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About 25 feet beneath the sea off Southern California’s Catalina Island, David Hornbaker had his eye on some blue-banded gobies. The mesmerizing fish have bright orange bodies with thin, electric-blue stripes, and are highly sought after by marine aquaria collectors like Hornbaker for their high resale value. Grasping a squirt bottle, Hornbaker squeezed to release an opaque, cloudy substance over some rocks where several gobies were hiding. One darted from behind a rock and into the open, where it became incapacitated and ceased to swim. Hornbaker then gathered it into a small net and placed it in a container strapped...

If you've been a fan of the Mac during the past decade, you've probably felt like a kid who had been an only child until their parents surprised everyone by having a baby late in life. But, this wasn't just any new baby. The little wunderkind went on to become a straight-A student, a sports star and a decent human being loved by everyone in the community. Every once in a while, people remember that the kid has an older sibling -- who they admit is pretty cool, too. That's the Mac. But, after more than a decade of living...

Explanation: Will Comet Catalina become visible to the unaided eye? Given the unpredictability of comets, no one can say for sure, but it seems like a good bet. The comet was discovered in 2013 by observations of the Catalina Sky Survey. Since then, Comet C/2013 US10 (Catalina) has steadily brightened and is currently brighter than 8th magnitude, making it visible with binoculars and long-duration camera images. As the comet further approaches the inner Solar System it will surely continue to intensify, possibly becoming a naked eye object sometime in October and peaking sometime in late November. The comet will reside...

(UPI) -- A snorkeling instructor discovered a dead 18-foot oarfish off the coast of Catalina Island on Sunday. "It just amazed me," said Jeff Chace, director of the Catalina Island Marine Institute, adding that it took about 15 people to carry the leviathan onto shore. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery," he said. The instructor was snorkeling in 15 to 20 feet of water in Tony Bay when she stumbled upon the carcass after seeing a "half-dollar sized eye starring at her from the sandy bottom," Chace said. Chace said it is unclear how the oarfish died because there were no...

AVALON, CATALINA ISLAND (CBS) — Catalina Island is known for many things… its picturesque scenery, seafood and hiking, to name a few. But what about high gas prices? For the past two weeks, gas prices on Catalina Island have been an average of $7 a gallon. Stacy Dizon, who works at the Santa Catalina Island Co.-owned gas station on Pebbly Road, tells CBSLA that a gallon of regular unleaded on Saturday is $7.03. (credit: Ivan Hernandez/Avalon Marine Dock) The gas station is one of two service stations catering to the island and nearby, Avalon.

Sheriff's captain took inmate on golf outing, deputy says A pro golfer turned jewel thief was escorted from the Catalina Island jail to a golf course, where he gave the captain pointers, the deputy and the former inmate say. The captain is under investigation. - A hillside overlooking Avalon Harbor in Catalina. (Christina House / For The Times) The tiny jail on Catalina Island is hardly Alcatraz. Just ask Frank Carrillo. The pro golfer turned jewel thief couldn't believe his luck when he was moved out of his bleak Men's Central Jail cell in downtown L.A. and allowed to do...

LOS ANGELES – It could crash through burning buildings, make a fool of any number of small-town Southern sheriffs, help save the world from giant robots, even take criminals off to jail while engaging in witty repartee with its driver. In the end, about the only thing a Pontiac automobile couldn't do anymore was persuade enough people to keep buying it. So General Motors announced this past week that it is killing off the Pontiac brand, maker of muscular, noisy, gas-guzzling V-8-powered vehicles immortalized in song and movies for the way they seemed to shout to every other car on...

LONG BEACH – A wildfire burning an estimated 4,000 acres of hillside brush on Santa Catalina Island through the night Thursday forced the evacuation of about 1,500 people after the blaze pressed to the edges of town of Avalon, the isle's lone population center. Of those evacuees, 138 stayed overnight at an emergency shelter hosted by the Red Cross in the gymnasium at Cabrillo High School in Long Beach; most of them were residents and workers from the island with their families. "Everyone and everything smelled like smoke and ash when they arrived," Red Cross support officer Margaret Madonna said....

FORT HUACHUCA - In preparation for Bataan Memorial Death March later this month, the Boy Scouts of America Catalina Council's Troop 431 hoofed along post for about 22 miles Saturday morning. Eleven of the troop's scouts participated in Saturday's training. Troop 431 has participated in the Bataan memorial march for seven years now, but seven years is longer than the stipulated Boy Scout tenure. For example, Jake Oliver, an Eagle Scout, has marched in White Sands for four years, he said. The 26-mile memorial march has been annually staged in New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range since 1989, in remembrance...

<p>PBY-5: Seaplane with seven aboard is thought to have fallen in 1942.</p> <p>A search team from a U.S. Army lab that recovers the remains of American military service members arrived at Kiska Island on Friday morning to excavate the crash site of a World War II bomber possibly untouched for more than six decades.</p>