This coming semester, Fall 2023, I am teaching marine biology (BIO 11B) at Cabrillo College. I’ve done this for years, but what makes this semester different is that I’m teaching it asynchronously online. We’ve been teaching in-person for a few semesters now, but due to an unusual crunch for lab…
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You never see just one
For the past several weeks now, the by-the-wind sailors (Velella velella) have been washing up on local beaches. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one floating on the surface of the sea, which is Velella‘s actual habitat. And when you see one Velella on the beach, all you have…
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Practice, practice, practice
Over the weekend we had dinner with some family members down in Monterey, and my niece gave me a leaf. She had collected it somewhere and carried it around for a while, and I never did get a clear answer about where it came from. To me it looks like…
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Upcoming talk
In this strange pandemic school year with classes online and student clubs not able to meet in person, the Natural History Club has been meeting virtually twice a week. We can’t go out as a group on any field trips, so the students have been sharing their nature journals online….
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False nightfall
California has been burning for almost a month now. Wildfires rage up and down the state, and it seems that new ones pop up every day. I haven’t bothered looking up the latest stats on acreage destroyed because, frankly, it would be too depressing. All across social media today people…
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Fire Breaks
Today’s report was written by a guest blogger, Alex Johnson, who also happens to be my husband. 26 August 2020 In the late afternoon last Saturday, the wind shifted and we got our first breaths of fresh air all week. We even saw actual clouds and blue sky for the…
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Ups and downs
At the end of April we made another trip down to southern California to catch the tail end of the wildflower superbloom. We knew that the best part of the bloom had passed, because we had already seen lots of it a month ago, but thought that there might still…
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Leavings on the beach
A week ago today, on Valentine’s Day, I accompanied two students from the Natural History Club to Seacliff State Beach. Catie and Ryan, on behalf of the NHC, want to take charge of a now-empty glass display case at the visitor center and turn it into an exhibit of some…
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Cleaning up
In the wee hours of Sunday 12 August 2018, the F/V Pacific Quest ran aground near Terrace Point. Over the next 24 hours she broke apart and began leaking diesel fuel into Monterey Bay. Fortunately most of the diesel was removed from the wreck, but the boat itself continued to…
