April 3rd and 4th in Monterey

The last few weeks have been full of so many amazing sights throughout my travels that the blog posts will be a bit piecemeal, but I really wanted to post some photos from a few days we spent in Monterey where I got to visit the fantastic Monterey Bay Aquarium and see California transients on a whale-watching trip.

They Monterey Bay Aquarium is a place that does it right. They don't hold any pinnipeds or cetaceans in captivity but have extensive stunning exhibits and provide excellent information; it's not hard to spend an entire day there. They also maintain the excellent Seafood Watch program, which are the best reference for making sure you're eating sustainable seafood in any US region. I took the RicohGR along and here are some of my favorite shots from the day:

The jellyfish exhibit is always one of the highlights

While the colors are amazing, I think some of the photos look pretty stunning in black and white too!

A glimpse into what a bait ball might look like from underwater

The two-story kelp forest exhibit

Clown fish with anemone in the coral reef exhibit

Staghorn hermit crab

With so many reports of orcas in Monterey Bay over the preceding days, and having woke up with a good feeling about the day, we decided at the last minute to go out whale watching from Moss Landing with Sanctuary Cruises. Good choice! Even just leaving the harbor we saw a ton of wildlife including a variety of birds, harbor seals, sea otters, and an abundance of California sea lions.

As we cruised offshore we came across several humpback whales, the first of which fluked nicely for us.

After one dive, as we waited for the whale to resurface, we were surprised when it lunged upside down right off the port-side bow!

On the next surfacing we got a great look at the humpback's double blow holes:

A bit further on we spent some time with a pair of humpbacks traveling together:

We started motoring away from these guys when the captain learned another boat in the area had spotted orcas! Not too far away were about half a dozen whales, a group of California transients. These orcas are considered part of a different population than the West Coast transients we regularly see in the Salish Sea, though the populations do have some overlapping territory and have occasionally been seen to intermix. In fact, the whales we saw - known as Emma's group after the distinct female CA140 Emma - were seen in the Strait of Juan de Fuca on January 8th before first being spotted in Monterey this season on February 21st. Here's my first photo of a California transient:

I've dreamed of seeing orcas in Monterey Bay, and while sightings have been especially good in recent weeks, I felt incredibly lucky to have seen them. (While of course the very next day they got to witness this same group of whales take down a gray whale calf - which would have been amazing to see - the orcas were gone entirely for several days after that.) We heard they had just finished feeding on a long-beaked common dolphin (a species I still have yet to see!) and when we got there instead of stopping to play after feasting they were clearly on the move. It's a whole different challenge watching and trying to keep up with the whales in the open ocean, especially since it was a pretty choppy day! We were still graced with a few excellent looks as the captain did his best to keep up with them.

They were mostly in travel mode, but we did get to see two huge spyhops - I captured one here, in my favorite photo from the day:

All too soon it was time to say goodbye and head back to port, although at that point it was a relief to move with the waves and wind rather than into them!

We saw a couple more sea otters on our way back to the slip, concluding an awesome few hours on the water!

Underwater Video - First Takes

Winters on San Juan Island are very different from summers: the days are short, the weather is wet and gray, and the town is quiet. People get through the winter in different ways, but there are lots of different community activities to help pass the long, dark nights. Sports are my personal favorite. In years past I've played hockey and done rollerblading at open skate, and this year I've tried badminton and indoor soccer as well. This week I ended up doing all four, resulting in various types of soreness as I use muscles that have laid dormant all summer. I thought it was amusing, however, that the thing I was most sore from this week wasn't a sport at all - it was crouching on the dock taking underwater video clips.

I got a Flip video camera for my birthday, along with an underwater case. This is the perfect time of year to put it to good use because the marina is just full of schooling fish, and as a result, lots of other wildlife. We've had groups of seals coming through several times a day, plus different types of gulls and other marine birds, river otters, and the regular assortment of intertidal life.

I still have a long ways to go in getting the types of clips I think might be possible from right off our dock (including getting the camera lined up right in the casing), but here are a few samples from my first week or so of attempts. Featured here are a dock shrimp, a couple schools of fish, a cross jellyfish, a very brief look at a seal (they're proving the hardest so far!), and a Bonaparte's gull:

Biking with Birds and More Marina Wildlife

Finally, some warmth and sunshine! It's starting to feeling like the summer season here in Friday Harbor, and not just because all the tourists have been arriving. The weather is finally catching up to the calendar and it's nice enough to go for walks without a jacket or sweatshirt on a daily basis for the first time this year - it's awesome!

