As a native Californian, I’ve been living with drought my entire life. Well, maybe not so much during the El Niño of 1997-98, but even then the thought “We have water now but might not later…” was always in the back of my mind. This season we had a great few weeks of rain in late November and early December, then January was bone dry and February has been disappointing as well.
This weekend an Arctic storm is moving through the region, bringing rain and cool temperatures to coastal areas and (hopefully) snow in the Sierra Nevada. Here in Santa Cruz it hasn’t rained much yet but we did get a few decent showers this morning. It just so happened that I headed down to the marine lab between showers, and the light was magnificent. The water was that magical color of aquamarine and seaglass green that I associate with the tropics. The sun was shining, casting cloud shadows on the water, which added depth to the color palette when combined with the kelp bed. So pretty!
© Allison J. Gong
© Allison J. Gong
Brown pelicans (Pelicanus occidentalis) were one of many bird species whose populations were devastated by widespread use of the pesticide DDT in the mid-20th century; in 1970 it was listed on the federal Endangered Species List. After the general use of DDT was banned in the United States in 1972 the population began to recover, and in 2009 the brown pelican was removed from the Endangered Species List (I believe the bureaucratic jargon for that is “de-listed”). It is now not unusual to see long lines of pelicans skimming the waves as they fly just above the ocean surface.
Today I didn’t see any large groups of pelicans in flight, but I did catch this one flying by right in front of me.
© Allison J. Gong
Anyone who knows me personally knows that I’m not a big cheerleader for the marine mammals. However, seeing cetaceans in the wild is always a treat. This morning I was lucky enough to catch this pod of dolphin-type critters as they swam right off the point. There were 6-8 of them, I think. As they swam past the marine lab a couple of them indulged in some tail slapping.
© Allison J. Gong
I’m not enough of a cetacean expert to be able to identify the animals from photos. They did have dolphin-like dorsal fins but I couldn’t see a prominent rostrum on any of them. I didn’t have my binoculars with me . . . and I call myself a naturalist??
Since the animals were not traveling very quickly I decided to see if I could catch them on video. I was lucky enough to get this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KybN6ORXOk&feature=youtu.be
Can anybody help me identify what these animals are?
right whales? pilot whales?
pilot whales…not right….that’s my best guess…
Definitely pilot over right, based on size alone. I couldn’t tell how big they were, but even 6 meters sounds big for what I saw. Shape of pilot whale matches, though.