Today's Liberal News

Emily Underwood

The Search for the World’s Simplest Animal

On a sunny pre-pandemic afternoon at the beach near Santa Cruz, California, children shriek as the waves demolish their sand castles, and seagulls squawk over a discarded bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips. Pelicans, sea lions, and fishermen flock to the end of an old wooden pier, attracted by schools of fish that shelter in the wreckage of a half-submerged tanker, the SS Palo Alto. The pier bristles with fishing poles, their long lines trailing into the water.