Chiidax the Northern Fur Seal and the Evolution of the Otariids

Late last year, the New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts received Chiidax, an orphaned northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus).  However, it was last July that Alaska SeaLife Center first took in Chiidax, after he was left outside the Alaska Department of Fish and Game offices.  A note which was included on the outside of the box that the pup came in said that the pup's mother had died while she was giving birth.  Notice how in the first two pictures of Chiidax below, the pup is covered in an all black coat, a mark of his young age.

After the pups are weaned at around four months old, they molt into their next coat, the cream and brown color of the young juvenile northern fur seal.  Look for those in these next four pictures, taken sometime last fall.  The post on ZooBorns (read that HERE) doesn't say exactly when the pictures were taken, but given that the post was published late last November, these last photos were presumably taken around then.  

When the first post on Chiidax was written on November 23rd of 2013, he weighed 18 pounds, but when he's full grown, he will definitely be a bit bigger: the males, or bulls, of the species can weigh nearly 600 pounds, which is several times more than the females weigh!  The males have to be so large because they create harems of thirty to forty females, and defend them from other males.  The seals are native to the Pacific Coast of the United States, as well as the coast of the Bering Sea in Canada, Alaska, and Russia.  

The last report on Chiidax was in late December, on the 29th.  Below are several pictures that were shared then.  You can see how smooth he looks, and how perfectly adapted for a life beneath the waves this creature is!  

The northern fur seal is the sole extant member of the genus Callorhinus, but there is also a fossil species of Callorhinus.  C. gilmorei is known from the Pliocene Epoch of southern California and Mexico, as you can see in this paper HERE.  Other sources cite another paper, linked HERE, as stating that this genus is also known from Japan, but I was unwilling to pay the fee to read the paper, so that fact remains unconfirmed.  If you have a subscription to this online journal, let me know what you find!

According to the first paper, the eared seals, or the members of the family Otariidae, can be traced back at least to the Mid to Late Miocene Epoch, approximately 11-12 MYA in California, in the form of Pithanotaria starri.  Another taxon, Thalassoleon mexicanus, is known from Mexico during the Late Miocene, approximately 5-8 MYA.  The authors of the paper suggest that between 5 MYA and today, between our time and the time of Thalassoleon, was when fur seal diversification took off, resulting in the eight extant species of Arctocephalus and the extant Callorhinus ursinus, which includes little Chiidax!  The genus Arctocephalus, along with the genus Callorhinus, comprise the extant members of the eared fur seals.  The writers of the paper also suspect that it is during this 5 million year period that the sea lions developed as well.

Things have probably changed a lot in this area of paleontology since this paper was published in 1986, but unfortunately I can't seem to access most of these papers.  Callorhinus gilmorei still seems to be a valid taxon, however, as do Thalassoleon and Pithanotaria.  Hopefully, new fossils will yield more interesting results regarding these creatures very soon!  

Unless otherwise noted, the photo credit for all of these pictures in the post go to ZooBorns, either this post HERE or HERE.  

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Works Cited:

Migrating Fish: Anadromous or Catadromous?

According to Merriam-Webster's online edition, the word "anadromous" means "ascending rivers from the sea for breeding."  This word is almost always used in conjunction with fish, as they are the main type of animal that do this.  There are a number of fish that are defined as anadromous, but of particular import for us are several types of salmon, including the Coho, steelhead, Chinook, and sockeye salmons.

You don't have to be in a school (of fish) to hypothesize that there might be a group of fish that behave in an opposite manner from the anadromous fish.  "I'll take the bait," you're saying.  "What's the opposite of an anadromous fish?"  Let's break the word apart.  First, we can break off the root "ana," a Greek root which means "up."  For you chemistry buffs out there, you might have felt an electric current running up your spine, as you've probably thought of the word "anion," a term used to describe an ion that contains more electrons than it does protons, giving the atom an overall negative charge.  If you follow the flow of my logic*, you might be thinking of the opposite of an anion: a "cation," or an ion that contains fewer electrons than it does protons, giving the atom an overall positive charge.  So judging from this chemistry example, you can either conclude that, A) The opposite of anadromous is likely something along the lines of "catadromous," or, B) I give really long and tangential comparisons that are neither helpful or correct.  Fortunately for you guys, option A is the correct one.  The opposite of an anadromous fish is, indeed, a catadromous fish.  To learn more about the life cycle of a catadromous fish, let's travel to the eastern coast of North America, and meet Anguilla rostrata, the North American eel.  (And yes, eels are a type of fish.)

