sunrise ~ 09/24/10 ~ at home

cruise ship coming into the bay

September 24, 2010

This is probably the quickest I've ever loaded a pic from the camera to Nature ID. It looks like it's going to be a gorgeous day here on the coast. We haven't seen cruise ships for a while, but when they do come into the bay, they always seem to arrive right at sunrise. We chuckle that most people on the ships are probably still sleeping off the previous night's heavy buffet and miss the spectacular sunrises. For whatever reason, I have rarely had a desire to do a cruise; once I was tempted to do a river cruise in Europe. Mainly, we've been seeing military ships and squid boats out on the bay this year.

The vertical line of red dots on the mountain in the background is a tower located on Mt. Madonna. For the longest time I couldn't figure out the location of the mystery dots as I still get disoriented where things are across the Monterey Bay. A couple friends moved to the mountain right below the tower last year, so we finally figured it out.

Oh, here's a shout out to my uncle, aunt, and cousins who are heading to San Pedro, CA this morning for a 14-day cruise through the Panama Canal to Miami, FL. I can't wait to see their pictures!

ps 09/20/12 - There's another cruise ship coming through this morning.  I thought it'd be interesting to log when I see them, and sure enough as I looked up this post it's almost at the same time of year!

pss 10/02/12 - Today there was another cruise ship.  When it first came in this morning like shown above, it made an unusual turn towards Moss Landing.  Later in the day it was anchored in the usual spot just outside of the Monterey Harbor.  I'm starting to wonder if the only reason I see these hard to miss massive cruise ships this time of year is because the summer fog has cleared away.  As a side note that I'd like to remember, cruise ship season = local termite swarms.  This evening I ran into a friend, almost quite literally as he was running across the street from his tri-pod camera to his car.  I turned around and jumped out to chat with him for a bit.  As the cruise ship was leaving the bay at sunset, large numbers of termites were flying around us.  With the low lighting, he thought they might be oak moths, but I caught one and confirmed they were indeed winged termites.

things I don't see everyday

unidentified massive ship
Monterey Bay
June 26, 2010

I've been seeing some unusual things lately and figured I'd make a post of links for my records:

1) The reason why I remembered I had the photo above from last month is there's ANOTHER massive ship in Monterey Bay this weekend called the USS Mobile Bay. Funny thing is, I can't find any online information on the ship I saw above, which was definitely bigger than the comparatively small USS Mobile Bay.

2) In our Monterey Boatyard there's a cute, 2-person submarine sitting in the parking lot (if you saw it, you'd say it was "cute" too). Yeah, I know, who knew such things existed? I believe it's a yacht-class DeepFlight Super Falcon. I remember seeing a similar one here last year.

3) We drove out to Cachagua at the end of Carmel Valley yesterday and passed an unusual sign and very high fencing. I googled AT&T Jamesburg Earth Station and discovered its for sale or lease. Seriously, who knew you could buy such things? I didn't even know what an earth station was until I looked it up (it's a massive dish antenna with stuff to make it useful). Jamesburg's claim to fame is broadcasting man's first walk on the moon. Interestingly enough, it's only a couple million dollars... very cheap compared to some of our $16,000,000 local homes along the ocean... and look at what you get!?! Of course, it's out in the middle of nowhere in the hot, hot summer heat. As a coinkydink, we've been subjected to several days of jack hammering as AT&T installs new fiber optic cables along our street, which made the impressive dish less useful years ago.

Lastly, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention some recent awesome nature blog posts:
Jessica's Nature Blog - neonatal Risso's dolphin
Walk the Wilderness - Indian wild dogs
Tree in the Door's Fauna and Flora - backyard bobcat

grunion greeting, 2009 #7

graceful rock crab
Metacarcinus gracilis (aka Cancer gracilis)

full moon cycle (11:05pm - 12:35am), partly cloudy skies

We arrived at Del Monte Beach at 10:35pm. The private cruise ship The World was there again to light up the waters. There were 4 adults and 1 boy out in the water catching grunion. Another group of young people and their dog, which happily ate a grunion, stopped by to check out what was going on. Diane and her coworker Steve also arrived ~11:30pm and walked down the beach together. I felt badly Steve didn't get to see a live grunion except for in a bucket. Before we left at 12:15am, our friend Charlie the night heron came to visit, but there was still too much going on for him to hang around much.

We saw 15 grunion total, with 11 of those showing up before the 11:05 high tide mark. Most were within 25 yards of the pier and at about the 7th parking meter from the bathroom (it didn't seem as high of a tide as during the new moon). We also counted 6 small crabs ~2" wide. This was the first time we've noticed crabs. They floated in on a wave and then quickly buried themselves in the sand. I tried to pick one up, but its pinch was pretty strong for such a little crab.

I talked with one fellow who was collecting and he seemed to know quite a bit about the grunion, including the behavior of scouts. He witnessed a huge grunion run with silvery flashes as far as the eye could see down the beach in June or July of 2007 on a full moon. His girlfriend confirmed the year. There was a beach party at the Adventures by the Sea rental and birds were lined up all along the shore. He said the air smelled like cucumber and noted that happens whenever there's a big run (I found this observation particularly interesting). He said as more people came out to check the run, it seemed to him that there were fewer grunion. He walked down the beach to the cement structure where it was darker and quieter and found even more grunion than by the pier. My husband was excited to hear this part of the story, because he suspected the cement structure would be a prime grunion "hot spot."

The 4 adults arrived a little after 10:00pm and collected 22 grunion. I know they saw quite a few more, because they were having a hard time holding onto the wiggly grunion. They planned to fry the fish whole. The boy managed to catch 3 grunion until his family came to drag him home.

I can't help but wonder if all the grunion collecting and activities stalled a big run from occurring these 2 nights.

ps 10/07/10 - I originally posted the above as an unknown crab. Thanks to a better picture from another grunion greeting night, I was able to ID this crab.