April 11, 2007

California Sea Otters: Haul Out On Land

The best, not to mention the most dangerous, aspect of nature photography, is that wildlife will always surprise you.

I've found that animals in the wild rarely display your "typical" behavior. National Geographic knows this very well, just look at the recent April 2007 article called Lessons Of The Hunt, where a young leopard kills her first baboon only to adopt its infant temporarily. Certainly not what you'd expect would happen, especially to a young leopard afraid of baboons.

My current special project, the California Sea Otters, is an excellent example of how wildlife doesn't always act as you'd expect. Everytime I go down to visit the otters, I see something I'd never read about before.

Bigger Rafts

The first time I visited Moss Landing, there was a raft of about 50-60 otters hanging out together. I had read that you might see packs of up to 10 together and that they segregated themselves by gender. I will occassionally see a small group of otters, often the younger ones, break off from the main group and play in another part of the slough, but for the most part, the main group stays together.

Shy or Not?

Most of the otters are pretty skittish, unless they're busy eating. When boats approach too close, they all dive and move to another part of the slough. Still, some otters are less shy than others.

Take this past Monday, for example. I had staked out this great spot to photograph the Moss Landing wildlife. It was low tide and I positioned myself at the end of the jetty, down at the waterline. Here, the seals, otters and shorebirds cruised in from the ocean and were almost on top of me before they noticed me. This made for some great seal and bird shots and the main group of otters drifted closer and closer. I was watching a Western Grebe, with its beady red eyes, fish under the water at my feet and so I didn't notice the little otter come zooming around the jetty within 10 feet of me. This otter, whom I've dubbed Baby because it had one pink and one blue tag on its flippers, swam right up to me and made to jump up on the rock next to me. I was so surprised, I took a quick step backward, away from the otter, and so Baby decided to stay in the water and look at me instead. Movement or talking on my part did not phase Baby, who floated so close the long lens of my camera could barely focus. After about 10 minutes, the otter rejoined the main group about 20 meters away.

How Close Is Too Close?

Getting close to wildlife is always a bit art and a bit luck. Stealth helps, too. You're stalking these wild creatures, and putting yourself in amongst them, hopefully without upseting them or causing yourself harm. I generally use the following rules: start with the Marine Mammal Protection Act and stay back 25-30 feet, but stay back even further if the animal seems wary or bothered by your presence.

Sometimes, you have to use a bit of stealth and underhandedness. I was able to sneak up amongst a large group of notoriously shy harbor seals the other day by using the fact that some idiots were scaring them from another direction and they weren't watching me. I couldn't stop the guys from bothering the seals, so I used the distraction to my advantage, placing myself between two groups. I also have found that as long as you do not directly approach a seal, but instead zigzag back and forth closer, they do not panic and enter the water. Once in position, I get down close to the ground and look small and non-threatening. This way, the seals can relax and I can relax and take their pictures.

I know I'm doing it right when the seals resume their original activities and the shorebirds start approaching and fishing within a few feet of me. When its time to go, I slowly rise and back away, never approaching any of the animals. I walk backwards to keep an eye on the animals, and pause if they seem troubled.

When Too Close Happens

This brings me to what happened two days ago. I'm still riding on a high of my immense good luck at the experience, but at first it was a bit unsettling because I got trapped using my own rules, which leads me to another good piece of advice: Always have a secondary escape route.

I had positioned myself at the base of a seacliff, in the afternoon shade with the sun setting behind me. The otters were right in front of me, frollicking in the sun. They were well lit, but I wasn't, and there was a pretty strong wind. In retrospect, my position hunkered down on the beach was really too good - they couldn't smell me and the sun blinded them from seeing me well. Some of them did know I was there, they would come up to within about 10 feet of shore, look at me, and swim away.

A couple of otters had been teasing me like this for about two hours, and I was getting some great shots, intently focused on the otters right in front of me. I do try to be aware of my surroundings, but the beach was only 20 feet wide and my back was to the cliff, so I didn't check my left, right or behind very often. So because of this, I had missed a rather large otter standing in about an inch of water up the beach from me, and in the other direction, another one was looking like it was doing the same.