To learn more about the life cycle of the North American eel, I consulted the website of the Penobscot River Restoration Trust.  According to the Trust, mature Anguilla rostrata leave their brackish or freshwater homes and migrate to the Sargasso Sea in the fall.  The Sargasso Sea is not actually a distinct sea, but instead a large region of the Atlantic Ocean where a holopelagic species of seaweed called Sargassum reproduces.  The term "holopelagic" simply refers to the fact that, unlike other seaweeds, Sargassum does not require the presence of the ocean floor to reproduce, and can instead reproduce while just floating around in the ocean, or in the pelagic zone.  In turn, the pelagic zone is simply defined as an area of a body of water that is neither close to shore nor close to the bottom.  I remember when my family and I went on the Tybee Island Ecology Tour with Dr. Joe Richardson several years ago in Georgia, Dr. Joe commented on the large amount of Sargassum that was on the beach that day.  I've recently talked with Dr. Joe about the Sargassum, as well as the North American eel, and this interview will be the subject of our next post.

As winter rolls around, the adult eel spawns....then dies.  Sad day for the grown up eels.  Their eggs, however, hatch after a few days, and the young develop into a larval stage (which are then called leptocephali) that simply drift around for a few months.  Their days of floating casually around the ocean end as they enter the Gulf Stream, and are carried north towards North America.  Once the larvae find themselves near the continental shelf, they transform into what are called "glass eels," miniature little eels that, as you could probably guess from the name, are transparent!

It's not over for these eels yet, though!  Next, the young reach the estuaries, transitional areas along the coast where the rivers meet the sea.  Once the summer rolls around, it is in the estuaries that the eels enter the next stage of their life.  In this phase, the young eels are called "elvers," a name for a juvenile fish that is specific to eels.  After making their way into their adult habitat, they finally develop into their adult morph, where some eels stay for 8-25 years before migrating back to spawn in the sea!  

So there's a perfect example of a fish with a catadromous lifestyle.  Or, rather, nearly perfect.  In more recent years, scientists have begun to discover that while some adult North American eels fit well under the catadromy heading, other members of the exact same species simply stay in the estuaries to mature, while still more travel back and forth between the estuaries and the fresh water habitats further upstream!  This has caused many scientists to reconsider the stance of a purely catadromous lifestyle for these eels, and revise their description to "facultative catadromy," which essentially means that these eels seem to be able to choose whether or not they want to commit to a fully catadromous lifestyle.  But what about an anadromous fish, like the Chinook and Coho salmon that we mentioned earlier?  Don't worry, I'm not going to flounder: I know that if you're still reading this, then you're probably hooked, and want to hear more.

Speaking of hooked: my fishing contact Larry Quilling with a spring Chinook salmon in the Trask River in Oregon.  Check back soon to see an interview with Larry about his experiences fishing salmon!  Photo Credit: Larry Quilling

When it comes to the lives of several of the species of Pacific salmon, the saying "When the going gets tough, the tough get going" really applies quite nicely.  One of the keystone species in the American northwest, the annual "salmon run" is incredibly important to the functioning of the ecosystem.  During the salmon run, millions upon millions of these fish travel upstream to their breeding grounds.  Some travel up to 900 miles, as is the case for many Chinook and steelhead salmon who make their home in Idaho, as seen below.  The Chinook females also build an enormous nest, called a redd, that can be one to four feet deep and around six feet in diameter!  

