Marine Mammal Mania!

Along California’s 840 miles of coastline, you can view a wonderful array of marine mammals. And the sightings recently have been unprecedented, from what might be the largest pod of gray whales ever spotted off the coast of Palos Verdes in southern California, to the clusters of whales and dolphins surprising boaters and kayakers while feeding off the Central Coast last year, to the flash mob appearance of a super mega-pod of dolphins off the coast of San Diego last week. I’ve been tracking all these stories, and was recently interviewed in The Christian Science Monitor  about the “marine mammal mania” we’re experiencing here in the Golden State.

This past weekend I ventured to the coast for a whale watching trip in Morro Bay, and while I didn’t view any dolphin mega pods, the marine mammals certainly did not disappoint. We watched two gray whales for almost an hour, were visited for a few fleeting moments by a harbor porpoise, laughed with the numerous barking sea lions, and enjoyed the almost unbearable cuteness of the sea otters. After the boat ride, I ventured up to San Simeon to catch the tail-end of the elephant seal season and saw two magnificent bulls do battle.

A collection of photos from my marine mammal encounters this weekend:

Sea otter and pup relaxing in Morro Bay (photo by Beth Pratt)

Sea otter close-up (Photo by Beth Pratt) 

Elephant seals on a San Simeon beach in California (photo by Beth Pratt)Watch a video slide show of two elephant seals doing battle:

“Thar she blows!” A surfacing gray whale. (photo by Beth Pratt)Gray whale making its northbound journey (photo by Beth Pratt)

Sutro Sam and Bottlenose Dolphins

Sutro Sam, the first river otter in San Francisco in 50 years! (photo by Beth Pratt)

For those of you not familiar with San Francisco's newest animal celebrity, Sutro Sam refers to the river otter who has taken up residence in Sutro Baths, a ruins located at Lands End in San Francisco. Aside from being pretty darn adorable, this intrepid animal is the first river otter to be seen in San Francisco in over 50 years! He now possesses quite a following and crowds gather around the baths to see him pop his head above water.

Sutro Baths, Lands End, San Francisco (photo by Beth Pratt)

Last week I made a field trip to check out Sutro Sam and spent a beautiful two hours strolling near the Pacific, alternatively watching sea birds and this river otter frolic in the adjacent waters. We receive so much bad news in the environmental field daily that I needed to celebrate this remarkable success story of an otter returning on his own to his historical habitat. As Megan Isadore from the River Otter Ecology Project observed to me in a recent interview: "Sutro Sam is a perfect example of the joy we gain from making the changes great and small that allow wildlife to return and thrive in areas where we haven't seen them in a long time."

Sutro Sam (photo by Beth Pratt)

At one point, as I took photos of Sam, I simply turned around to witness a group of bottlenose dolphins and their calves swimming in the ocean. Bill Keener, my friend at Golden Gate Cetacean Research, said there is a small group of dolphins hanging out around the San Francisco Coast even though they usually retreat further south for the winter.

Bottlenose dolphin from Sutro Baths (photo by Beth Pratt)Bottlenose dolphins and calves, (photo by Beth Pratt)

Just another reason I love California: river otters and dolphins within 500 feet of each other!

Don't miss the California Wildlife Festival in Berkeley!

Want to meet Ranger Rick? You can help him celebrate his 50th birthday at the California Wildlife Festival! We're going to have a fun evening at the David Brower Center, so be sure to join us. I'll be giving a talk on climate change and California wildlife, we'll be launching the Return of the Porpoise to San Francisco Bay campaign, and naturalist John Muir Laws will be doing onsite drawing demonstrations. Come learn about the great work of organizations like Save the Frogs, California Wolf Center, WildCare, Aquarium of the Bay, Felidae Conservation Fund and more! For more information visit our event page.

Yosemite Falls is flowing again!

The latest series of storms ended a long, hot summer (and fall) in the Sierra, and also restored the flow to Yosemite Falls. Check out the Yosemite Conservancy's live webcam of the falls for a virtual view.

According to our friends at NOAA, Tenaya Lake received 9 inches of snow as of Sunday. The last two years we experienced one of the wettest and one of the driest winters on record in the Sierra. Perhaps this year wil be average?

An evening of poetry not to be missed: Dan Gerber in Santa Barbara

Last year I simultaneously met a new friend and discovered the amazing body of work of a celebrated poet, Dan Gerber. We bonded over our ability to recite Eliot’s “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock,” (not your typical dinner party conversation) and our love for nature and wildness. I literally devoured his volumes of poetry, and his musical writing reverberated with me like the wind echoing amidst canyon walls—his poems have a mighty force, yet invite contemplation with their delicate grace.

If it’s any indication of his style, or my reverence for his talent, his books occupy a coveted place in my poetry bookshelf, right next to Jim Harrison, Robinson Jeffers and not far from Gary Snyder. A small sampling of a couple of my favorite lines:  “Tonight the sky is holding its breath,” or “…that what we still long for/longs to be let go,/like that fleeting but unmistakable flavor in the air/just before it starts to rain.”

Dan is a prolific and diverse writer. He has authored eight books of poetry, and his poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and Best American Poetry. He has also written a nonfiction account of the Indianapolis 500 automobile race, in Indy: The World’s Fastest Carnival Ride (1977), several novels, including Out of Control (1974) and A Voice from the River (1990), and a short story collection, Grass Fires (1987). Of his work across genres, Gerber told Contemporary Authors, “In poetry as well as prose, I feel less a creator than an instrument of experience. I write what presents itself to me as necessary.”

On November 10 at 2:00 pm at The Karpeles Manuscript Library in Santa Barbara, Dan will give a reading of his poetry and sign copies of his new book, Sailing Through Cassiopeia. He’ll also be signing books in Solvang at The Book Loft on November 28.