One afternoon last week I went down to American Camp for a walk in mid-afternoon, and because of the time of day it was pretty quiet. I did see a flycatcher that didn't match any of our most common species, and while it was unfortunately silent (flycatchers are easiest to identify by call), I did get the chance to get a photo of it. It wasn't a great shot, but with the input of several other birders, I'm fairly confident in calling in a western wood-pewee (182).

There's a nice six mile route to bike leaving from my house, and with the nice weather I rode it on both Saturday and Sunday. I was amazed at the number of bird species I was able to see/here just while bike riding! On Saturday I counted 28 species on my evening ride, then during the afternoon on Sunday I counted 20, including some different ones from the day before. Some highlights included violet-green, barn, and northern-rough winged swallows; olive-sided and Pacific-slope flycatchers; house finches, purple finches, and American goldfinches; California quail; orange-crowned warblers; and a Bewick's wren.

There have still been a few jellyfish around, though not nearly in the numbers as last week. I contacted a local jellyfish expert, Claudia Mills, who confirmed my IDs from my last post, although she explained that there are likely many more gregarious jellyfish (Phialidium gregarium) than aggregating jellyfish (Eutonia indicans). The former tend to outnumber the latter locally, so I'm sure there were lots of the gregarious jellies with a few aggregating jellies mixed in rather than being all aggregating as I had written. It was interesting to learn that such congregations of tiny jellyfish are typical in the spring, though this year the "invasion" was about three weeks later than normal.

Other interesting sightings continue to happen from the marina, as well. Last night there was a school of fish hanging out here, which I wouldn't hesitate to call the biggest I've ever seen. The fish were small, and densely packed together, and the school was HUGE. I wonder if there could have been a million fish there? I wonder what kind they were? Unfortunately it was getting too dark to get a very good look.

Also yesterday, a couple of river otters came through. Often we hear them at night, or they swim by at dusk when it's too dark for photos. During the day they usually just pop up quickly, too fast to go get the camera. Yesterday was an exception, though, and one even jumped out on the dock long enough for me to snap this photo:

Most people erroneously call these sea otters, but sea otters were locally extirpated from the region during the fur trade. These otters are fairly common here and do swim in the sea, but they are actually river otters. There has been a sea otter population re-established on the outer coast of the Olympic Peninsula, and perhaps one day they will re-expand their range into the Salish Sea. Several years ago (2005?) there were actually several sea otter sightings here, including one off Lime Kiln Lighthouse that I was able to photograph, but for now it's still same to assume that most if not all otters seen here are river otters.

Finally, word just came tonight that many resident orcas are inbound in the Strait of Juan de Fuca! L-Pod did blow right out west as suspected after our last whale report, and no resident orcas have been seen in inland waters since then. Many, including yours truly, have been eagerly anticipating their return, and it sounds like tonight could be the night! Hopefully these whales - at least J and L Pod whales by the sounds of it - will stick around a while, and hopefully my next post will include some whale photos!

Jellyfish Invasion

There have been thousands and thousands of tiny jellyfish in the marina this week. They seem to come in waves - sometimes the ocean is full of them and other times you can only see a few individuals. Yesterday and today I spent some time on my hands and knees at the edge of the dock (with camera in hand, of course) to take a closer look, and I was surprised to see no fewer than six different species. My cnidaria ID skills are very amateur, so I'm definitely looking for input if anyone knows more than I do about my tentative species identifications.

The most abundant species is the aggregating jelly (Eutonia indicans), shown here against both a dark and a light background:

The next most abundant species, that really seems to come in waves, is the thimble jellyfish (Sarsia spp.):

The only one of these species I have seen before is the cross jelly (Mitrocoma cellularia), which has been abundant in recent summers though completely absent in years prior to that:

Now come the three I'm not so sure of, and which I only saw in very small numbers. I think this might be a water jelly species (Aequorea spp.). It doesn't seem to quite have enough "spokes", but it's the closest I can come with my Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest: A Photographic Encyclopedia of Invertebrates, Seaweeds And Selected Fishes field guide:

This one might be a hanging stomach jelly (Stomotoca atra). If it is, as the name suggests that would be the stomach hanging out of the bell, surrounded by the lips.