Here we have another one of my fishing contacts, Wallace Westfeldt, with a steelhead in Idaho.  Wallace was also kind enough to help me out a lot, and we will also be seeing an interview post with him soon!  Photo Credit: Wallace Westfeldt

Another fascinating thing to note is the incredible transformation of these salmon, especially the males, as they travel upstream.  My personal favorite is the transformation of the sockeye salmon, whose changes can be seen in the picture below.  

With their fisshin accomplished, most salmon species die once they reach their spawning areas, just like the North American eel.  However, unlike the Pacific salmon, some individual Salmo salar, or Atlantic salmon, live to tell their gilling tale to future generations of salmon.  Not all Atlantic salmon die from their ordeal, as the bodies of these fish don't deteriorate post-spawning.  For the Pacific salmon, their method of reproduction is sometimes referred to as "semelparity," a situation in which the organism is physiologically incapable of spawning more than once prior to kicking the chum bucket.  The opposite of semelparity is iteroparity, where the animal can reproduce multiple times prior to death.  Almost all extant vertebrates (and, indeed, a large portion of extant organisms) are iteroparous, including us humans.  Notable examples of this semelparous lifestyle include some types of spiders, the genus of marsupial mice Antechinus, some types of bamboo, the aptly named century plant (or agave), and of course, several types of salmon.  

So in the course of this blog post, I've thrown a whole lot of new words at you.  Let's stop to reconsider them real fast, in the order that they were introduced in the post.

• Anadromous: Refers to a type of animal that goes from the sea into rivers to breed.  Many types of salmon fit this ticket.
• Catadromous: This term refers to a type of animal (typically fish) that goes from rivers into the sea to breed.  An example would be the North American eel (Anguilla rostrata).
• Holopelagic: An organism that remains in a pelagic area for its entire life.  An example would be the Sargassum seaweed.
• Pelagic: An area of a body of water that is neither close to shore nor close to the bottom.
• Leptocephali: A name given to the larval stage of eels.
• Glass Eel: The next stage in the life cycle of an eel, following leptocephali, but preceding the elver stage.  
• Estuary: The transition zone between the ocean and a river.  The portion of a river that is saltier than the rest of the river, but not quite salty enough to be the ocean, and is influenced by the tides.  Essentially, the last portion of a river prior to its arrival in the ocean.  
• Elver: A name referring to an eel in its postlarval stage following the leptocephali and glass eel stages.  
• Facultative Catadromy: A term used to refer to an animal that can choose (facultative) whether or not they want to commit to a fully catadromous lifestyle.  A good example is the North American eel (Anguilla rostrata).  
• Keystone Species: A species of animal that is integral for the functioning of a healthy ecosystem. 
• Redd: A nest made by a fish, such as that of the female Chinook salmon pictured above.
• Semelparity: A term which refers to organisms that can only reproduce a single time prior to their death.  Examples include some spiders, several types of Australian marsupials and salmon.
• Iteroparity: A term which refers to organisms that can reproduce many times prior to their death.  Examples include humans, pigs, and the Atlantic salmon.

That's a lot of new vocab for just one post!  While I'm not sure if we will be returning to the life cycles of eels again in the future, make sure you hold on to the terms "anadromous" and "catadromous" (as that was the whole meaning of this post), as well as "keystone species."  We will hopefully be taking a broad look at several keystone species sometime in the near future!  And make sure to check back in during the next several days so you can hear from Larry Quilling, Wallace Westfeldt, and Dr. Joe Richardson!

*I'm sorry, I am really proud of that pun.  Not ONLY does it work in the context of fish in streams, but it also works in the context of electric current and chemistry.  Dang I'm good.

References:

The Salton Sea

The Salton Sea in southern California has a very interesting history.  Today, it is California's largest lake, is 200 feet below sea level, and is more than 25% saltier than the Pacific Ocean.  But it wasn't always like this: it used to be as dry as the surrounding desert!

