Tag Archives | monterey

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Mystery of the Red Tide

I stood with my feet buried in sand, staring at the ocean waves as they touched the beach. It was mid-October. To my untrained eye, the Monterey Bay shoreline looked like a child’s bubble bath. To California Fish and Wildlife scientists, it was a terrible déjà vu. Nine years ago, an algal bloom wreaked havoc—and…

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Olive ridley sea turtle hatchlings on the Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica. Photo by Sukee Bennett.

How does one turtle’s tale promote ocean conservation?

I watched nearly 2,000 baby olive ridley sea turtles hatch while working on a sea turtle conservation project in Costa Rica. Most of them were born in our human-made hatchery from wild eggs we had relocated— each hatchling crawled and tumbled upon dozens of siblings in a sheltered plot, eager to be free. Others were…

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Battle of the bags at Monterey Bay Aquarium

Meet Makana, the only captive Laysan albatross in North America. An ambassador for her species, she takes the stage at the Monterey Bay Aquarium everyday at 1:30 sharp, helping guests understand how human-made plastics—single-use bags, straws, water bottles—can end up in sea birds’ stomachs. One of the props in her show is a 12-inch tube…

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Sea otter with urchin Credit: matt knoth (Flickr)

Sea otter death….and life!

Last fall, our class visited the sea otter researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Sandeep summarized many neat tidbits about otters from that trip on this blog. Two items that really piqued my interest involved otter mortality. In California, many otters die from disease or shark bite. What’s going on? I tracked down the answer during…

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Dall's porpoises can be found off the coast of Southern California. Perhaps they are responsible for getting the beloved Mary Poppins star?

Porpoise protectors?

From today’s Twitterverse: Apparently Dick Van Dyke fell asleep on a surfboard and woke up to no land in sight, but fins all around. The fins belonged to a group of porpoises that pushed the actor back to dry land. ~~ What’s the news here, that Dick Van Dyke was surfing at 84, or porpoises…

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Otter things have happened, it’s a big universe

Nads is on a roll and I thought I’d share a set of my own loose associations triggered after my facebook status update netted a comment by an astronomer. My original caption: “See, otters. OR It otter be illegal to kayak near otters. Oh wait, it is; 50 meter restraining order on all Homo sapiens.”…

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