A little internet checking showed that the last oil spill in the Santa Barbara area was in 1969. The tar on your feet was from natural oil seeps. Here is a blurb from one website I found.

"The largest natural oil and gas seeps in the Western Hemisphere lie in the Santa Barbara Channel. According to the California State Lands Commission,they comprise more than 1,200 of the over 2,000 active submarine seeps along the California coast. Half of these occur within three miles of an area called Coal Oil Point, located just west of Santa Barbara near the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) campus. It is estimated that oil seepage for a single 6-mile stretch, including Coal Oil Point, averages 10,000 gallons of oil each day (240 barrels). Every 12 months about 86,000 barrels of oil seep into the ocean—the equivalent of the quantity of oil spilled in the 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara. Since 1970, the quantity of oil that naturally seeps into the Santa Barbara Channel equals ~ 31 "1969" oil spills."
http://www.soscalifornia.org/problem.html
So, it is natural...so it must be good then, right? I wonder if drilling and removing the oil for use would relieve pressure and then diminish the amount of oil going into the water?

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