Chumash seafarers were so comfortable on the ocean that elder Kitsepawit called the tomol, a plank canoe, “the house of the sea.” Shipbuilders made the tomol by splitting driftwood, sewing planks with cordage, and caulking them with tar. Mariners paddled as far as the Channel Islands, fished the open waters, and returned to this lagoon and the nearby Chumash village of Muwu. In 1997, members of the Chumash Maritime Association built a tomol called ‘Elye‘wun (Swordfish), and a group of Chumash paddlers made a 2006 crossing to Limuw, Santa Cruz Island. Mugu Lagoon also receives thousands of birds every year, including resident birds and migrants traveling the Pacific Flyway from Alaska to Patagonia. As the largest remaining coastal wetland in Southern California, it provides food, shelter, and breeding habitat, and the open beach beyond it is critical habitat for the threatened snowy plover, which lays its eggs directly on the sand and needs an undisturbed shoreline for nesting.