After the storm...

Because of the storms and high winds which have recently rocked our coast, we've had a number of things wash up on the beach. The most spectacular of which was this...


A Risso's dolphin. We don't know why this guy died, but we do know that he is very young. Risso's get to be 10-12 ft in length, and are born at about 4-5 ft. He may have been just too inexperienced to ride out the storm. We won't know the cause of death for sure until someone does a necropsy. Very little is known about this species, so this little guy will help advance our knowledge.

Life Photo Meme: Shiny

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Cetacea

Family: Monodontidea

I finally got to see a Beluga whale! However, they were so white and shiny it was hard to take a picture of them...

Here are some interesting facts about the Beluga Whale (Delphinapterus leucus). They can get to 4.5 meters (~15 ft) in length and weight about 1500 Kg (3300 lbs). The whales are born toothless after a 14 month gestation period. They nurse for one to two years. After getting their teeth, they eat darn near about anything (octopus, worms, and fish to name a few).

They are a very vocal species; so much so, that they are often called the "sea canary". They are also the only whale with free cervical vertebrae (rather than fused), which means that they are the only whale which can turn its head or nod. They are most closely related to the Narwhal.

Whales with scale

Here are two whale skulls, with my spouse kindly standing in for scale...The first is a gray whale skull. The grays are doing their yearly migration down from Alaska to Baja, where the mothers will give birth to their calves.

The second is a fin whale skull. They are the second largest whale and second largest animal, after the blue whale.

Cool thing: Whale fossils

What better way to celebrate winter solstice than by visiting some great tidepools? We headed out to the tidepools and stopped by the Cabrillo Aquarium to check out the cool fossil finds that had just been discovered.

The week before, one of the directors of the aquarium was visiting the tidepools when he noticed these really cool fossil whale remains.

This is a shot of the rostrum. The two center lines that are close together are the upper jaw, while the bottom line is one half of the lower jaw.

Here's the neat part. This may be a cast of the inside of the brain case. The knob on the back end may be the foramen magnum.

Finally, a close shot of the fossilized bone. You can see the two layers of bone, the lighter compact bone (or cortical bone) and the darker, more porous spongy bone (or cancellous bone).

What a cool tidepool find!

Weekly video: Humpback whales

Always a favorite, some humpback whale playing around our boat on the way to a coral island.