One of my favorite seabirds is the pigeon guillemot (Cepphus columba). According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithololgy, pigeon guillemots should be present along the California coast year-round, but I seem to see them only during the summer breeding season, when they forage close to shore. Having first to incubate eggs, and then to feed…
Author: Allison J. Gong
Happy New Year!
Año Nuevo Island is a small island just off Point Año Nuevo along the San Mateo County coast. These place names come from the fact that the first European to see this bit of California, the Spaniard Sebastián Vizcaíno, first saw it on 3 January 1603. Of course, the native people of this area, the…
Meow!
For years now we’ve known that the world just beyond our back deck was owned by a variety of wildlife. We’ve seen coyotes and bobcats often enough to think “Good to know you guys are still there!” and of course we hear coyotes a lot more often than we see them. We’ve also known the…
The Flyer comes home
Last weekend the fabled Western Flyer came home to Monterey for a brief visit. For anyone who doesn’t recognize the name, the Western Flyer is the boat that Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck took to the Sea of Cortez in 1940. At the time of the trip she was just another purse seiner in Monterey,…
Take a class with me!
This coming semester, Fall 2023, I am teaching marine biology (BIO 11B) at Cabrillo College. I’ve done this for years, but what makes this semester different is that I’m teaching it asynchronously online. We’ve been teaching in-person for a few semesters now, but due to an unusual crunch for lab space the marine bio class…
A celebration of worms
Yesterday, 30 June 2023, was deemed by the National Museum of Natural History to be International Polychaete Day, and the Smithsonian had an entire day of talks and activities for visitors to learn about the marine segmented worms. And you know me: I’m in favor of any event that draws attention to the animals that…
You never see just one
For the past several weeks now, the by-the-wind sailors (Velella velella) have been washing up on local beaches. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one floating on the surface of the sea, which is Velella‘s actual habitat. And when you see one Velella on the beach, all you have to do is take a…
Wildflowers galore
Like many (most?) Californians, I was swept up in the 2023 wildflower superbloom, which followed on the record-setting rain and snowfall we saw in the previous winter. The rain caused disruptions in many areas of California; in my area, I had multiple students whose homes were flooded when the levee along the Pajaro River failed….
Exception to the rule
Ask any marine biology student to list some interesting factoids about barnacles, and one of them should be “Barnacles are benthic and sessile” by which they mean that barnacles live their entire lives glued to a single spot. This definitely describes what it means to be benthic. Barnacles are indeed stuck, for better or worse,…
An inadvertent voyeur
A week ago I was with a group of students at Moss Landing, where we spent a couple of hours watching birds on our way down to Fort Ord Natural Reserve for an overnight camping trip. The visit was well-timed: we arrived at low tide so there was a lot of mud flat exposed, meaning…