Finally, and this is another tentative ID but also another great example of why jellyfish common names are awesome, the closest I can come on this one is the blob-top jelly (Neoturris breviconis):

As with most wildlife viewing efforts, you end up seeing more than your "target" species. While taking such a close look at the water I also found this coonstripe shrimp (Pandalus danae) sitting on this giant plumose anemone (Metridium farcimen):

A Macro Look at South Beach

After a stormy night last night, today dawned surprisingly calm and sunny. It was a perfect afternoon to go for a long walk at South Beach and play with the new macro lens. It was also a good opportunity to soak up some much-needed Vitamin D, because with last night's "fall back" it is now dark out at 5 PM! Ugh, needless to say, not my favorite day of the year. But at least the sun was out!

Here are some highlights from my photo excursion....

November flowers

Beach rocks through a jellyfish

Water droplet on a blade of grass

Leaflets on a rock

Close-up look at moss

Interesting-looking insect....ID, anyone?

Grass shadows on a rock with lichen growth

Burnt driftwood

Sun shining through beach pea leaves

Lion's Mane Jellyfish and Current Flows

A lot of my beach walks this fall have featured dead lion's mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata) washed up on shore or in the surf. I've noticed that throughout the year we have periodic explosions of live and/or dead jellyfish of various species, and I never really understood why that was until I came across this 2002 article by a scientist from the Friday Harbor Labs.

It turns out that despite the daily tidal fluctuations the prominent water flow in the area is out towards the ocean. Occasionally, usually at least once in the spring and once in the fall, the water flow temporarily reverses and we get a huge influx of typically oceanic species into our inland waters. These species then can persist here for months, giving researchers an opportunity to study species of plankton, etc. that aren't always as accessible. The influx of jellyfish I've noticed are also due to these current shifts. Typically, we see smaller jellyfish coming in with the spring flow, and lion's mane with the fall flow. I'm glad I finally learned a little more about this!

Jackson Beach Variety

Yesterday morning I went to Jackson's Beach, and while nothing was very abundant the variety of life I saw was amazing. Here's a sampling....

One of the 15+ killdeer:


Raccoon footprints:


A surprisingly large grasshopper:

There was a dead harbor seal pup in the surf which I reported to the stranding network, but I spared you the photo of that. Instead, here is a beached moon jelly:

An adult bald eagle:

There were about five different species of wildflower in bloom, but this is one I don't recognize and wasn't able to immediately find in the field guide. Any ideas?

Marine Wildlife Highlights

There's been a lot of wildlife to see lately - not just the orcas. Here are a few photo highlights:

A whole flotilla of cross jellyfish right off the back deck of the houseboat

A great blue heron takes flight after perching on a kelp bed

Humpback whales visible from shore!

This afternoon I was watching some L-Pod whales from shore when I saw a very tall blow, and I said out loud, "That is NOT an orca!" It turned out to be from a humpback whale, and watching through binoculars revealed it was actually three humpbacks traveling together. Humpbacks used to be found in the inland waters here until they were hunted to local extinction. In 2003 they started coming back, and now every year they are seen in the area, especially in the fall, but a sighting from shore is still a rare thing indeed! Even though they were a mile or more offshore it was so cool to see them.

Cross Jellies and Beach Bugs

This morning when I looked into the water between the houseboat and the dock there were clusters of clear jellyfish. Usually this time of year we're seeing moon jellies, but these are actually cross jellies (Mitrocoma cellularia), a species I haven't ever noticed here before. The white stalks are giant plumose annemonies, there's some seaweed floating on the surface, and the photographer was accidentally captured, too:

In turns out there were hundreds and hundreds of cross jellies just about everywhere today, floating along with the currents. I wonder where they all came from?

This afternoon while taking a walk down at South Beach with some friends and family, we came across this bizarre looking insect. I've never seen anything like it, but it was distinct enough that it wasn't too hard to use the field guide to identify it as a banded alder borer (Rosalia funebris), a round-necked longhorn beetle:

They're found from Alaska to California and are mostly a coastal insect. This one was very cooperative as multiple cameras came in for some macro shots, just crawling slowly along a piece of driftwood. How often is it you get the specimen and the field guide in the same shot?!

My dad then found another insect that he immediately named a "gray sandhopper". Gullible as always, I thought he actually knew what it was, but he was just giving it an appropriate name off the top of his head. I'm not able to narrow this down any more than a member of Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets, katydids). Any thoughts?