Around 2,000 year ago, the Salton Sink and the Imperial Valley (the vast basing that today holds the Salton Sea) was home to Lake Cahuilla, a much larger body of water than the present Salton Sea.  Over time, it was naturally drained, and the area then turned into a hot, dry desert.  This process has happened numerous times over the years, as the Salton Sea is, according to a brochure that I got from there, a "landlocked extension" of the Gulf of California to the south.  The last time the Salton Sink was dry was around the early 1900s.  But it wouldn't stay that way for long.

The year was 1901.  In order for water to reach the Salton Sink and Mexico, the Colorado River was diverted from Yuma, Arizona, through Mexico, and into the sink for agriculture.  Four years later, in 1905, a diversion structure failed, and caused the entire might of the Colorado River to flood into the Imperial Valley.  For two years, from 1905 to 1907, the massive outflow of the Colorado River slowly built up in that natural basin, resulting in what we today call the Salton Sea!  (It would suck to be the dudes who made THAT boo-boo).  Since the basin (and thus the sea) are both landlocked, as well as below sealevel, that means that the sole means of exit for the water in the basin is through evaporation.  And since minerals and salts don't evaporate....you can probably see where this is going.

The Salton Sea, as I have mentioned before, is 25% saltier than the Pacific Ocean with the level of salinity in excess of 40,000 parts per million.  Many of the native fish that were washed or swam into the newly created body of water were unable to cope with the continued increase of salinity, and have died out.  Some marine fish, such as Gulf croaker, orange-mouth corvina, and sargo have been introduced and established, as well as tilapia.  However, they too will most likely end up going extinct in the basin, unable to cope with the ever-increasing levels of salinity.

When we visited there, not only did it stink, but there were dead fish skeletons everywhere.  And when I say everywhere, I really mean everywhere.  Interspersed amongst the rotting fish carcasses were the remains of an enormous number of gulls and other sea birds that will visit the Salton Sea.

Now the picture I am painting you is a grim one: "Why would I ever want to visit this place?" you're probably wondering.  Well, according to the brochures, the Salton Sea is one of the world's "most important winter stops for birds traveling the Pacific flyway."  Some of the many birds that can be found on the shores of the Salton Sea include a personal favorite of mine, the black skimmer, white pelicans, yellow-footed gulls, Caspian terns, Canada geese, pintail ducks, marbled godwits, snow geese, osprey, American avocets, Yuma clapper rail, black-bellied plover, black-bellied, whistling duck, wood storks, roadrunners, great blue heron, and brown pelicans, along with many, many other birds!  We of course didn't see all of these birds when we were there, but we certainly saw a large number of birds!  I would definitely recommend checking this place out if ever you are in the area, the natural history of the place, combined with the bird watching, makes it well worth the trip!

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Whales In Music: An Interview With Alex Shapiro, Composer

So a month or two ago, I went down to Greeley, Colorado to see my good friend Masaki Kleinkopf perfom in the All State Concert Band.  One of the songs that they played there was a piece by composer Alex Shapiro entitled "Immersion."  One of the movements in the piece was entitled "Beneath," and it was particularly interesting!  In it, the band played with one of the most musical animals in the world: the whale!  I was very interested in this piece and the work that went into it, so I contacted the composer and asked her a few questions, and she was kind enough to oblige!  I found her answers very, very interesting, and I hope you guys find them as interesting too!

Alex Shapiro!  Photo Credit: Paul Chepikian

The Natural World:  What made you decide on including whale song in the piece?

Alex Shapiro:  Interestingly, the choice wasn't pre-meditated; the song found me, and I welcomed it in unexpectedly. To back-track for a moment, BENEATH-- for symphonic wind band and prerecorded electronics-- was originally a far more intimate piece for contrabass flute and that very same prerecorded electronic track, titled BELOW. Anyone curious can hear excerpts from both versions of the music: the original solo piece for contrabass flute and prerecorded electronics, BELOW:

http://www.alexshapiro.org/Belowpg1.html

And the version I later created, using the exact same track, for symphonic wind band, titled BENEATH:

http://www.alexshapiro.org/Immersionpg1.html

Around the same time that I was beginning to think about a commission from the wonderful flutist Peter Sheridan for what ended up becoming BELOW, I happened to be poking around on the NOAA Vents Program website (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/index.html), fascinated by the sounds from our oceans. If I weren't a musician, I might have become a marine biologist, and I also have a fascination with the geology of the ocean floor. I found-- and ended up using to open and close the piece-- a recording of a volcanic eruption from the floor of the Pacific. Perusing the NOAA website, I clicked through to the area with whale songs (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/sounds_whales.html) and from there, I found my way to many other websites with marine mammal audio files. And that's how I discovered the whale who I realized would be a perfect duet partner with Peter. The song was so haunting, I just had to use it as the centerpiece of the music.

