There's a high concentration of humanity on the shore here, but the ocean still offers up some natural things, as it always does. We visited from July 15 -17.
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| Willets. We also saw dowitchers, Marbled Godwits, Whimbrels, Sanderlings in breeding plumage, and the expected gulls (Western and Heermann's). |
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| Dolphins (these were actually off the Manhattan Beach Pier a few miles to the south). Look like Pacific Bottlenose. |
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| Pyrosomes (Pyrosoma sp.), which are colonial tunicates embedded in a gelatinous tunic. These can also be bioluminescent, and are normally pelagic (found in the open ocean). They were washed up dead along the beach. Thanks to my colleague Paul Detwiler for identifying these creatures. |
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| Each "spine" contains a single filter-feeding tunicate. |
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| A MINUTE crab, spotted by the kids on the blacktop adjacent to the beach, of all places. It was about 6-7 mm long. |
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| An impressive red alga. Need to find an algae field guide to ID this one! It was about 8 inches long. |
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| Unfortunately this is not an organism. A huge oil tanker arrived, pumped oil, then departed while we were there. Afterwards, there were many blobs of petroleum on the beach... |
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