Now comes the weird part. First one otter, then another, and another, come crawling out of the water around me. They blocked off my way off the beach without walking by them. The first large otter hauled out and curled up smack in the middle of the 20 foot beach, forcing me to skirt around it with very little room to spare. This otter, Sleepy (my husband named her), went straight to sleep on the beach, and wasn't the slightest bit upset by my setting up the camera about 30 feet away from her.

As I sat there watching her, another otter hauled out, came up to her and poked her with its nose. She opened her eyes, rolled over, and went back to sleep. The other otter went back into the water to play. Some young boys came along while I went to the car and tried to poke it and pet it and feed it crab legs, but I explained they shouldn't bug it like that (they were tourists and barey spoke English and didn't know it was an otter).

I went back and took more pictures of Sleepy and told my husband to come down to the beach and see this, because we hadn't known that sea otters ever came on land. Its not that they're not capable, but they are really quite graceless on land. They walk along on their front flippers and drag their wet back end out of the surf. When he arrived, it was almost sunset. We watched more and more otters haul out. We counted 12 otters on our short stretch of beach. Seven of which had hauled out together and were running around on the beach, doing that hop-like ferret walk. At least thirty more otters still floated in the shallows nearby. We got some video footage and I'll post it on the podcast feed later this month.

I cannot find much of anything online about sea otters hauling out on land. It's a very rare event, and to see so many is really amazing. I've contacted the Monterey Bay Aquarium to ask about this behavior. I read that mothers often beach their babies while they hunt, but there were no babies here. These were resting otters and some younger ones playing and running around.

I would never have anticipated that the otters would have come up on the beach. If I had, I would have been paying more attention to my flanks while I was shooting. Luckily, Sleepy was just that, and she wasn't bothered when I had to sneak by her, she just kept on snoozing.

Posted by sorsha at 9:24 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

April 4, 2007

Moss Landing State Beach: A Natural Graveyard

The beach is a natural graveyard. Things inevitably wash up, and for the most part, this an integral part of the shoreline ecosystem. Shore creatures rely on this rotting stuff as a source of food. Low tide may not smell particularly good, but its one of the best times to see birds, since they arrive to pick through the ocean's leavings.

I've been spending a lot of time at the beach lately, photographing Monterey Bay wildlife like the Northern Elephant Seals, the Southern Sea Otters, and various other marine life and shorebirds. Today I went down to Moss Landing.

I went to Moss Landing to photograph the resident raft of otters. Obligatory cute Southern Sea Otter photo below:

There certainly were a lot of otters there (upwards of 60). Floating about, grooming, eating, playing. There is also a small colony of harbour seals, including a couple of very young pups from this season (March-June). Since it's still winter, the number of bird species is ridiculous. It was the shere abundance of wildlife - both in the sea and the skies - along Elkhorn Slough that attracted me there in the first place.

I'm used to seeing dead animals, especially young seals, washed up on beaches. It's a fact of life that the nearer you are to a rookery (mating colony), the more likely you are to see carcasses. Only the strongest will survive, and that's the way it should be. The weaker ones certainly don't perish in vain. They become a meal to some predator like a great white shark or a killer whale, not to mention all the scavenger fishes and birds. Their demise also keeps the living population strong, genetically. There are a lot of stupid and lazy people out there, but nature isn't as forgiving - stupid and lazy animals get munched.

I cannot think of a place in the Monterey Bay where I've seen more diverse species that at Elkhorn Slough and Moss Landing Beach. It's not really where I'd go to see a seal rookery - for that I'd go to Año Nuevo, but I cannot think of another place, other than at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, that I can always spot at least a few otters.

So I stalked some otters, shot their cute little faces. I think that California schools should teach the marine mammal act - and the stay back 25 feet rule. Too often I see people harassing the wildlife. Even beyond the 25 feet, if you are bothering the animal, you should not approach closer. Some animals, like the elephant seal, don't seem to fussed with people. Harbour seals, however, are quite a bit more skittish.