TNW:  What specific whale did you choose?

AS:  The recording I use is that of a male Pacific Humpback whale; I'm told that they're the ones who do the best singing. I actually listened to a couple of hundred whale songs from seven or eight different kinds of whales before I came across this heart-wrenchingly beautiful song. I became adept at hearing the differences in the vocalizations of each species, and could identify a Minke from a Blue from a Sperm just from the audio. Orcas-- the most familiar whales where I live on San Juan Island, Washington, are easy to discern because, as members of the dolphin family, they make high-pitched chirps. Like the Orcas, many whales don't have a song that lends itself as well to human composition needs when it comes to melody (I place the blame for this on the limitation of our musical language, not theirs!). Too many short blasts, pulses, and other non-linear sounds (all of which are great for rhythm, though!). But the Humpback really does sound much more like a human voice, and when I found this particular song, I was mesmerized. I went over to my piano and began improvising with it. Amazingly, the whale was perfectly pitched with my well-tempered instrument, and I immediately found harmonies that worked beautifully (thus making it a whale-tempered piece!). The only audio editing I needed to do was to use filters and equalization to "clean up" the sound of the audio file, so that the blanket of low-humming water noises picked up by the hydrophones that recorded the animal, didn't overpower the higher pitch of the song itself.

TNW:  Are you planning on incorporating nature motifs into any later pieces?

AS:  Absolutely! I'm often recording the sounds around me-- from nature, and even from my travels through and across nature, such as last week when I was on the ferry from Friday Harbor to Anacortes, on Fidalgo Island, and used my iPhone to capture a hypnotic rhythmic passage created by the boat engine that I'll use in an upcoming work. And one of my upcoming 2014 symphonic wind band commissions will be centered around recording the sounds of the state of Wyoming, and using them in the digital audio track I create to accompany the band. The possibilities are endless, and inspiring.

TNW: Where did you get the idea to do a piece about Wyoming? Have you already come up with the ideas for the sounds you are going to use?

AS: The piece is an upcoming commission for wind band and prerecorded electronics, commissioned in part by a grant from The Biodiversity Institute, a division of the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming, to be premiered by conductor Bob Belser and the University of Wyoming Symphonic Band, that will entail me returning to Wyoming to capture the sonic essence of the environment. U of Wyoming gave a beautiful performance of IMMERSION last year (the piece that includes BENEATH, with the whale), and and you can imagine, this new piece is a perfect fit for me!

And again, anyone curious can hear excerpts from both versions of the music: the original solo piece for contrabass flute and prerecorded electronics, BELOW:

http://www.alexshapiro.org/Belowpg1.html

And the version I later created, using the exact same track, for symphonic wind band, titled BENEATH:

http://www.alexshapiro.org/Immersionpg1.html

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ms. Shapiro for taking the time out of her busy schedule to chat with me!  Hopefully we can ask a few more questions for her once her Wyoming piece is released!  I feel as if I speak for all of us when I say we look forward to hearing more from her in the future, both blog-wise and music-wise!

23-Fact Tuesday: Strange Evolution of the Wild Pacific

So the other day, I enjoyed a Discovery/BBC program entitled "Wild Pacific," all about animals and humans in the Pacific.  This episode was entitled "Strange Evolution," and boy, were some of these guys strange!  Let's take a 23-Fact Tuesday look at some of these bizarre creatures!  Allons-y!

