Mark Tautrim was checking fences along his coastal cattle ranch 20 miles west of Santa Barbara on Tuesday afternoon when he caught a whiff of oil so strong it gave him a headache.

“Gosh, do you think the pipeline is leaking?” his wife, Susie Tautrim, asked him.

Tautrim headed toward the beach to investigate. He was among the earliest witnesses to an oil spill that has coated several miles of beaches along one of California’s most ecologically important shorelines.