The Brown Pelican: A Miracle, Clad in Monk-Brown Robes

Silent fisherman

Pelicans, like brown clad monks

travel single file.

"Gray Beach Day" by Wendy DeWitt

The sun sparkled across the water as the sun crept lower in the sky. I zipped my jacket up to my chin against the late afternoon breeze that blew in from the Pacific. Pelicans, silhouetted against the setting sun, streamed across Catalina Head, low in the sky their smooth passage was interrupted by occasional flaps of their wings. "Modern-day pterodactyls," I think, "Bombers returning from their afternoon sortie."

A miracle, clad in monk-brown robes.

The Brown pelican is something of a miracle, a conservation success story. A testament to the power of the Endangered Species Act. Almost extinct in the 1970s, their numbers have rebounded such that they have been de-listed as an endangered species.

Encounters with an Oarfish

Two oarfish were sighted off Isla San Francisco in Baja California!  The story and videos of the fish are on the Smithsonian website.

For more about oarfish, read this from the American Galapagos blog.

Losing Our Past: Climate Change and Island Archaeology

Climate change is here, now. Record droughts, increasingly severe storms, rising average temperatures, and a growing disconnect between ecological processes all point to the damage that increased greenhouse gas emissions are having on our world's climate.

We are just beginning to realize the effect that climate change will have on our lives, what we can do to reduce them, and what it's going to cost us. One cost of climate change, however, can't be measured in currency, jobs lost, or property damage. It is the loss of our shared human heritage. Climate change's effect is being felt on archaeological resources around the world, particularly on coastal sites that contain some of the oldest records of humankind.

Riding the Kelp Highway -- The Channel Islands Link to the First Americans?

We all know the story of how people first came to the Americas, right?  Well, maybe not. Research published in the last 10-15 years has suggested that our old view of human colonization from Asia is wrong - and studies of human prehistory on the Channel Islands could help us understand how this colonization progressed.

The Oarfish: The Messenger from the Sea God's Palace

Last fall Jasmine Santana, an instructor at the Catalina Island Marine Institute, was snorkeling in about 20 feet of water.  She noticed a very long ribbon-like fish lying on the ocean floor and recognized it immediately as an oarfish.

Santana knew that an oarfish was a cool and unusual find, so she dove to the bottom, grabbed it by the tail, and dragged the dead fish onto the beach. After recruiting some help, she and other CIMI crew managed to wrestle the 18-foot long oarfish onto the beach at Toyon Bay.

About a week later, a second dead oarfish washed ashore near Oceanside, about 40 miles north of San Diego.

Lone Woman of San Nicolas's cave is found

An October 2012 story in the LA Times describes the recent discovery of a cave on San Nicolas Island that archaeologists believe sheltered the Lone Woman of San Nicolas.

The story of the Lone Woman was immortalized by Scott O'Dell in his book "Island of the Blue Dolphins".  A fictionalized account of the Lone Woman, whose Native American name was never known, the book tells the tale of a young woman named Karana who survives alone on a remote island for nearly twenty years.

The remarkable sea otter

From Wikipedia

The small square of fur was silky smooth and buttery soft. The surface hairs were deep brown, long and supple. Underneath, short fuzzy hairs cushioned my hand as it rested on the fur. It was 2004, I was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and I was petting a piece of sea otter fur. 

Why is sea otter fur so remarkable?