the Santa Ynez Valley. Row upon row of new vines spread to the horizon; one after another, the ranches and farms producing all that local cuisine-—from goat cheese to grass-fed beef, from sweet onions to micro-lettuce—have been bought up and replanted with grapevines at astronomical costs. This valley is well on its way to becoming the vanity-vineyard playground of America's romantic rich.

I stopped at one of the newest and most beautiful, the Melville Winery. Melville started from scratch in 1996, planting seventy-five acres with pinot noir clones, syrah, chardonnay, and a single acre of viognier. Its first vintage had just come due, and, in true Santa Barbara style, everything was being done with the greatest care-—unrefined, unfiltered, gravity-processed, with hand bucketing and other Burgundian practices suited to this cool climate-—and little regard to cost.