David Helvarg

Helvarg is a journalist and environmental activist. He is the founder and president of the marine conservation lobbying organization Blue Frontier Campaign.

He wrote stories for the Reader off and on from the late 1970s through 2000

Articles by David Helvarg

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David Helvarg and the Reader

Ocean Beach hippies, Convair, Twenty-nine Palms, sharks, Japanese San Diegans during WWII, our Indians who survived

Helvarg is a journalist and environmental activist. He is the founder and president of the marine conservation lobbying organization Blue Frontier Campaign. He is the author of: The Golden Shore - California's Love Affair with ...

How to catch a shark

If you feel you simply must have a six-foot Blue

From a February 20, 1977 Reader story by David Helvarg From the 1870s through the Second World War, San Diego had a thriving shark catching industry… [Today] albacore and yellow tail remain the big sport ...

Freaks, Uppity Women, and Politicos: An Ocean Beach Reunion

Hippies grow up - or at least older

We walk past 5155 Muir, which is about to be torn down. The house still has one of the 9 millimeter bullet holes from a January 6,1972, attack by the right-wing Secret Army Organization.

Convair's making of Tomahawk cruise missiles

The birds of war

The sea-launched cruise missile is designed to be fired from submarine torpedo tubes or from armored box launchers on surface ships such as the soon-to-be recommissioned battleship New Jersey.

War games at Twenty-nine Palms

If they want to have a war the Marines want to fight it

We’re sitting at the bar rail in the officers’ club at Twentynine Palms. It’s crowded with desert-tanned Marines in camouflage utilities and combat boots. Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It’’ is playing on ...

1979: San Diego's year in review

Rape of the Earth Medal of Dishonor The year's most infamous award goes to the voters of San Diego, a majority of whom agreed to exchange 39 acres of prime canyonland in Balboa Park for ...

Japanese railroaded out of San Diego during WWII

The San Diego Union printed 14 editorials calling for their removal o from the West Coast

"There’s still some. People I went to school with in Coronado before the war, I see them at work; they still don’t speak to me. It’s like the fact that we were evacuated proved we were guilty."

The Barona, Campo, Pala Indians of San Diego County

Survivors

She stops at the grave of Yellow Sky, something of a legend among the Indians of Barona. He used to walk the desert between Yuma and San Diego wearing only a breach cloth, trading firewood for a meal.

All about San Diego sharks

The better to eat you with my dear!

It just happens that the epicenter of White Shark distribution in this part of the world happens to be off San Francisco and we have a number of While Sharks off this coast, especially around ...