1.  The dingiso, a bear-faced, dog-sized tree kangaroo native to the rainforests of New Guinea, only became known to science in 1994, showing that there are still many, many fascinating natural phenomenon that have yet to be discovered by humans!

2.  Prior to the arrival of humans on Hawaii, it has been estimated that only one new species of animal or plant washed up on the shores every 35,000 years!

3.  With few terrestrial predators on the islands of New Zealand, the Fiordland crested penguin has moved from nesting along the shore to nesting within forests, moving along freshwater streams to reach their nests!

4.   The young of the Fiordland crested penguin are, of course, born in the forests.  They don't actually see the ocean (although the nests are usually close enough to hear and smell it) until they are about three months old, at which time they embark on their very first fishing trip: alone!

5.  On the island of Santa Catalina in the South Pacific, local fisherman fish in a simply fascinating fashion: they actually use spider webs from the golden orb spider that are reportedly as strong as kevlar to capture fish whose mouths are too narrow for conventional fishhooks!  Click on the link HERE to watch a short and fascinating video about this!

6.  Prior to human colonization of New Zealand, the only mammals that made it to its shores were bats and marine mammals.

7.  With so few terrestrial predators, one bat, the short-tailed bat, actually spends much of its time on the ground, foraging through the leaf litter, searching for the flightless weta, a relative of the locust.  In order to prevent damage to their delicate wing membranes, the short-tailed bat has developed special sheaths on its wings.  Interestingly, this terrestrial foraging behavior is probably very similar to how the bat's mouse-like ancestors behaved.

8.  The flightless kakapo is the world's largest parrot, and has developed sensitive whiskers on its face in order to help it navigate its way through the dark.  It's nocturnal behavior, as well as its size I would assume, has earned it the nickname "the owl parrot."

9.  The favorite food of the kakapo are the tiny seeds of the rimu tree and, since the bird is flightless, it has developed strong claws to help it climb up into the trees to reach the seeds.  Interestingly, the kakapo only breeds when the trees produce a "bumper crop," which is only about once every four years or so.

10.  Due to this odd cycle of breeding of the kakapo, the bird reproduces less often than almost any other bird.  By contrast, however, it lives longer than most others, sometimes up to 60 years!

11.  During breeding season, the male kakapo makes a "booming" sound to attract a female.  The male booms nonstop each night for 8 hours a night for up to three nights, resulting in thousands of booms.  The wind can carry the booms for up to three miles!  The female, of course, only responds to the males booms if the rimu seeds are plentiful.  Click HERE to check out some footage of the kakapo booming.

12.  LAST KAKAPO FACT, I PROMISE!!  The kakapo was almost hunted to extinction by humans for food and feathers, but they are making a human-assisted comeback now, climbing from only 51 individuals in 1995 to 91 individuals today!  (Possibly more, as I believe the television program is a year or two old or so.)

13.  The Australian brushtail possum was imported by colonists for fur to New Zealand over two centuries ago.  With no natural predators, however, it has spread like a plague, stripping trees of their vegetation.  About 70 million of them are estimated to inhabit the forests now.  That's like 350,000 a year, not including the ones that died.  Holy.  Cow.

14.  Introduced species can cause terrible problems to insular (island) ecosystems.  One of the most extreme examples is thought to be Easter Island, where it has been hypothesized that rats were what did in the colony.

15. For nearly 100 million years, the tuatara and its ancestors have remained almost entirely the same.  During the time of the dinosaurs, the tuatara's ancestors were very numerous, but following their extinction 65.5 MYA, they just couldn't compete, and were slowly extirpated across the globe.  Except in New Zealand, where they still reside today!  Incredibly, the tuatara sometimes can go an entire hour with only one breath!

16.  60 MYA, what is now the island of New Caledonia broke off from Australia, and is now 800 miles from the mainland.  This has allowed its native fauna to evolve in new and fantastic ways: such as the flightless, chicken-sized kagu, the only extant member of an ancient lineage.  HERE we have a fantastic video of this ridiculous bird!