Anyway, so I was tromping around in the low tide. About 30 seconds from the car, I ran across a dead young harbor seal. I'm no forensics expert, but I've seen the holes in animals before and thats usually from the birds and scavengers. The fact that the seal's head was rather non-existent makes me think it more likely got run over by a boat or something. Unfortunately the seals have taken up residence a stone's throw from the yacht harbor, and the boats are forced to go by them each time they want to leave the harbor. Then they have to sail through the raft of otters and out past the getty, also full of otters. Its basically a wildlife gauntlet and its basically impossible to keep the 25ft distance.

This is when I decided to take some pictures of otters. Happy, live otters. I noticed that the beach was covered with bones and large abalone shells, which I attribute with the otters, since they are nawing away on such things not 50 feet from me.

After a while, I decide to walk down a bit to see if the baby harbour seal is available for an Easter photo. Oh, and that's when I saw a little bunny in the coastal brush. So as I'm walking down the beach, I see a dead bird. Then another. And another. Not little birds, big birds. Duck-sized and larger. You know I cannot identify birds in life, so don't ask me what they were.

Shorebirds... Dead ones.

At first, I just told myself it was normal, but after the 10th dead bird, I was starting to feel a bit uneasy. There are a lot of birds here, so does that mean its normal to have a lot of dead birds?

When does the sheer number of dead birds become enough to be a concern? When does it become a red flag that something is very wrong here, something that needs to be addressed? The answer is: I don't know. I'm curious what other people think on this.

So much is going on here that could be having a negative impact. It's a very strange wildlife refuge, to be honest. Moss Landing is also home to a rather large power plant that cycles over a billion gallons of water a day. Huge smokestacks, surrounded by artichoke fields and guarded by otters. Very ironic. Sometimes the water the plant expels is quite a bit hotter than the ocean water, which causes problems. There's also the harbor pollution and boat traffic from the fishing docks and the yacht harbor. The surrounding land is all farmland, with pesticides potentially washing into the slough. The list goes on and on. Winter is bird migration time, maybe it's bird flu?

I tell myself, though, that there must be a reason so much wildlife settles here. Something must have been done right or they would move on. I like to think the otters choose to be there.

What do you think?

Posted by sorsha at 3:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 8, 2006

Moss Landing State Beach: Southern Sea Otters

A Raft Of Otters
Moss Landing SB, California


Playing In The Water Moss Landing SB, California


Keep Your Distance Moss Landing SB, California

Hanging In Kelp Beds
Moss Landing SB, California


Just Floating Around Moss Landing SB, California


Floating Around Moss Landing SB, California


Grooming Moss Landing SB, California


Thick Coats Moss Landing SB, California

Mother & Young Otter
Moss Landing SB, California

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Moss Landing State Beach: Otter Research & Tagging

Tagged!
Moss Landing SB, California


Tags Are Pesky Moss Landing SB, California

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Moss Landing State Beach: Otters & Their Young

Mother and Child
Moss Landing SB, California


Mother and Child Moss Landing SB, California


Mother and Child Moss Landing SB, California


Mother and Child Moss Landing SB, California

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Moss Landing State Beach: Otters at Play

Otters Playing
Moss Landing SB, California


Otters Playing, Fighting & Mating Moss Landing SB, California


Otters Playing, Fighting & Mating Moss Landing SB, California


Otters Playing, Fighting & Mating Moss Landing SB, California


Otters Playing, Fighting & Mating Moss Landing SB, California


Otters Playing, Fighting & Mating Moss Landing SB, California


Otters Playing, Fighting & Mating Moss Landing SB, California

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Moss Landing State Beach: Shark Attack

Great white sharks make their home in the Monterey Bay, but I have never see one in the Monterey Bay. Still, I know better than to swim anywhere near seals, nor near dusk. However, these otters didn't seem too bothered. Sorry I didn't get a better picture but at least you can see - the bigger splashing, the fin showing, and the very clear black and white coloring and bullet shape of the face. It looks to be a very young great white, given the size. It was not a successful attack.