Black Cormorant

Sands Beach

Sands Beach, off Isla Vista, is known mostly for its surfing and for the snowy plovers that nest there.

Jumping Waves

Can driving a personal watercraft be fun?  I don't know, I've never tried one.  They make plenty of noise, heard from the surface or underwater, so divers can hear them coming and quickly submerge deeply enough to get out of the way.

Box Jelly

This is a close view of the "head" of a box jelly.  They seem surprisingly agile and purposeful as they trail their tentacles through twisty passages.  Their insides look like wrinkled sheets of wax paper or plastic.  Quite a few of them have been showing up at Refugion Beach lately, in the shallows when the surf is low.

Jelly Detail

Some tentacles of the floating medusa -- a hydrozoan.

Blue Whale Deaths

A third blue whale has died in the Channel, in the past couple of weeks. All 3 were hit by ships; the third was alive when hit, and died instantly.  They may have been injured, or incapacitated, before being struck; healthy whales can hear ships in time to move out of the way.

The Navy began testing new medium-frequency sonar at San Clemente, far to the south, just before the first whale was discovered. The second whale, showed no signs of physical damage to its ears.  Of course, sound travels far under the ocean, and blue whales are profoundly sensitive to it.

A couple dozen blue whales have been feeding in the Channel lately, attracted by abundant krill. The Channel is part of the shortest route between Long Beach and Asia, and has a great deal of shipping traffic.

Juvenile Piddocks

Piddocks are common, but tend to be solitary. However, these appear en masse in an earlier stage of life.  Which of these piddocks will survive to adulthood?

Jellyfish

Tiny Hydroids

A field of tiny hydroids, each about the size of a pin, but with tentacles, at Refugio Beach. 

Jellyfish

This looks like a bell medusa (Polyorchis penicillatus) in Daniel Gotshall's "Guide to Marine Invertebrates: Aaska to Baja". It's thus a Hydrozoan, and so more related to hydroids and similar creatures, than to other things that look like jellyfish, which are Scyphozoans.

Jellyfish in a Sandstorm

This jelly was drifting through the kelp at Refugio.  The bell is about the size of a dollar coin.  I like the way it looks like a Mars lander about to touch down.