17.  The monkey-tailed skink is the largest skink in the world, and is native to the Solomon Islands, an archipelago of nearly 1,000 tropical islands).  The monkey-tailed skink grows to around 3 ft. in length and weighs around 2 lbs., which is about 1,000 times heavier than the world's smallest skink.

18.  The monkey-tailed skink is an oddity amongst skinks.  Not only is it the largest skink in the world (as we mentioned above), it is also the only skink in the world to have a prehensile tail, which it uses to grasp branches while climbing in trees, assisted by its thick, sharp claws.   This is also an oddity, as most skins are terrestrial (meaning they live on the ground), as opposed to arboreal (which means that they live in the trees).  Furthermore, most skinks are insectivores, while the monkey-tailed skink is mostly vegetarian, consuming the leaves in the trees.

19.  The New Zealand kea, named for its call and native to the southern Alps, is considered to be one of the most intelligent and playful birds in the world.  As a matter of fact, some keas will damage cars out of curiosity!

20.  Up to thirty non-native species arrive on Hawaii every year due to humans, such as the Jackson's chameleon, native to east Africa, which was imported in the 1970s to Hawaii as an exotic pet.

21.  Another biological organism introduced by humans to Hawaii was sugarcane.  Like most places that humans visited, however, they also accidentally introduced rats.  And the rats ate the sugarcane.  Well, the humans who were trying to make a profit off of the sugarcane didn't like that, not one bit.  So, in the hopes of extirpating the rat population, the humans introduced the Indian mongoose.  However, what the humans failed to take into account was the fact that the Indian mongoose is diurnal, or lives during the day....while the rats are nocturnal, and move around at night.  So instead of eating the rats, the Indian mongoose eats the native birds.  Hawaii: 0.  Human Stupidity: A whole lot more than it should be.

22.  The ancestors of the I'iwi, a long billed honeycreeper endemic to Hawaii, were blown to Hawaii about 4 MYA, and looked very different from what they looked like today.  It is thought that they looked something like the Palila, a short billed finch that uses its tough beak to tear open tough seed pods.

23.  The last fact isn't from the program.  It's from "The Song of the Dodo" by David Quammen, one of my favorite books of all time.  It's a quote: "Islands are where species go to die."  He means that islands can be very dangerous places for animals to live.  But now with all the messes humans have introduced, that effect has been exasperated.  Just something to think about.

Sanctuary Spotlight: The Marine Mammal Center

While in San Francisco, my family and I decided to check out the nearby Marine Mammal Center, and boy are we glad we did!  It was a really, really cool place, and we got to learn all about the local marine mammals, as well as what is being done to conserve and preserve them!  In the picture below, you can see my sister standing next to a life-size statue of an elephant seal!

We also got to see all of the enclosures where the various seals and sea lions are kept while they are being rehabilitated.

 

 

We also got to watch (and, in the case of my sister, be a part of!) a really cool and interesting demonstration about how the people who work at the Marine Mammal Center are able to capture wounded and injured seals and sea lions, and bring them in to the center for care!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo credit for all of the photos in this post goes to Julie Neher.

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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

Aquarium Spotlight: Monterey Bay Aquarium

When my family and I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, we saw a ton of really cool things!  So let's take a look at some pictures of some of these animals now in our very first....Aquarium Spotlight!  First off, the sea otters!  They were really super cute and were swimming ALL over the enclosure, as it was feeding time, and some of the zookeepers were doing a feeding demonstration with training.

 

 

 

 

 

Sea otters weren't all that they had, though!  Another thing that the Monterey Bay Aquarium had was a pretty good jellyfish exhibit.

 

 

 

They also had one of my most favorite animals, the African penguin!

 

 

They also had a few fairly large tanks too, with large schools of fish that looked super amazing and really pretty.  My mom tried to get some good shots of them, but it was dark and they didn't really come out super well.

 

 

 

 

Finally, the other main thing that I thought was worthy of mention were the sea turtles, they had some pretty cool sea turtles!

 

 

 

 

Photo credit for all of these pictures goes to Julie Neher.

Monterey on Dwellable