Not so long ago, I posted about a trip I made with my nephew to the aquarium in Monterey. More recently, my Mum came to stay so we took her there for a day out too. It was a lovely day and we wandered around cannery Row a bit before heading in to the aquarium itself. I don’t have much new to say about the place other than it is very cool. Instead, I shall just let you see some of what we saw.
While all of the activity on the beach was going on with the males and females, there were also a ton of pups lying around. Once the pups have suckled long enough, they are fat and happy and left to their own devices. They don’t have enough strength so, for the next few weeks, they will move about the beach burning down the fat and strengthening themselves up before heading out to sea.
Meanwhile, they look very cute. They are called weaners when they are left to their own devices. Every image you have of a baby seal is met by the weaners. Small, plump with huge eyes. Just what you imagine. In amongst them were some so-called “super-weaners”. These “little” fellas had got a double dose of mother’s milk and they were huge. Normally in young creatures you imagine that getting extra is good for you. For seals, this is not so much the case. Having all of the extra fat means they are very buoyant. When they head out to see, they tend to bob around on the surface and that makes them easy pickings for the sharks offshore. I guess greed isn’t good for you!
Elements of this post may come with an R Rating. If you are a sensitive soul, look away now. Courtesy of Nancy, I spent a morning in the midst of a crazy place. Ano Nuevo State Refuge is on the Pacific coast about halfway between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. The beaches of the park are a popular location for breeding elephant seals. The park protects the seals from the visitors while allowing people to get a good view of them. However, they also run a series of sunrise photo tours. In a small group, you are escorted by a ranger to various locations where you are close in to the action with the seals. And there is some action!
This was something Nancy bought me as a birthday treat. She didn’t come along. Something about a 5am start on a rainy day didn’t appeal to her – not sure why. Calling it a sunrise tour was a little optimistic. The horizontal rain meant it was more a case of dark transitioning to quite dark. However, that didn’t get in the way of experiencing some great stuff.
I was a little unsure of what sort of equipment to take with me. I knew some walking would be involved and ultimately elected to leave the 500mm behind and go with the 70-200 and the 100-400. If I do this again (and there is a good chance I will), I would include the 500mm and a tripod. The early start meant the lighting was pretty difficult. We did walk but spent most of our time in a few locations and only walked when moving between them. Carrying some extra gear would not have been too tricky. Keeping it dry was more of an issue of course!
Auto ISO was a friend in this situation. I went to manual mode, set up the speed and aperture I wanted and let the camera deal with the ISO. With conditions evolving, this made things a lot easier. The newer version of my camera has a function that would have been welcome here and that is the ability to add exposure compensation to the mix. Mine won’t do that sadly. It would have been helpful in this situation. As the light got better, it was possible to go back to a more normal aperture priority shooting approach fixing the ISO and using exposure comp as required. The high ISO capabilities of modern DSLRs are so handy on a shoot like this. The 70-200 is an f2.8 lens so it allowed relatively low ISOs from early on but the 100-400 is an f5.6 at length and so the ISO was really pushing up there. However, while the noise is noticeable, the images really are very useable.
The beach was covered in seals. Various dominant males had their harems scattered around. They were either mating with the females or fighting males that wanted to get in on the act. Some of the males would come in either straight through the front door looking for a fight or sneaking around the side hoping not to be noticed. The result was usually the same. Some of the fights were pretty brief when the challenger realized that they were out of their class. Occasionally they went on for a long time with the males taking chunks out of each other as they swiped their teeth into the neck of their opponent. I have heard the bellow these seals make on video before but in person it really resonates through you.
Meanwhile, a second group of males were waiting down by the water. The females had raised their pups and were now leaving them on the beach and heading back to see. They were fertile again so many males were trying to intercept them as they came to the water out of range of the harem. They had some success with this but were also fighting each other to be in the best spot. Consequently, it was almost non-stop fighting and mating on the beach with the occasional birth taking place too! Good luck to those females because, once they were off the beach, they had the great whites to look forward to a little further offshore.
Relaxing with our lunch near the harbor entrance at Moss Landing, the noisiest thing we could hear (apart from the foghorn on the entrance markers) was the sound of sea lions. There was a steady stream of their barking so we were looking around to see where they were. There was a pontoon jetty near the highway that was the source of the noise with a lot of them lying on it and sunbathing. We figured this had to be worth a visit before we left.
A while later we drove around to the location of the jetty and took a look at the gathering. This was not just a few sea lions. There were tons of them. There was nowhere near enough space for them all so they were piled up on top of each other. It was quite a sight. Several deep they were stacked across the dock. As new ones would leap out of the water, they would land on those already there and try to make their way to their preferred spot. All of this would arouse the ire of whoever they were walking on so barks and bites would be thrown around with abandon. It seemed quite a perilous voyage. Getting out at all wasn’t easy since there was no space to gain any purchase initially so, if the first leap wasn’t good enough, the chances were you would be “helped” back into the water.
It was hard to work out where the preferable location was. It appeared that the water’s edge was better since the sea lions there would periodically drop their heads into the water to cool off and blow some bubbles. We guessed that made this the best place to be but it was hard to tell. Some of the others on the edge were almost totally buried by their neighbors and that didn’t look to appealing. Whichever way it works, it was obviously the place to be if you were a local sea lion.
I am getting repetitive! I can’t get enough of cormorants. I have said it before but they are just my favorite bird. Moss Landing proved to be a fun place to go and watch some. We ended up sitting near the harbor entrance and the waterway there was something of a highway for cormorants. There was a steady stream of them in each direction so I was a happy guy. As they came out, the light was better for them but either way was okay so I was shooting a lot. I was trying to work out whether there was a cormorant traffic plan since they seemed to go out on one side and in on the other. This wasn’t a rule but seemed to happen a lot. Maybe I was just looking for a pattern that wasn’t really there. I’m sure they can manage to avoid each other without implementing traffic rules!
