Water Life

Imagine a road trip of 5,000 to 7,000 miles.
Now imagine making that trip 11 months pregnant.
Now imagine making the return trip just three months after arriving and giving birth.
Now imagine doing these two major road trips every year of your life until the day you die.
If you are able to come even remotely close to grasping what this would be like, then you are one step closer to understanding the life of the Pacific gray whale.

Tyler at Hammerland – Ouch

Solid and consistent swells and calm weather have combine for the best winter surf in recent memory.

by Kevin Cody
At the end of the summer an evening demonstration was held for the parents.
It was cold, gray, windy and getting dark. Ugly, overhead surf pounded the shore.
We shivered shirtless in our Spartan red trunks with the JG patches sewn on by our moms. If I had been the parent of one of those 10-year-old JGs I’d have yanked him off the beach.
Rudy yelled run. We ran. He yelled buoy swim. We swam through the surf to the orange buoys that bobbed in and out of sight off the end of the pier. He yelled rescue and we dolphined out through the surf dragging our red rescue cans. We strapped the rubber cans around our theatrically flailing partners and towed them back toward shore. When we reached the impact zone we pushed our victims over the falls to mess with them and scare their parents.

Western snowy plovers or Charadrius alexandrines nivosus are cute little birds that inhabit prime waterfront property along California’s coast and inland water bodies. Weighing just one to two ounces and reaching six and a half inches in length, snowy plovers are designed to blend in with their environment. Their back feathers are a sandy brown and the stomach feathers are fluffy white. This color scheme is accentuated by a stout black bill, dark grey legs, black eyes and a white ring around the neck.