The Santa Barbara Maritime Museum (SBMM) will host a Zoom presentation by photographer and filmmaker Harry Rabin and an expert panel talk on Detecting and Capping Leaking Oil Wells in Summerland. The event will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 17.

Panelists include Mike Giuliani, Hillary Hauser, David Valentine, Joe Fabel and Hannah Beth Jackson.

The event is free to attend but registration is required at https://sbmm.org/santa-barbara-events/.

For decades, oil has been leaking from the wellheads of some of the first offshore oil rigs in the world, more than 400 of them in Santa Barbara County. The beaches in Summerland were the source, and the oil spread as far southeast as Carpinteria and northwest along the coast to Miramar, Hammonds, and East Beach.

Finding the exact locations of the leaks and making the determination that they were indeed old wellheads vs. natural seeps took years of research both above and below the ocean.

From good eyes for observations, to shovels and the latest technology, from drones and ROVs to multibeam sonar, Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) and improvised metal detection — all would need to be deployed to solve the mystery of where the oil plumes were coming from and to come up with a viable solution.

That task was taken on by Heal the Ocean with Rabin at the helm working with State Sen. Hannah Beth Jackson, the California State Lands Commission, UCSB, and Interact. The story is a victory for the environment, finally ending the flow of multiple barrels per day into the sea.

Producer, director, and documentary filmmaker, Rabin is the CEO and founder of On the Wave Productions, an award-winning production company and a leader in high-tech camera and custom support gear.

From “The Land to Under the Sea” and “Up in the Air,” his cameras and gear have captured first-time-ever-witnessed action as it unfolded. Rabin has worked alongside Jean-Michel Cousteau, documenting the infamous Whale Jail in Russia, and with James Cameron, Mike DeGruy, and Sylvia Earle on documentary-based film projects.

A 40-year resident Santa Barbara resident, Rabin previously presented his film “Into the Shark Zone” at SBMM; it can be seen at: https://vimeo.com/285927409.

Rabin’s passion for the ocean and all marine life recently prompted the formation of Reef Guardians California/Hawaii, where he plays a lead role in working with scientists and researchers to better understand the problems plaguing our reef systems and looking for solutions.

Currently, Rabin also serves as an advisor to Heal the Ocean, the Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences, Whale Sanctuary Foundation, Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, and Monterey Bay Aquarium.

More recently, he discovered leaking, abandoned offshore oil wellheads, and worked alongside government and private industry to get them capped and stop the destruction off the California coast.

Giuliani, Sr. head engineer at InterAct, holds a B.S. in petroleum engineering and has worked in the field for some 30 years. He has a broad base of experience in artificial lift, reservoir, decommissioning, and steam engineering, and is the person who did the Summerland well abandonment.

Hauser, co-founder and executive director of Heal the Ocean, has published books and articles about the sea and underwater adventures. In 2009, she received the NOGI Distinguished Services Award from the Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences; she was elected president of the academy’s Board of Directors in 2013.

Hauser worked as a reporter on ocean issues for the Santa Barbara News-Press (1981-86).

Valentine holds the Norris Presidential Endowed Chair in Earth Science, is the founding director of the Marine Science program in the College of Creative Studies, and has been a professor of geochemistry and microbiology at UCSB since 2001.

Valentine’s research interests focus on the interaction of microbes and chemicals, and his projects have included hydrocarbon seeps and spills, ocean exploration, and the microbial technology to address social and environmental problems. Recently, he discovered millions of barrels of DDT that had been dumped in the ocean off Los Angeles.

For more about SBMM, visit sbmm.org or call 805-962-8404 for details.