Having said that, I did get watch must count as my first crossing shot of the season. Not fast jets or even any other type of plane. Two cormorants made a head on pass and I caught the moment. Let’s tick that one off for the year. As with Monterey over the holidays, I saw a few birds carrying material which I assume is for nest building. The big load in their mouth doesn’t seem to affect the balance. I also noticed the variation in colors between some of the birds with a light colored breast on a few of them. I was even spoiled by having one fly straight in towards me to land on the water and then proceed to dive under in the area in front of me. What a star!
Living near the ocean now means I have a lot of chances to see these great birds. Therefore, prepare to have a steady stream of cormorant related posts in the months to come. You may not love them like I do but hopefully the shots will be enough to avoid driving you away!
In a previous trip to Monterey, I saw some sea otters out in the bay near the aquarium. I was interested in heading back to try and get something a bit better than last time and that included taking along a lens that was a bit more up to the task. I had done a little research online about places where he sea otters are regularly seen and decided to go to Moss Landing which is further up the bay from Monterey itself. There is a marina there which was supposed to be popular with the otters. I had no idea whether this meant they were always there or it was just a good chance that they might show up. Imagine my surprise, then, to pull up and see two otters in the water right next to the road.
We weren’t the only ones paying them a visit. There were a few people around with some long lenses on display. One of the otters was pretty subdued and seemed to be focused on grooming while the other was a lot more active. Lots of twisting and diving was going on and the constant movement made tracking for a good shot a little harder than might have been expected. They aren’t the hardest target by any stretch of the imagination but when they are active, they really don’t stay still for long. If they are lying on their back and grooming, things are a little easier.
I didn’t just pay attention to the otters near the road. There were a bunch of them out in the entrance to the harbor feeding on the local shellfish. It was fun to watch them come back to the surface, start to feed and attract the attention of the seagulls that saw a meal for the taking and decided to have a go. Of course, sea otters have some pretty healthy claws and teeth so were not an easy mark for the gulls. They seemed to keep their prize but it didn’t stop the gulls having a go. Sometimes, they just seemed to sit and watch. Maybe they were just envious.
Getting a good shot of the otters was harder than I expected. With them constantly on the move, they always seemed to be lined up in the wrong direction. The back of the head does not make a good shot and they seem to blink a lot so, without the eye, the image looks less interesting. A bit of patience was in order. Also, using the long lens in close meant that the depth of field was shallow so a sharp eye meant a blurred nose and vice versa. I looked at both types of shot to see if it mattered and, while when looking at normal size, it didn’t make a big difference, the shots with the eye sharp did appear better. I guess that rule is not a bad one!
No story with this one. I just got a shot of this bird while out and about and I liked it.
They were hunting – not me! I was hunting too but it was a plane I was after. However, since there was time before the plane arrived, I was able to watch a pair of egrets busily feeding. They are hungry birds! They didn’t always catch something but their success rate was high and then it was straight back to the next fish.
Watching them stalk through the shallows and then strike at their target was a lot of fun. The speed of the entry is impressive and then to see the fish in their mouth before it is swallowed is a sign of a job well done. With the water so calm, they also made for some very symmetrical shots.
My recent trips to SFO have also allowed for the occasional bird to be photographed. The bay is very popular with bird life so, in the times between interesting aircraft movements, you can get a few extra shots. A lot of the birds are wading types wandering along the shore looking for life in the mud. You also get some egrets and obviously plenty of gulls. Some ducks life around the area and they can be seen diving for stuff on the bottom of the bay. A few pelicans will sometimes show up and dive for fish a little off shore.
This time I even got lucky with an osprey flying overhead. I haven’t seen one here before so was quite surprised. I grabbed a few shots as it passed overhead and then it was gone. Meanwhile, it was fun to watch some of the larger flocks flying together. The way in which they move seemingly as one is really cool and, with the low sun angle, their changes of direction made them appear to flash as their undersides suddenly caught the light.
My nephew was interested in a visit to the aquarium at Monterey while they were staying so he and I decided to head down there for a day. I last went over ten years ago so did not remember a great deal about it. I also didn’t know whether a lot had changed in that time anyway so not remembering was not a major problem!
First things first. This place is great. We spent plenty of time there and could probably have spent more but we were thinking about some food before heading home. The collection is very interesting and really nicely laid out. Not only does it cover the wildlife of the Monterey Bay well, it also has some very nice terraces outside so you can go and see some of the real thing while you are there.
There are two huge tanks cover deep water and the kelp beds of the bay. These can be viewed from upper and lower levels and there is so much going on, it is easy to just stand and stare for long periods of time.
There is a great jellyfish exhibit. Nancy and I saw a similar exhibit at the Shedd Aquarium a while back as I reported here but this is a permanent feature and it is well worth a visit. There are other attractions that get a lot of visitors including the octopus exhibit. While we were there, this fella was very active. He (or she, I can’t tell which) would retreat into a dark corner for a while and then suddenly make a trip across the tank covering the glass with tentacles as he went. This was amazing to watch. Why he did it so often I don’t know. Maybe they do something to prod him into action every once in a while. (It was also quite fun to hear people berating those people using flash on their cameras which seemed to be happening every couple of minutes. Signs are hard to read I guess.)
We spent some time outside watching the wildlife. We had brought binoculars but there were some healthy telescopes available to use to. Sam quickly spotted the spray from a grey whale out in the bay and there were plenty of sea lions and sea otters to see although usually a bit far out. The bird life was teeming closer in.
I will be back before too long. I suspect any other visitors will want to check it out too but I can handle repeat visits I think.
