Oregon Coast Aquarium Exceeds Expectations

I’ve been a member of the Monterey Bay Aquarium for more than 20 years now, which means that I’m often disappointed when I visit other aquaria. Perhaps they don’t have a very good variety of critters on display; or their tanks may seem too small and barren for their inmates; or their displays may be jazzy but lacking in educational value.

I’d heard good things about the aquarium in Newport, but as I walked through the doors of the Oregon Coast Aquarium and paid my $14.95 admission, I tried to keep my expectations low. They’re a much smaller operation, I kept reminding myself. They haven’t been in business as long. They don’t have the endowments that the Monterey Bay Aquarium has. Don’t expect miracles.

The woman who sold me my ticket said that the sea otter feeding would be in 15 minutes, and the sea lion feeding 30 minutes after that, and pointed me towards their enclosures. I went out into a courtyard and wandered around with my mouth hanging open, delighted by the naturalistic setting the aquarium’s builders had created. 

Beyond Napping: A Visit with the Elephant Seals

After living in Northern California for more than 20 years now, I’ve had the great fortune to explore many miles of its coastline. While all of it is beautiful, some stretches of Pacific oceanfront draw me back again and again. Año Nuevo State Reserve, just 55 miles south of San Francisco and 20 miles north of Santa Cruz, is one of those places.

Nestled between the staircase steps of marine terraces forming the Santa Cruz mountains in the east and surf-kissed sandy dunes and beaches in the west, the landscape on it’s own is spectacular. But it’s the bountiful wildlife that elevates this beautiful spot to an animal lover’s mecca.

Climbing out of the car in the Visitor’s Center (VC) parking lot, you first sense the presence of wild animals in the distant sound of a bull elephant seal’s challenging roar. Meant to put would-be competitors in their place and advertise the beachmaster’s virility to nearby female Northern elephant seals, the sound creaks and ratchets like the putt-putt of a poorly-tuned outboard motor engine echoing through a giant cave.

Inside the VC you check in for your guided tour (the only way to see the seals from December 15th through March 31st) or your visitor’s permit (available for self-guided tours the remainder of the year). Then you can explore the wonderful books and stuffed animals offered in the store, and work your way through the VC exhibits, which explore the fascinating lives and evolutionary adaptations of the Northern elephant seal.

The VC’s well-designed and informative exhibits discuss the lifecycle of the elephant seals, which start out as 70 pound newborns, weigh around 200 pounds by the time they are a month old, and eventually grow into 1800 pound females and 3000 pound males. The exhibits include photos that show beaches packed with massive light-brown bodies that at first glance look like driftwood logs. But it can’t really prepare you for the sight, sounds, and smells you experience out in the field when you crest the dunes overlooking the beaches where hundreds of Northern elephant seals are giving birth, nursing their young, and breeding next year’s crop of pups.

In past years I’ve taken the tour on typical cold-and-damp or downright soggy January and February days. This year I was in short sleeves, slathered with sunblock, and was able to see and photograph more detail than I’ve observed in the past.

Among the volunteers, researchers, rangers, and other habitual seal-watchers who visit the reserve frequently, the elephant seals have a reputation for being more active on cooler, overcast days, so I was concerned that the cloudless skies and warm breeze on February 1, 2009 might actually work against us. 

But as soon as we topped the first ridge in the dunes field, the cacaphony of roaring males, bleating pups, and exasperated females assaulted my ears. In the distance, a pair of subadult males reared up and smashed their chests against each other, fighting for supremacy. A scattering of what looked like driftwood logs closer to me sent up fountains of dry sand to cover their backs, and my eyes finally perceived dozens upon dozens upon dozens of prone elephant seals.

Keeping our voices low in spite of our enthusiasm, we followed our guide through the dunes, checking in all directions for seals -- they move around quite a bit, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act requires that observations be done from a distance which does not disturb the animal or change its natural behavior, quite aside from the fact that they have sharp teeth and short tempers. We stopped at half-a-dozen spots with good views of the rookery, and were able to observe behavior beyond napping, (which was the prevalent activity on most of my previous visits), including:

• Subadult males displaying at each other and “practice-fighting,” smashing chest shields together and swiping at each other with sharp canines. (You can tell subadult males by their noses, which have begun to elongate but haven’t yet grown into the full “elephant trunk” appearance they’ll have if they reach maturity.)
  
