Seals and Sea Otters in Monterey Bay

Right after my family and I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, we went out to eat at a Bubba Gump on the dock.  As we looked out at the bay, we saw a seal pop its head up out of the water!  We took a bunch of pictures, but it wasn't long before it disappeared beneath the waves again.  After looking at the pictures, I came to the conclusion that it was not, in fact, a seal, but actually a sea otter!  My bad.

The seal that's not really a seal but actually a sea otter

After a few more minutes, one of us suddenly realized that not all of the lumps of floating kelp out there were actually kelp: some of them were actually wild sea otters!  It was really, really cool!  Being a native Coloradoan, a sea otter is pretty exotic, especially a wild one!  Here are a bunch of pictures that my mother and I took!

A wild sea otter!

The sea otters are off to the right, not the thing right in the center of the photo, that is a kelp thing

The sea otter is a little below and to the left of center

The group of three little dots in the middle-ish of the photo, as well as the little dot thing off to the right of the picture (almost out of the shot) are all sea otters.  The other random dot, to the left of the three other dots, is the same lump of kelp that is in the photo two above this one.

The sea otter-looking dot in the a bit above the center of the photo is the sea otter

Carmel on Dwellable