Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Moss Landing, CA

Moss Landing is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Monterey County, California, sitting on Monterey Bay at the mouth of Elkhorn Slough and at the head of the Monterey Canyon, one of the deepest submarine canyons along the continental United States.

Archaeological evidence shows the Ohlone people lived in the Moss Landing and Elkhorn Slough area as long as 4,000 years ago, long before the Spanish mission era.

In the early 1860s Texas ship captain Charles Moss built a landing and wharf here to handle the Salinas Valley grain trade, and the settlement was first simply named Moss in his honor; its post office opened in 1895 and the name was changed to Moss Landing in 1917.

Moss Landing grew into a busy whaling and fishing port with fish processing plants and canneries, and the Moss Landing Harbor District, established in the 1940s, dredged its channels and built piers; today the harbor berths more than 600 boats, including about 350 commercial fishing boats.

Moss Landing's population was 237 at the 2020 census, living in 114 households with an average size of 2.08 people, and unusually for a small coastal town about 69% of its occupied homes were rented rather than owner-occupied.

The California State University system founded Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in 1966 as a multi-campus marine research and graduate teaching facility; the original lab was destroyed by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and rebuilt nearby.

Moss Landing is also home to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), the deep-sea oceanographic research center founded by David Packard in 1987 and moved to Moss Landing in the mid-1990s, which employs roughly 220 scientists, engineers, and staff and operates remotely operated vehicles that explore the Monterey Canyon.

The Moss Landing Power Plant, opened in 1950 and rated at 2,538 megawatts, hosted what was the world's largest lithium-ion battery energy storage facility until a massive fire in January 2025 burned for days and destroyed most of it.

Moss Landing is the gateway to Elkhorn Slough, the largest tract of tidal salt marsh in California outside San Francisco Bay and a National Estuarine Research Reserve where more than 350 bird species pass through annually and sea otters are reliably seen.

Protected shoreline near Moss Landing includes Moss Landing State Beach, Salinas River State Beach, Zmudowski State Beach, and the Moss Landing Wildlife Area.