• Pups nuzzling moms to request a nipple, and moms either rolling over to grant the request, or barking peevishly and moving away a little. The mother’s milk is about 55% fat, and pups grow from 70 pounds to more than 200 pounds in about 28 days drinking it! We saw some females barking at other adults that were getting alarmingly close to their pups, and others barking gently at their pups to solidify the mother-pup bond.
  
  
• Adult males roaring challenges to each other, and a few times saw them engaged in some chest-bashing, and heard reports that there had been a couple of “good fights” (meaning the males were well-matched, and the bashing and slashing went on for several minutes, resulting in some minor bloodshed) earlier in the day.
  
  
• Bull males accosting females, but the females dodged all of the mating attempts that I saw.
  
  
• Both youngsters and adults scratching themselves with their amazingly dextrous front fins, and throwing up fountains of sand to cover their backs. After decades of observation, researchers still don’t know if covering themselves with sand helps keep the elephant seals cool, or reduces itching caused by insects, or acts as a sunblock, or what.
  
  
• Dozens of gulls and ravens (no vultures, although our guide said they usually could be seen circling overhead) flapping and hopping amidst the huge marine mammals, beady eyes on the lookout for the first signs of a birth in progress. (The birds will swoop in and carry off the very nutritious afterbirth.) We did not, alas, see an actual birth, although some of the pups we observed were obviously just a few hours old.
  

Most surprising of all, we saw a coyote down on one of the beaches, walking nonchalantly amongst all the enormous pinnipeds, many of which could have crushed it in the blink of an eye. Although coyotes are common in the reserve, that was the first time our guide had seen one walking around among the elephant seals, and speculated that it must, like the birds, be scavenging for afterbirths and the remains of dead seals.

Although the elephant seals only breed during the first few months of they year, you’ll see various factions of the population on the beach during other seasons, resting and molting in between months-long feeding forays out to sea. For more information, visit http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=523.

The First Singer

(In February 2008 I spent four wonderful mornings diving with the Mike Severns Diving outfit in Kihei, Maui. Here's a writeup of another of our memorable wildlife encounters.)

We were motoring in towards the southwest shore of Maui, having completed our first dive in Molokini crater, when Andy slowed the boat and craned his neck, peering out over the bow at the water ahead.

Divers, divemaster, and deckhand all lunged to our feet and peered in that direction; this was my second day with the crew, and I knew by now that slowing down probably meant he had spotted whale activity of some sort.

“I think it’s a singer,” he said, pointing ahead of us as he slowed the boat to a dead stop and cut the engine. “I just saw it dive, and I’m pretty sure it’s alone. If I’m right, he’s hanging motionless underwater, with his head lower than his tail, and he’s signing. If we’re quiet, we may be able to hear him.”

We all stood silent as the boat drifted in the direction Andy had seen the whale submerge. At first the predominant noise was the slap of waves on the metal hull, but after a couple of minutes the boat found her groove and the slapping vanished. I heard a phrase of faint, deep moaning that lasted just a few seconds. When I looked around, wondering if my imagination was running away with me – I’d heard recorded whale songs dozens of times in my life – I was pleased to see that others heard it, too.

Andy was nodding excitedly. “Everybody put an ear on the railing,” he said, demonstrating the pose himself.

Somewhat skeptical, I set my ear against one of the round metal pipes that formed a cage-like railing system all around the boat – and heard more moaning, higher-pitched and very distinct. The metal hull of the boat amplified the sound like the body of an acoustic guitar and transmitted it through the railing to our ears. “Hey, Andy, pull the string tighter, I can’t hear so well,” deckhand Jeff joked, referring to the tin-can-and-string “phones” we had all played with as kids.

The sounds were fascinating:

• Long, drawn-out moans at high, medium, and low pitches. The low-pitched ones really reverberated through the boat and into your flesh and bones.
• Short, deep “huh” sounds that made me thing of punctuation marks.
• Short and long squeals that reminded me a bit of recordings of dolphins, but seemed a bit lower-pitched and more drawn out to my untrained ear.
• Noises I can only describe as “bubbly” – the sort of “glub glub” effect you get if you try to speak with your mouth underwater in a swimming pool.

The sounds got louder as we drifted over the singer, then started to fade as we drifted past him and away. When Andy was sure we were a safe distance past the singer, he started the boat and motored slowly away. We had listened for about fifteen minutes, and the song would go on for another five to ten minutes.

