Monterey, Carmel, & Point Lobos photos
Photos from California, edited down to a reasonable number. (And only including vacation-within-vacation photos, because I presume nobody wants to look at Sacramento or Lincoln, jewels of the Central Valley that they are).
Carmel:
Pebble Beach is that green bit that sticks out.
Monterey:
I still adore this place. It makes me feel like an awestruck little kid. And since we went in the off-season it was not crowded at all, just some adults (lots of Australians, incidentally) and some kids too young to be in school. This made it easy to get a good look at everything, but the poor curators faced a tough crowd audience participation wise. The special exhibits were on river otters and sea horses.
The little fish are sardines (a species which pops up in the aquarium a lot in homage to its former life as a sardine cannery).
Giant pelagic tank. The long streaks near the top are mahi mahi, lower big blobs are blue fin tuna, the spiral is a school of sardines. Unfortunately they didn't have any sunfish at the moment (all outgrew the tank and had to be released with no new specimen found yet) but they did have a great white cruising around in here. She was much too fast to photograph even as a blur.
Jeeeeellyfish...
...I love them.
Moon jellies.
A bunch more of them.
Sea nettles.
This little penguin was very, very hungry.
Three dude penguins.
Apparently these penguins are so lazy (...or brilliant?) that they only eat if a fish is physically placed in their mouths by a human being.
Kelp forest tank, populated with stuff found right off shore. (I've been diving in Monterey; it does look like this, expect visibility is, like, five feet on a bad day.)
Large, fake sea mammals. This is as close as the "Cetacean Institute" gets to actually having whales.
There were rays in this pool but they didn't show up. They feel weird, like a ziplock bag full of chicken breast.
Cuttlefish! I love cephalopods, but all the others were too dimly lit to get a halfway decent photo.
Sea horses.
Sea dragon.
Aquarium people doing their thing. A couple were diving in dry suits. Pansies.
Back deck of the aquarium (with legs of a dry suit and rock filled with invisible common murres).
Deep sea fish strip a whale carcass on rejected Star Trek set.
Specimens from Ed Ricketts lab.
Cannery Row.
Ugly fishing trawler.
Point Lobos State Reserve:
I don't remember coming here before, but I must have at some point. It's a lovely park, and apparently the diving is also quite good. There were a couple sea otters and sea lions hanging about but too far off the shore to photograph. We didn't have time to drive the 25 miles to Big Sur, so we spent the afternoon here instead.
Little tiny egret.
Four fat harbor seals with the right idea.
Middle of Nowhere:
My dad has this bizarre fixation with the mega fruit stand "Casa de Fruta," which I think is located somewhere outside of Hollister; I remember stopping here as a kid. It's the middle of nowhere, right off the highway... and it has a carousel. We stopped because we thought it was funny and I knew my dad would ask if we had. We did end up buying a bunch of fruit and nuts and salt water taffy. Best damn strawberries I've ever had.
Casa de Fundamental Misunderstanding of Spanish Language.
Nonsensical Bonus:
Jelly bean governator. I love California.
Carmel:
Pebble Beach is that green bit that sticks out.
Monterey:
I still adore this place. It makes me feel like an awestruck little kid. And since we went in the off-season it was not crowded at all, just some adults (lots of Australians, incidentally) and some kids too young to be in school. This made it easy to get a good look at everything, but the poor curators faced a tough crowd audience participation wise. The special exhibits were on river otters and sea horses.
The little fish are sardines (a species which pops up in the aquarium a lot in homage to its former life as a sardine cannery).
Giant pelagic tank. The long streaks near the top are mahi mahi, lower big blobs are blue fin tuna, the spiral is a school of sardines. Unfortunately they didn't have any sunfish at the moment (all outgrew the tank and had to be released with no new specimen found yet) but they did have a great white cruising around in here. She was much too fast to photograph even as a blur.
Jeeeeellyfish...
...I love them.
Moon jellies.
A bunch more of them.
Sea nettles.
This little penguin was very, very hungry.
Three dude penguins.
Apparently these penguins are so lazy (...or brilliant?) that they only eat if a fish is physically placed in their mouths by a human being.
Kelp forest tank, populated with stuff found right off shore. (I've been diving in Monterey; it does look like this, expect visibility is, like, five feet on a bad day.)
Large, fake sea mammals. This is as close as the "Cetacean Institute" gets to actually having whales.
There were rays in this pool but they didn't show up. They feel weird, like a ziplock bag full of chicken breast.
Cuttlefish! I love cephalopods, but all the others were too dimly lit to get a halfway decent photo.
Sea horses.
Sea dragon.
Aquarium people doing their thing. A couple were diving in dry suits. Pansies.
Back deck of the aquarium (with legs of a dry suit and rock filled with invisible common murres).
Deep sea fish strip a whale carcass on rejected Star Trek set.
Specimens from Ed Ricketts lab.
Cannery Row.
Ugly fishing trawler.
Point Lobos State Reserve:
I don't remember coming here before, but I must have at some point. It's a lovely park, and apparently the diving is also quite good. There were a couple sea otters and sea lions hanging about but too far off the shore to photograph. We didn't have time to drive the 25 miles to Big Sur, so we spent the afternoon here instead.
Little tiny egret.
Four fat harbor seals with the right idea.
Middle of Nowhere:
My dad has this bizarre fixation with the mega fruit stand "Casa de Fruta," which I think is located somewhere outside of Hollister; I remember stopping here as a kid. It's the middle of nowhere, right off the highway... and it has a carousel. We stopped because we thought it was funny and I knew my dad would ask if we had. We did end up buying a bunch of fruit and nuts and salt water taffy. Best damn strawberries I've ever had.
Casa de Fundamental Misunderstanding of Spanish Language.
Nonsensical Bonus:
Jelly bean governator. I love California.