Although female humpbacks issue short vocalizations, only the males of the species sing, and they only do it when they are here in their Hawaiian islands breeding waters. Researchers don’t know if every male of breeding age does it, but many do. They also don’t know what prompts them to start, or why they sometimes sing over and over again and other times take breaks in between.

Remember singing “Row Row Row Your Boat” in school when you were a kid? The teacher would divide up the class into three groups, and group one would start whie group two would wait and start with “Row, row, row” as the first group began “Merrily, merrily…”, and then group three would join in later stil? The whale singing is like that, but far less organized!

Being underwater or listening through a hydrophone, you often hear several males singing simultaneously. They are all singing the same song, but in a “round,” so that the first phrases of one singer overlay the second chorus of another and the fifth of yet another.

There is one song for the season, and all males sing that song, with one of them occasionally making a change that all the other singers then immediately pick up on and incorporate into their songs. Nobody knows why they introduce these changes. The changes accumulate over the season, which runs from January through May, and by the time the whales leave the Hawaiian islands to go feed in the waters off Alaska, the song has changed considerably. When the first hydrophone picks up the first singer next year, he’ll be singing exactly the song that they left off with at the end of the 2008 season, and over the course of the season, other males will introduce changes so that it’s a different song by the end of the 2009 season.

The noise carries for miles; other whales, with their highly attuned hearing, can hear it for at least 25 miles around, while we mere humans, when submerged, can pick up the tune broadcast my a male some five to seven miles away. Scientists are sure it has to do with breeding, but they have yet to fully explain the meanings of the songs. It could be anything from advertising his presence to showing off his fitness for mating – we may never know the true meaning to another whale.

Close Encounter with Humpback Whales

(In February 2008 I spent four wonderful mornings diving with the Mike Severns Diving outfit in Kihei, Maui. Here's a writeup of one of our memorable wildlife encounters, which happened before I even got my gear on!)

During Captain Andy’s introduction talk aboard the Pi’iili Kai, he went over all the usual safety stuff, pointed out various features of the boat – the side gates we would giant-stride out of, the stern ladders we’d use to get back onto the boat at the end of the dive -- and ran through what the day would probably be like. Then he said our first dive would be out at Molokini crater. “Usually it takes us 15 minutes to motor out there,” he said. “But this is humpback season, so it could take us a lot longer!”

Whales have right of way around Maui, which is the center of the Humpback National Marine Sanctuary. Also, since the humpback is both on the Endangered Species List and protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, people are supposed to give the humpbacks a wide berth – 100 yards, by law. “Sometimes these guys pop up right in front of the boat with no warning and I have to slam on the brakes,” Andy warned us. “It’s like having a three-year-old run out in front of your car.”

So it was no surprise to any of us that, five minutes into our cruise between Kihei boat ramp and Molokini, we were veering off course to avoid a small pod comprising mom, calf, and escort. Our veer took us closer to another pod, though, just as one of them started doing pectoral slaps. Andy cut the engine and we drifted, watching the 40-something foot long beast roll back and forth on the calm surface of the ocean, repeatedly flinging one 15-foot-long front flipper skyward and then bring it down on the water with a resounding smack. White water fountained up around the graceful pectoral fin each time it plunged into the sea, and cascaded off it again as the pec rose for another slap.

The long pectoral fins are relatively narrow and look thin compared to the animal they are attached to. Dark on the upper side, white beneath, they are rounded at the tips and have a lacy crenellation around the edges, which often carry barnacles the size of a toddler’s fist.
After a few slaps another pec – this one belonging to another 40-something-foot-long leviathan – rose into the air and smacked down, doubling both the sound and the whitewater fury of the display. The first humpback brought its second pectoral fin into play, rolling rapidly back and forth, smacking down first one, then the other, as though to outdo its competition. The only other sound was the occasional blast of a humpback expelling a breath at 300 miles per hour through the paired blowholes, or nostrils, on top of its head.

We drifted for five or ten minutes, and the pectoral slapping display showed no signs of abating as Andy started the engine and turned us again towards our dive spot. Researchers suspect the slapping is a form of communication between humpbacks – the sound carries for quite a distance both above and below water – but what it really means is for the whales to know and us to wonder.